It would appear that, much like Dracula Untold, which was and then wasn’t the first attempt to start a new Universal Monsterverse, the new The Mummy is going to lean more heavily on an ass-kicking Mummy rather than a creepy one. There are scenes in the new trailer that literally feel like moments on the rollercoaster ride at Universal Studios. Sofia Boutella gets to continue her streak of bad girls in heavy prosthetics, and Tom Cruise does all of the falling and hanging off of things and near-drowning we’ve come to expect.
The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that this feels much closer so far to the Brendan Fraser Mummy films than the original Universal black and white movies, and that makes sense from a bean-counting perspective, since those movies were mostly huge, and did indeed spawn a slightly larger universe with all the Scorpion King spinoffs. But the humor that was integral to those seems lacking–if the Tom Cruise who shows up turns out to be the Knight and Day Tom Cruise, however, that could be interesting. If he’s straight up Ethan Hunt, though, I just hope Russell Crowe‘s Dr. Jekyll gets into it with him a bit.
On the other hand, if the big twist is that Cruise actually becomes the Mummy by movie’s end, it would be one hell of a hook for a larger universe. He made a pretty decent vampire once upon a long ago, and is usually more fun when he taps into his dark side a bit.
Are you wrapped up in this concept yet? Tell us in comments how you want your Mummy.
Image: Universal
