The so-called Dark Universe is in trouble. Universal's monsters begin with the wrong foot in this chaotic, reiterative and patched reinvention of its legendary creature of Ancient Egypt, which misses a good chance to resurrect enough fascination for its own monster and also for the universe to which it intends to open us. The mummy, directed by Alex Kurtzman (screenwriter for Transformers 1 and 2, The Amazing Spider Man 2) has one main problem that he never gets rid of: his argument does not seem to decide between being a "Tom Cruise movie" (Where everything is arranged so that Tom Cruise can run and be just that: Tom Cruise), a history of origin to introduce something like the Extraordinary League, a movie with a hero like Indiana Jones, or just a mere foundation for a future franchise.
In other words, and to use a timely term for the universe, the script - written by a group of six people - has a quality like Frankenstein, who, unlike the creature created by Mary Shelley, can not come to life at all .
Once Tom Cruise has the opportunity to show us his acrobatics on that famous zero-gravity scene - and that gives rise to the London release of the Egyptian monster - the plot becomes a succession of action scenes disjointed, inserted in a zombie plot, that advances without much conscience, but, with much impetus and without apologizing.
The director expresses his desire to pay homage to Boris Karloff's classic - and to that light but fascinating tone of horror - in the way he portrays his villain (played by Sofia Boutella) in the modern world. Boutella, whom we saw as Gazelle in Kingsman and as Jaylah in the last installment of Star Trek, has the opportunity once again to show the physical abilities that her previous career as a professional dancer has left her. It remains what it was before: a promise to Zoe Saldana for Hollywood.
However, and although it is the most intriguing of this film, its participation as the first female mummy (as far as main villain is concerned) is not entirely that project intended to show that talent that we intuit. The script does not leave much choice. Her character falls into the commonplace, made up of elements we've seen before: a woman who steals lives through kissing, a resentful villain, living dead as henchmen who make us think about Evil Dead.
Certainly, the film begins very well with a plot that envelops the viewer's attention and with a rather intense scene from an air crash in which Cruise's character allegedly dies. However, everything becomes very confusing when including London tombs (of medieval crusaders) irrelevant to history and a ritual to bring a malevolent being to Earth. A secret organization of monsters is behind this, headed by Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll / Mr.Hyde (???).
As an individual project, The Mummy is a succession of references to other horror, adventure or science fiction films. However, as a franchise start, it has even more problems. There is simply too much noise: the trilogy starring Brendan Fraser is recent and at least the first two films were quite funny.
The Mummy strives to remind you frequently that this is a shared universe, incorporating other creatures and working very hard to make sure that more movies from this universe come. The result verifies what we feared: perhaps this monster was not indicated to start the Dark Universe (especially with others that would have been more interesting and fresh, like the Black Lagoon Monster or even the Bride of Frankenstein, that will be the following film).
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Regards, Antonio.