My thoughts on why 'the Mummy' failed to launch Dark Universe

[Peyton Westlake]

Yeah, I think that's fair.

A few things that stick out in my mind on Tom Cruise's Mummy:

* Cruise's character not liking Annabelle Wallis talking about how short their time having sex was
* Jake Johnson's ridiculous character arc. I think it was partly meant to be evocative of American Werewolf in London, though not sure.
* Just all these convenient plot elements. Like Courtney Vance's character letting Cruise and Johnson's characters assist in Wallis' excavation of that tomb. Like why would he even allow that? Shouldn't they be arrested and court martialed immediately?

A lot of the movie seemed, pieced together & patched I thought. Like it was written beforehand & several writers went back and cut things out or added things of their own.
Poor job. Usually good ol' Tom does a better job of picking projects.
Maybe if it wasnt labeled 'the Mummy' and was just an action movie all byitself without being connected to Universal's monsters, it would have been better.

 

[Fincher]

I liked the new Mummy all right, and it did have more of the horror element than the previous reboot. One thing I will say is that given that they intended the male lead to be the mummy at the end, Tom Cruise was a weird choice. I know he wasn't a literal mummy/Ancient Egyptian, but it just doesn't seem like a good fit. I was fine with him right up until he became the mummy, and then it turned awkward.

 

[Peyton Westlake]

I liked the new Mummy all right, and it did have more of the horror element than the previous reboot. One thing I will say is that given that they intended the male lead to be the mummy at the end, Tom Cruise was a weird choice. I know he wasn't a literal mummy/Ancient Egyptian, but it just doesn't seem like a good fit. I was fine with him right up until he became the mummy, and then it turned awkward.

Yes, a good point to be made Fincher.
Universal should have stepped cautiously with making an American the Mummy.
All the Egyptian lore that is associated with it, I'm sure they could have found a capable actor of Middle Eastern descent to portray the Mummy.

 

[Thundarr]

I don't think having a female mummy had anything to do with the film's failure at all. It was simply a garbage film and the GA saw that a mile away.

Universal should have taken a page out of New Line's book and come at the Dark Universe as a bonafide horror franchise. Scale the budgets back and make true horror films. Push R-ratings if you want to. You may not get billion-dollar earners like Marvel, but put enough production value into the films and you'd make some respectable profits off of them.

I would have lined up day one if the new Mummy was more akin to The Descent, with archeologists trapped inside the claustrophobic, underground passageways of a pyramid and getting picked off one-by-one by an animated, mummified corpse. Instead, we get a generic action movie with a generic action star fighting a sexified mummy, and an already-weak narrative bogged down by pointless "this is a shared universe" subplots. Yawn.

Or alternatively, they could have made it an action movie franchise where the monsters are the HEROES.

Imagine if The Mummy was about an ancient Egyptian hero who tried to thwart some great evil but was mummified for his efforts. He is resurrected by some magic MacGuffin thousands of years later and must now defeat a new evil (or perhaps his original foe had returned as well and they must do battle one final time) in the modern day. Then after the BBEG is defeated at the end of the movie the heroic mummy decides to use his supernatural powers to continue to fight evil in the modern age as a mummy superhero.

Dracula falls in love with a mortal woman (not unlike in the beginning of Castlevania) and chooses to mend his evil ways in order to win her affection. It works and they get married. They live happily until old age takes her, Dracula takes his new love of humanity and chooses to defend them from other vampires.

Doctor Jekyll is beaten and robbed on his way home after work. Perhaps his wife was with him and she didn't survive the assault. He creates a serum that turns him into an unstoppable wrecking machine. Bent on revenge he goes out at night as Mister Hyde, seeking the muggers who beat and robbed him and murdered his wife, becoming a monstrous vigilante.

Similar stories can be written for The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and Frankenstein's Monster, making them all tragically heroic characters instead of frightening monsters. Then in a massive crossover event, they can all team up Avengers Style to fight off an evil that's bigger than all of them.

I don't know. It's just a thought.

 

[DarkKnight88]

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Or alternatively, they could have made it an action movie franchise where the monsters are the HEROES.

I think there is a good argument for that. Building a series around a villain can be very difficult. Obviously there are some slasher franchises that have done it successfully, but not successfully to the point they can carry $200 million+ blockbusters. Most of those are lower budget with lower expectations. Even the Godzilla movies made him a good guy both the old ones after the first three or four, and the new ones.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Or alternatively, they could have made it an action movie franchise where the monsters are the HEROES.

Imagine if The Mummy was about an ancient Egyptian hero who tried to thwart some great evil but was mummified for his efforts. He is resurrected by some magic MacGuffin thousands of years later and must now defeat a new evil (or perhaps his original foe had returned as well and they must do battle one final time) in the modern day. Then after the BBEG is defeated at the end of the movie the heroic mummy decides to use his supernatural powers to continue to fight evil in the modern age as a mummy superhero.

Dracula falls in love with a mortal woman (not unlike in the beginning of Castlevania) and chooses to mend his evil ways in order to win her affection. It works and they get married. They live happily until old age takes her, Dracula takes his new love of humanity and chooses to defend them from other vampires.

Doctor Jekyll is beaten and robbed on his way home after work. Perhaps his wife was with him and she didn't survive the assault. He creates a serum that turns him into an unstoppable wrecking machine. Bent on revenge he goes out at night as Mister Hyde, seeking the muggers who beat and robbed him and murdered his wife, becoming a monstrous vigilante.

Similar stories can be written for The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and Frankenstein's Monster, making them all tragically heroic characters instead of frightening monsters. Then in a massive crossover event, they can all team up Avengers Style to fight off an evil that's bigger than all of them.

I don't know. It's just a thought.

They seemed to (kind of?) go that route in the Mummy movie since Cruise gains her powers by the end but it was such a crappy movie that the sequel it set itself up for will never happen. But I do wonder if that’s how each of those planned films would have gone - with the monster ultimately becoming a hero or another character gaining their abilities and becoming that hero so they could have set up their Monster Avengers crossover film. Dr. Jekyll was already in a kind of Nick Fury/Tony Stark role.

 

[DarkKnight88]

These characters are tragic, not superheroes. The only way to make it work is less Avengers and more Dirty Dozen/Suicide Squad. They shouldn’t get along, and in the end some may turn on each other (I’m looking at you Drac). And keep them scary. The audience surrogate, if there are any of the bunch, would be Frankenstein’s Monster or the Wolf Man since they’re the only ones trying to do good but are either cursed with something they can’t control or “born” different.

But keep the atmosphere. That’s a part of what made the Universal films so beloved.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Yeah, don't try to make them like their competition. What would make these successful is staying true to their horror roots. There was a lot of potential for this.

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

 

[Drizzle]

That's....actually not a bad idea.

 

[Silvermoth]

I actually reckon the time is right now more than when it was first pitched. Like if you went full A24 with it and got some good actors and let them work with some basic effects, that would turn out much better