The Mummy (2017 film)

The Mummy is a 2017 American action-adventure film directed by Alex Kurtzman and written by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dylan Kussman, with a story by Kurtzman, Jon Spaihts, and Jenny Lumet. It is a reboot of The Mummy franchise and the first installment in Universal's planned Dark Universe franchise. The film stars Tom Cruise as a US soldier who accidentally unearths the ancient tomb of an entrapped Egyptian princess (Sofia Boutella). Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, and Russell Crowe also star.

The Mummy premiered at the State Theatre in Sydney, Australia, on May 22, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 9, 2017, in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and grossed $410 million worldwide.

Plot
In present-day London, construction workers discover the tomb of a crusader knight who was buried with an Egyptian ruby in 1127 AD. In present-day Iraq, U.S. Army soldiers Sergeant Nick Morton and Corporal Chris Vail discover the tomb of Princess Ahmanet, who attempted to summon the deity Set; she was caught and mummified alive. They and archaeologist Jenny Halsey fly Ahmanet's sarcophagus to Britain.

During the flight, Chris is possessed by Ahmanet through a spider that had bitten him in the tomb, attacks the others, and is killed by Nick. A large number of crows attack the plane, causing it to crash, killing everyone except Jenny, who escapes by parachute.

Nick returns to life in a morgue. Chris's ghost appears and tells him he has been cursed by Ahmanet, who seeks to use him as a vessel for Set. Ahmanet's mummy escapes from the sarcophagus and begins feeding on people to regenerate her body; she recovers the Dagger of Set and turns workers into zombies which trap Nick and Jenny.

Soldiers appear and subdue Ahmanet. Their leader, Dr. Henry Jekyll, explains that Jenny is an agent of Prodigium, a secret society dedicated to hunting supernatural threats. Nick and Jenny then discover Dr. Jekyll intends to allow Set to possess Nick completely in the belief that this will render Set vulnerable.

Jekyll then transforms into Edward Hyde; Nick stops him with a serum Jekyll invented to prevent him from undergoing this transformation, and he and Jenny escape. Ahmanet finds them, regains the dagger, summons a large number of crusader zombies, and creates a large sandstorm in London; Nick and Jenny escape her. The crusader zombies kill the Prodigium soldiers; Ahmanet recovers the ruby, combining it with the dagger in order to free Set.

Guided by Chris's ghost, Nick and Jenny flee into the London Underground. They are attacked by Ahmanet's minions; Ahmanet captures Jenny and drowns her. Nick tries to attack Ahmanet and ends up sustaining injuries. He lets Ahmanet embrace him, a ruse to let him steal the dagger and shatter the ruby. He strikes the pommel of the dagger against the floor, cracking the ruby. As he is about to shatter the ruby for good, Ahmanet reminds him that the dagger could grant him the ability to reverse death. He stabs himself instead and because the ruby is cracked, becomes partially possessed by Set. He goes to Ahmanet, but, upon remembering both Jenny and Dr. Jekyll's words, turns on her and uses Set's powers to kill her. He resurrects Jenny, and knowing the Prodigium are coming for him, vanishes.

Jenny and Dr. Jekyll debate whether Nick, now fused with Set, will use his powers for good. Nick returns to the desert and resurrects Chris. The two then go on a new adventure.

Cast

 * Tom Cruise as Nick Morton, a U.S. Army sergeant.
 * Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet, the title character. She is loosely based on Imhotep from the original Mummy films, as well as the ancient Egyptian goddess, Amunet.
 * Annabelle Wallis as Jennifer "Jenny" Halsey, an archaeologist who has a past with Nick.
 * Jake Johnson as Chris Vail, Nick's friend and closest ally.
 * Courtney B. Vance as Colonel Greenway, Nick and Chris's superior officer.


 * Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll.
 * Marwan Kenzari as Malik, Jekyll's chief of security and a member of Prodigium.
 * Javier Botet as Set, the ancient Egyptian god of death.

