The scary thing about a character thing like the mummy is, well, he or she really isn’t that scary. Ever since the original The Mummy movie was released in 1932 Hollywood has been remaking and trying to make the mummy scarier than it was last time around. But honestly, the mummy is such a benign character it really can’t ever be scary.
I mean, what’s scary about a creature that consists of moldering, rotting bones only held together by a few bands of cloth that can only walk at a snail’s pace? Something that’s so dry any spark would ignite the bandages and so clumsy it seems to want to trip and fall at every step? In many ways a mummy is like a really lame zombie that doesn’t ever really do anything.
That’s not to say mummy movies haven’t been interesting or good ones, just that they’re never all that scary.
The most recent spate of mummy movies began in 1999 with The Mummy directed by Stephen Sommers. That movie was a sort of end film to the 1990s reboots of some of the Universal Monsters that, along with The Mummy, included the likes of Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). While those two films did play up the scary elements of those characters, the 1999 The Mummy instead pushed that film franchise into adventure territory.
Almost a melding of an Indiana Jones style movie crossed with horror movie, The Mummy starred Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and Rachel Weisz as Evie Carnahan. Rick’s an adventurer who talks with his fists and when his fists are busy substitutes chatting with two blazing pistols. Evie is a scholar who needs Rick to take her to a hidden tomb where they accidentally release an ancient mummy that unleashes its ancient curse on Egypt.
The Mummy was one of the very first movies I covered for my website and I remember liking it a great deal. I saw it in the theater and picked up a DVD copy of the movie as soon as it was available.
There’s lots of action and a little horror in The Mummy, but for the most part The Mummy is a safe film the whole family can enjoy. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what a good horror movie should be. Creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolfman are there to scare the audiences. But out of all those monsters the one that’s the least scary is the mummy.
Which is interesting because the first film of what’s planned to be a whole interconnected series of films all taking place in the same universe starring the Universal Monsters is a new The Mummy movie out now.
Starring Tom Cruise as Tyler Colt, this The Mummy takes place modern day with a female mummy (Sofia Boutella) accidentally being awakened by Colt and seeking vengeance on our world for what was done to her in ancient times. And, much with like the 1999 The Mummy, the 2017 The Mummy looks to be more like an action-adventure flick than something meant to make the kiddies wet the bed.
Which I guess makes sense. The movies making all the money these days at the box office from Captain America to Star Wars James Bond are really action-adventure movies at heart. And while Universal Pictures does have those kinds of movies like The Fast and the Furious and Jurassic Park, they don’t have any comic book movies like Marvel or DC and are being left out of that game. But they do have all of the Universal Monsters so why not try and make a film series out of that?
I love the Universal Monsters, I just wish that instead of going the action-adventure route, that Universal instead would have the guts, he-he-he, to go for horror instead. Who knows, an R-Rated The Creature from the Black Lagoon might just be what audiences are looking for rather than PG–13 toned-down horror-lite movies that it looks like Universal is set to produce?
If successful, though, expect an Invisible Man movie starring Johnny Depp and a Frankenstein one with Javier Bardem along with Wolfman and Creature from the Black Lagoon to rise from the grave in the near future.
That is if The Mummy is successful.