THE MUMMY (2017)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                           Like the three-film "Mummy" series that began in 1999, this reboot of that franchise emphasizes adventure over drama in its finished form. However, some writeups indicate that director/co-writer Alex Kurtzman meant to place more emphasis upon the titular monster (now changed to the female character Princes Ahmanet) than on the hero who defeats her. This may have been due to the casting of Tom Cruise in the role of Nick Morton, a contemporary reworking of Brendan Fraser's character in the first series. Allegedly Cruise dominated the filming thanks to his enormous box-office clout, with the result that Ahmanet (Sofie Boutella) was reduced to being the opponent of the main hero. Cruise's clout didn't deliver good box-office, though, so this take on THE MUMMY unraveled.                             

 Taken on its own terms, MUMMY is probably no better or worse than a lot of successful popcorn flicks. Cruise's Nick is another of his bad-boy types, using his status as a sergeant in the US army to hunt for caches of Iraqi treasure. He romances lady archaeologist Jennifer (Annabelle Wallis) and steals a map from her; in addition, Nick further talks his buddy Chris (Jake Johnson) into abetting his skullduggery. What Nick doesn't suspect is that Jennifer works for a secret organization, the Prodigium. Jennifer's bosses fear that the mummy of Princess Ahmanet, who in ancient times slew her whole family, may be about to revive and to conjure forth Set, the ancient evil deity of the Egyptians. Nick's duplicity is exposed but for some reason his superior assigns Nick to help Jennifer's investigation of Ahmanet's tomb. During this tomb-raiding expedition, Chris gets poisoned by a mystic spider and turned into a Renfield-like servant to Ahmanet before he's killed.                                                                   

   I won't attempt to replay every beat of this noisy FX-heavy film. Suffice to say that Ahmanet does come back to life, and that she, like her 1990s predecessor Imhotep, has almost godlike magical powers, which she proceeds to wield against modern humankind. Nick dies, but he's brought back to life by the mummy-woman, who wants to use him as a dedicated sacrifice to Set. Loosely, Nick has to avoid his usual selfish habits and become a hero to defeat Ahmanet's evil, though the script doesn't ever make Nick resonant enough for viewers to identify with his superficial struggle.                                          

Most of this MUMMY proves thoroughly routine, but I did like the scene in which Jennifer introduces Nick to her Prodigium boss, who's none other than a 21st-century version of Henry Jekyll-- who comes complete with his own inner Hyde. Viewers don't get any backstory as to how this Jekyll became the head of a monster-stopping organization. However, since a hypothetical Jekyll would be devoted to restraining his own inner demon, it makes a modicum of sense that he might also devote himself to corralling the "outer" breed. In fact, during Jekyll's colloquy with Nick, "Eddie Hyde" comes forth and suggests making a deal with Ahmanet for everyone's mutual benefit-- except the majority of mortals, of course. Nick and Hyde have a pretty good hand-to-hand fight, which I liked better than any of the forgettable battles with Ahmanet's zombie minions. Eventually the evil mummy is defeated but Nick, who's sort of undead, retreats from human contact, accompanied only by Chris (who also got resurrected in the interim).                             

    Had THE MUMMY been successful, Universal had plans to use the movie as a tentpole for a "shared universe" involving various famous Universal monsters. The film's failure skotched those plans and maybe that's just as well, given how the studio failed to commit to Kurtzman's ideas about focusing upon the monstrous mummy. Initially I didn't think this 2017 film qualified as a crossover. However, my system does allow for the combination of one "established" icon (Jekyll-and-Hyde) with one "novel" icon (Nick), so I suppose MUMMY is both a crossover AND a monster mashup. Ironically, the only established monster here who appeared in a Golden Age of Hollywood film, Mister Hyde, appeared not in a movie from Universal but from Paramount.