Production
Universal Pictures first announced plans for a modern reboot of The Mummy franchise in 2012. The project went through multiple directors, with Len Wiseman leaving the project in 2013, and a second director, Andrés Muschietti, in 2014.

Tom Cruise began talks about playing the lead in November 2015, with Sofia Boutella beginning talks that December. Kurtzman cast Boutella after seeing and being impressed by her largely mute performance in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Kurtzman noted that "if you look at her eyes, and this is what I got from watching Kingsman, there's a whole performance going on here. And in not saying anything but conveying that much to me, I thought oh my god, no matter how much prosthetics we put on her, no matter how much CG we put on her face, if I see this, she's going to convey something very emotional to me." Other casting news was announced between March and May, with Russell Crowe joining during the latter month.

Shortly after the film opened, Variety reported that Cruise had excessive control over the film and firm control of nearly every aspect of production and post-production, including re-writing the script and editing to his specifications, telling Kurtzman how to direct on set, and enlarging his role while downplaying Boutella's. Universal contractually guaranteed Cruise control of most aspects of the project, from script approval to post-production decisions. Kurtzman said about the movie in a 2019 interview that, "I look back on it now [and] what felt painful at the time ended up being an incredible blessing for me. I learned that I need to follow my own instincts, and when I can’t fully do that, I don’t think I can succeed."

Filming
Principal photography on the film began on April 3, 2016, in Oxford, United Kingdom, and also took place in Surrey. Filming on the movie concluded on July 17, 2016, in London. Production then moved to Namibia for two weeks, with principal photography wrapping up on August 13, 2016.

For the filming of the plane crash the production made use of The Vomit Comet and parabolic flight to simulate the illusion of weightlessness. The crew did a total of 64 takes with many of the crew becoming sick to their stomachs. Initially Kurtzman planned to shoot the scene entirely using wires and a rotating set, however Cruise's insistence changed his mind.

Music
Composer Brian Tyler started work on the music for the movie early, writing about a half hour of music before filming even began. Working on the film for a year and half, Tyler recorded with an 84-piece orchestra and 32-voice choir at London's Abbey Road. He ultimately wrote and recorded over two hours of music, which, given the length of the film (110 minutes), resulted in a soundtrack album longer than the film itself.

Release
Initially scheduled for a 2016 release, the film was released in the United States and Canada on June 9, 2017, with international roll out beginning the same day. The film was screened in various formats, such as 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D.

On December 20, 2016, IMAX released a trailer with the wrong audio track attached; this unintentionally prompted the creation of memes and video montages featuring the mistakenly included audio track, which was missing most of the sound effects and instead featured Tom Cruise's grunts and screams. IMAX reacted by taking down the trailer and issuing DMCA takedown notices in an attempt to stop it from spreading.

Video game
A video game based on the film, The Mummy Demastered, was released on October 24, 2017. It is a Metroidvania featuring a stand-alone story, which takes place concurrently with the events of the film and follows Prodigium soldiers under the command of Dr. Jekyll who fight the forces of Princess Ahmanet; unlike the film, it received positive reviews.

Box office
The Mummy grossed $80.2 million in the United States and Canada and $329.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $410 million, against a combined production and advertising budget of around $345 million. Deadline Hollywood estimated the film lost the studio around $95 million. The Mummy concluded 2017 as the 23rd highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.

United States and Canada
In North America, the film was released alongside It Comes at Night and Megan Leavey and was originally projected to gross $35–40 million from 4,034 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after making $12 million on its first day (including $2.66 million from Thursday night previews), weekend projections were lowered to $30 million. It ended up debuting to $31.7 million, marking the lowest of the Mummy franchise and finishing second at the box office behind Wonder Woman ($58.2 million in its second week). Deadline Hollywood attributed the film's underperformance to poor critic and audience reactions, as well as "blockbuster fatigue." In its second weekend the film made $14.5 million (dropping 54.2%), finishing 4th at the box office. It was pulled from 827 theaters in its third week and made $5.8 million, dropping another 60% and finishing 6th at the box office.

