Review: I Watched the Mummy Remake with Tom Cruise. Why? Just Why? (Spoilers)

I remember watching the original Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraiser when I was maybe 8 or 9 and at first, I thought it was too scary and didn’t like it. Fast forward several years to today, I now like those movies and don’t get scared of them anymore because there’s better things to be scared of…like Bidenomics. In those years between being scared of the original movies, apparently another one was made starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe that I only now just watched and my main question is just…why? Why did this movie become a thing?

#1: The Mythology

In the original movies, the original Egyptian mythology was bastardized, but it wasn’t so to the extent that it was in the remake. At least the mythology still had a few recognizable parts in the originals, but this time it was apparent that no one looked into anything they were basing the movie on. The main example I can find here is the whole plot line of the villian making a deal with the god Set to gain control of the Egyptian throne and become his wife. While I have no idea if the Egyptians ever tried to bring Set into human form and become his spouse, I do know that he was already married in the mythology to Nephthys, the goddess of the Nile. He also certainly wasn’t the god of death, that was his brother, Osiris, who he killed and mutilated. He was, however, the god of the desert, thunderstorms, eclipses, and earthquakes and helped defend Ra from the snake Apophis on his trips through the Underworld.

#2: The Villian

The villian in this movie is supposed to be a femme-fatal mummy who is able to come back to life by drawing the life force out of people by kissing them.

I’m not kidding.

That’s how she returns to her mostly intact form.

By sucking the life out of people’s mouths.

At least in the original movies the villian was just sucking the souls out of people by opening his mouth. This lady just makes it weird. Thanks to the weird kissing thing, the movie became way over sexualized (especially as she starts looking more normal), and I found myself constantly cringing.

#3: Dr. Henry Jekyll

One of the other villian/anti-hero characters in the remake was Dr. Henry Jekyll who runs what is essentially an underground monster hunting buisness that reminds me of SCP. However, Tom Cruise’s character soon finds out that Henry Jekyll is cursed (his alter-ego is Eddie Hyde – can you believe it?) and that creates a bit of drama for a few minutes.

The reason why I don’t like this “plot-twist” is because it is just so obvious. I heard the name Jekyll and saw the vampire-skull in one of his display cases and all I could think was, “Oh boy, I totally didn’t see this coming.” What’s worse is the fact that they were going to make three other movies after the Mummy remake that centered around fighting vampires, werewolves, and pretty much everyone from Monster High, but didn’t because this movie was so bad.

#4: Manufactured Romance

The love interest in this movie is the love interest because 1). The plot needed her to be and 2). She had slept with Tom Cruise’s character. That’s it. Those are the only reasons why she’s there. That means that when she dies and comes back to life later thanks to Cruise’s character becoming Set to save her, there is no emotional response from the audience. There was no reason for us to be ardently shipping them so it was just another thing to put in the movie for the sake of why not?

In conclusion, the movie sucked. I would not recommend it.

Until next time,

M.J.