Lo and I say unto you, I have beheld the origins of the Dark Universe and it is without comfort and joy. Verily, it is a strange place, with all manner of creature and abomination prepared to slink and scuttle into our collective consciousness — and yet it seems a place without reason. This initial glimpse into the realm of Universal’s underworld is not just shadowy and mysterious but murky and muddled.
What the heck am I talking about, you wonder? Universal is beginning its “Dark Universe” franchise — it even has a specific logo — with The Mummy. Universal will be releasing new versions of its signature monster movie characters (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon) over the next few years in an interconnected series of what they hope will be blockbuster films. Case in point: the only familiar character in The Mummy is not the Mummy itself (Karloff’s Imhotep is now Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet) but rather Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe), who will, undoubtedly, receive his own “origin story” movie, and perhaps others as well. The Universal executives have finally decided, after eighty years or so, that the time is right to begin remaking their cornerstone properties. They may be right, as some of the old classics are now old chestnuts. Even so, I cannot help but bemoan the notion that updating these properties evidently means turning tightly-written, gloriously goofy fright-fests of the imagination into dry, soulless, overproduced “event” pieces with no real identity. ‘Cause that is what happened with The Mummy.
Alex Kurtzman’s film takes a genuinely creepy premise about an ancient Egyptian queen, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), and turns it into a torture-laden James Bond / Indiana Jones-style action film with terrible lighting and cardboard characters. Our hero is one Nick Morton (a generic name if there ever was one, played charmlessly by the completely miscast Tom Cruise), a scoundrel with a hidden heart who looses Ahmanet into the world, only to fall prey to her evil demands. Our heroine is Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a spunky archeologist who knows all the answers and shares a brief, unexpanded-upon history with Nick. Together they, under the tutelage of Dr. Jekyll (Crowe), who is like James Bond’s M, only with cabinets of curiosities and monster claws, try to prevent the ancient soul-sucker to conquer our world.
The film is awkward and insular, never really involving anyone outside the main circle even while sandstorms send planes crashing and people running throughout England. One would expect the Dark Universe to be dark thematically, or metaphorically, but this movie is dark, or at least dim, pretty much throughout. It was difficult to follow, or care about, the action when Nick battles Ahmanet in the too-dimly lit crypts, which is a cardinal sin in an action movie. To take Shakespeare out of context, this movie is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
One thing the classic Universal monster movies did well was to create empathy for its monsters. Frankenstein’s Monster is a victim of science, for instance, and is much more relatable than its human creator and the rabble who fear it. Karloff’s Mummy is evil, but his quest for immortal companionship is certainly understandable. This film makes Ahmanet a force of evil without any empathic qualities. I felt sorry for her as she was chained and manacled, but I also knew she would soon break free. Then she experiences the Kiss of Death, just as she dispensed it to so many others (just like the space vampire in Lifeforce). There’s also a sidekick, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), a cross between Beni (Kevin J. O’Connor) in Brendan Fraser’s Mummy movies and Jack (Griffin Dunne) in An American Werewolf in London. Very little about this movie is fresh, original, or interesting.
Why did Universal begin their Dark Universe with The Mummy? I cannot say. Other than the Dr. Jekyll angle, it doesn’t seem poised to lead into anything else. Up next is Bride of Frankenstein, to be released in 2019. Why do the Bride before Frankenstein has even created his Monster? I cannot say. It is interesting that the first two are female monsters, but I wouldn’t call that a big win for female empowerment. One can only hope that the following films will be much, much better than this. Time exists to correct the mistakes that this movie makes, to position upcoming adventures with talented actors (not stars like Tom Cruise, who hasn’t changed his movie persona in years now) and stories that thrill the blood, not deaden it. We need to care about the characters for the films to work; the human (and monster) stories always trump destruction scenes. ☆ 1/2. 20 June 2017.