International
Outside North America, the film opened in 63 overseas territories, with China, the UK, Mexico, Germany, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Russia receiving the film the same day as in North America, and was projected to debut to $125–135 million. It opened on June 6, 2017 in South Korea and grossed $6.6 million on its first day, the biggest-ever debut for both Tom Cruise and Universal in the country. It ended up having a foreign debut of $140.7 million, the biggest of Cruise's career. In its opening weekend the film made $52.4 million in China, $7.4 million in Russia, $4.9 million in Mexico and $4.2 million in the United Kingdom. As of July 9, 2017, The film other big markets are China ($91.5 million), South Korea ($26.2 million), Russia and the CIS ($15.9 million) and Brazil ($13.2 million).

Critical response
The Mummy received generally negative reviews from critics, with criticism aimed at its narrative tone, acting, and plot points setting up the Dark Universe. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 16% based on 290 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Lacking the campy fun of the franchise's most recent entries and failing to deliver many monster-movie thrills, The Mummy suggests a speedy unraveling for the Dark Universe." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 70% overall positive score.

Vince Mancini of Uproxx gave the film a negative review, writing: "If you like incomprehensible collections of things that vaguely resemble other things you might've enjoyed in the past, The Mummy is the movie for you." IndieWire's David Ehrlich gave the film a D-, calling it the worst film of Cruise's career and criticizing its lack of originality, saying: "It's one thing to excavate the iconography of old Hollywood, it's another to exploit it. This isn't filmmaking, it's tomb-raiding."

Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote: "The problem at its heart is that the reality of what the movie is—a Tom Cruise vehicle—is at war with the material. The actor, at 54, is still playing that old Cruise trope, the selfish cocky semi-scoundrel who has to grow up. ... The trouble is that Cruise, at least in a high-powered potboiler like this one, is so devoted to maintaining his image as a clear and wholesome hero that his flirtation with the dark side is almost entirely theoretical." Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film one star out of four, saying: "How meh is The Mummy? Let me count the ways. For all the huffing and puffing and digital desperation from overworked computers, this reboot lands onscreen with a resounding thud."

Glen Kenny of RogerEbert.com gave the film 1.5/4 stars, writing: "I found something almost admirable about the film's cheek. It's amazingly relentless in its naked borrowing from other, better horror and sci-fi movies that I was able to keep occupied making a checklist of the movies referenced." Entertainment Weekly's Chis Nashawaty wrote that the film "feels derivative and unnecessary and like it was written by committee."

In BBC World News Culture, Nicholas Barber calls the film "a mish-mash of wildly varying tones and plot strands, from its convoluted beginning to its shameless non-end. Tom Cruise's new film barely qualifies as a film at all. None of it makes sense. The film delivers all the chases, explosions, zombies and ghosts you could ask for, and there are a few amusing lines and creepy moments, but, between the headache-inducing flashbacks and hallucinations, the narrative would be easier to follow if it were written in hieroglyphics."

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film "has some nice moments but is basically a mess. The plot sags like an aeon-old decaying limb, a jumble of ideas and scenes from what look like different screenplay drafts." Empire film magazine was more positive, with Dan Jolin awarding the film three stars. "It's running and jumping grin-flashing business as usual for Cruise, once more on safe character territory as an Ethan Hunt-esque action protagonist who couples up with a much younger woman, while another woman chases after him," he wrote. "And if the next installment-teasing conclusion is anything to go by, Cruise seemed to have enough fun making this that he may just return for more."

Future
The film is part of Universal Pictures' Dark Universe, an attempt to create a modern cinematic universe based on the classic Universal Monsters film series. A remake of Bride of Frankenstein was originally scheduled for release on February 14, 2019, but on October 5, 2017, Universal decided to postpone it to allow more work to be done on the script. The next film in the franchise to release is The Invisible Man. The 2014 film Dracula Untold was originally considered to be the first film in the series; however, since the film's release, the connection to Dark Universe was downplayed, and The Mummy was re-positioned as the first film in the series.