Really, Where's Your Sense of Adventure?

"Where's your sense of adventure?"
Tom Cruise's character in The Mummy asks Jake Johnson that question twice, bookending the film. And honestly Universal, where is your sense of adventure? I'm going to keep this short and ugly. If you read my blog, you know my worst film of 2017 is Kong: Skull Island, but this one is a contender for that title. Honestly, Kong is bad because of my expectations, maybe it's not that bad, but I was super disappointed. But The Mummy is really bad. It wasted a great production, a talented cast, and possibly, hopes for a new franchise. Tom Cruise's Nick Morton is a treasure hunter(not sure, if he is, a bad one at it). He found an Egyptian tomb in Iraq with an archaeologist, Jenny and his sidekick, Vail. He was then cursed to be the vessel for Set, Egyptian God of Death and the Mummy who goes by the name of Ahmanet is unleashed to the world.

I didn't have any expectations for this film. I was simply going in for Tom Cruise, whose decision to star in this film is super peculiar and out of character. It's not his typical film and one can only guess how much he's paid to be covered in CGI rats in this film (yes, that's an actual scene). The Mummy's only redeeming value is the production design. Much of it is actual set and that's something to celebrate. But that's it. Story is bad as fuck. Direction by Alex Kurtzman seems non-existent. This film doesn't deserve the actors' dedication. Sofia Boutella is so underused in this film. And any film that wasted Emmy winner Courtney B. Vance is a criminal. At least we know how they got Tom Cruise to star in this film, by offering him extreme stunts, which, to some people, turned this film into a Mission: Impossible-wanna be monster picture. And maybe they pitch him a bumbling idiot character that he never plays I don't know. I usually love Jake Johnson, Nick from New Girl and he screams Nick a lot in this film which is weird, but in this film he's super annoying. And let's take our hats off in mourning for Annabelle Wallis who is receiving the 2017 Taylor Kitsch Bomb Award for starring in this failure and box office failure King Arthur. Oh, another thing the producers done right is actually hiring Tom Cruise because the film is actually making a buttload of money it shouldn't have made.

The film does not know what it wants to be. Either it is a zombie horror film or a horror film or a comedy-adventure film, instead it settles on being the most bland film I've seen in a long time. Some of the scenes comes off as unintentionally funny. But the actual jokes they do in this film is beyond cringy. What these writers should know is that they can't do Marvel-type jokes without affirming the characters' personalities, and the characters in this film shouldn't make jokes. Also, without backstory they shouldn't do Jekyll and Hyde in this film which to a lot of audience who's not familiar with the literature comes off as the ultimate what-the-fuck moment in this film. Even I know about Jekyll and Hyde but it's still weird. Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe should have a better movie to camp it up ala Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes in Clash of the Titans. The biggest crime though, is that for a movie titled The Mummy there's not enough Mummy terror in this film. Instead they decide to bound their titular character in chains to deliver expositions and set up this crap Dark Universe, and with this film, the future for Dark Universe is dark indeed. I hope they just don't continue this doomed universe because they just don't have that sense of adventure. They just have the sense of grabbing cash from the audience without making a compelling film. The Mummy: rated 1/4.