The Mummy; who's your daddy?

There’s a moment, about fifteen or twenty minutes into The Mummy when people who’re tired on Marvel movies might say to themselves “Well, they’ve got the origin story out of the way quickly enough.” Nope. The whole movie is the origin story for how Tom Cruise gets to be The Mummy, because heaven forbid that we could have two superhero style movies in one year where there’s a strong woman character with the movie named after her. Poor old Ahmanet is just the catalyst for Tom Cruise to become the title character. Which short changes Sofia Boutella, a performer who could own the screen without any dialogue in Kingsman and makes as good a fist as anyone could of the stupid dialogue in The Mummy. You could have made a perfectly decent Mummy movie for half the price by letting her do ALL the heavy lifting.

Easily the best thing about the movie they DID make is the decision to make Tom Cruise play a jerk. Tom Cruise is at his best when he plays self-absorbed dickheads, because there’s something in his face which somehow makes it easy for him to play shiftiness. Inevitably he insists on getting a reforming arc, but it’s fun til he gets there. They had a trailer before The Mummy for his other 2017 movie and it looks like he’s going to be even more of a dirtbag in that. One advantage of making Cruise a jerk is that it becomes less difficult to understand his epic lack of chemistry with female co-stars. Annabelle Wallis is, for all I know, a brilliant actress, but Cruise brings out her inner tree-stump every time they’re on screen together. It’s easier to understand when he’s being annoying.

Other weird bits; clearly the writing team shared my undying love for American Werewolf in London, since there’s a running gag through the middle of the movie where Tom Cruise is haunted by the buddy he took for a suicidal walk in the Iraqi countryside and indirectly turned into one of the living dead.

And finally, just as in the credits, Russell Crowe as both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Hyde may have involved less actual acting for Crowe, but it was weird to watch him set up as the middle aged avuncular foil to Tom Cruise’s young gun when Cruise is a year older than him. Possibly Cruise is being kept in a vault full of frozen mercury in between movies.