Poster:
Teaser for the teaser:
My bad if I’m totally behind the times on this, but I only just now noticed this thread - is this some kind of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen kind of thing? Why would Dr Jekyll be in a mummy movie?
This movie is the kickoff to Universal’s classic monsters movie universe. It was supposed to have started with 2014’s Dracula Untold, but since that movie flopped, the studio decided to regroup and tweak some of the concept to include more AAA stars - hence Tome Cruise.
The plan so far includes movies for each of these characters:
The Mummy
The Wolfman
The Invisible Man
Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
Van Helsing
Like the Marvel and DC movies, the plan is to share plotlines, characters, and marketing.
Well that just sounds totally bonkers. But what do I know, probably make a crapload of money.
Maybe. Keep in mind that Dracula Untold already flopped and that was supposed to be the inaugural movie in the series.
I don’t know the first thing about Dracula Untold or who was in it, but I’m betting if it had Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp then it would have gotten a fairly significant number of people in seats, out of curiosity if nothing else.
It had Bard, from the Hobbit movies. Also, Tywin Lannister.
I’ll also expose myself to ridicule and say that it wasn’t a stupendously dumb movie… just a run-of-the-mill dumb movie. It’s one of those movies where you’re flipping through channels and say “oh, this is the scene from that silly Dracula movie where the guy who played Bard in the Hobbit movies first learns how to turn into a swarm of bats…”, and then all of a sudden it’s an hour later and the credits are rolling and you wonder what the hell happened to your afternoon.
Is Charles Dance still supposed to be the lynchpin that connects all the movies together?
It’s also kinda weird that almost all these works are public domain, so can’t like anyone make competing dracula or mummy movies?
That’s a good question. No one at Universal has said.
Universal definitely wants to go more towards modern-day settings for these movies, so I don’t know why he wouldn’t work since the end of Dracula Untold established his presence in today. But the studio has also been pretty clear that Dracula Untold should not be considered part of the new direction for this movie universe.
LOL I don’t even remember this movie existing. Flop indeed…
Dracula Untold was a great bad movie. It’s totally worth watching after a night of binging on Overwatch and you’re too amped from Genji’s bullshit to go to sleep so you might as well watch some TV to calm down and shit it’s now 2:30am but that Dracula movie was pretty cool.
I thought Dracula Untold was a nice deviation from the mythos of Dracula. It’s an original origin story for how Dracula got he powers.
Was it told in the best way? Was the story riveting and keeping you at the edge of your seat? No. I’d classify it more as a sophomoric attempt that hit a lot of the right notes to really show his power. It starts by showing you who he gets his power from, and those scenes were awesome. Later on, when he lays waste to an entire regiment attacking the castle solo. you get more. I’d say where the film falters is in his attempt to get his country men to safety and the scenes of pitchfork wielding mobs was fabricated much too quickly and meekly.
Of course the ending is too mushy and revenge driven, which you knew was going to happen because then we wouldn’t even have a Dracula.
So, I’d recommend it like @Wallapuctus has said - don’t avoid it, and maybe seek it out when you need some brainless activity.
The first official trailer dropped yesterday:
I haven’t been following this too closely, but when the announcements were made for some sort of “shared universe” I thought that of course Tom Cruise was going to be the mummy. It’s unclear if that’s going to happen here, though I guess when I hear “shared universe” I think of superheros, and if our universe is going to have Frankenstein, the Mummy, Creature From The Black Lagoon, etc, maybe the characters appearing in the various and sundry movies are going to be the monster hunters? Whatever!
Two impressions from the trailer (not terribly spoilery):
- Tom Cruise looks younger than ever. How???
- No way in hell he survives the plane crash (perhaps there’s a plot device we don’t see, I guess. I can’t imagine that a plane crashes and he just happens to survive, given what the trailer shows).
I wish I hadn’t seen that trailer. It’s definitely on the spoiler-y side in that it spoils what looks like a really good action sequence. I would have loved to see that blind.
Of course, I watched the trailer because I didn’t think I was interested in the movie, but now I’m interested.
That’s a better trailer than I expected - for some reason I expected this to keep the jokey kind of hijinks of the Brendan Fraser movies, and this seems to have a shade of actual horror in there. I’m moderately interested!
I may watch this years from now on TNT. But I won’t be paying money for it.
What was with Tom Cruise’s scream in the plane? That was some Nic Cage level emoting.
What was Tom Cruise thinking?
He can be in any movie he chooses.
why take over Brandon Fraser’s sloppy seconds? This movie is terrible.
The reason the Fraser Mummy worked, and the reason the Marvel Movies work I think is that there are bits of humor sprinkled in with the drama. I don’t see this movie doing that.
It’s like they are mixing the worst part of DC’s movies (the darkness of tone and utter lack of humanity or complexity of character) and the worst IP ever and are rolling the dice big. This is the king of big bet that could bankrupt them if they get blinders on.
Buuuuuut Dracula untold was a 3x ROI for them. That’s a hit. So they have been been given the message the IP is valuable. And I might be wrong, it might be. But Dracula, Frank, etc were Victorian England stories. I think they have lost much of their cultural appeal. We’ll see though. If this makes money we’ll see another, if not … next!