The Mummy (2017) - Tom Cruise and the start of Universal's monster universe

Though true, this isn’t specific to Cruise - that seems to be the norm for Hollywood casting.

I liked this trailer a lot more and it seems like this will be a traditional summer blockbuster. Which is ok as far as I’m concerned. Though I thought Boss Baby would be a horrible flop, so maybe my judgement on movies is suspect.

It’s already apparent that this “monster universe” isn’t going to be of any interest to me, notwithstanding my love for the original Universal monster movies and Hammer’s remakes/reimaginings. Turning undead and werewolves into CGI world-threateners like alien invaders is just stupid and dull.

Couldn’t agree more. This is one of my pet peeves with Hollywood where a certain type of film doesn’t feel complete unless the villain and stakes can be scaled up to apocalyptic levels. Even if the scaling is nonsensical.

I agree. What if the villain just wants to wipe out a small village? That’s still really bad and evil. We don’t need to destroy New York in a CG apocalypse in every single movie now. Why does The Mummy even care about New York? Shouldn’t it be angry with Egypt?

The Mummy should be all “Who put that damn dam on the Nile?”

Universal has given their monster movie universe a name.

“Dark Universe”

Like the Marvel movies, the Dark Universe title bit will play before each of the new movies.

I’m totally in on this. I so want this to be awesome.

And a bit of a spoiler about how the universe will be tied together:


Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll has a secret anti-monster superhero organization called The Prodigium that gathers exceptional (some might say extraordinary) people to fight monsters and keep the world safe from supernatural threats like the mummies or vampires.

Lego already did this and it was pretty awesome:

You know, I wish them well, but there have been a LOT of attempts to make a “good guy” organization or syndicate made up of (or dedicated against) characters from Gothic Horror stories, and the vast, vast, VAST majority of them have failed utterly. There was the recent Frankenstein movie, Jackman’s Van Helsing, and the Brothers Grimm movie from a few years back.

Comics have had a better run, but not as good as you might think. Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was fantastic… but only the first run; the later attempts never managed to capture the magic. The Creature Commandos are far better in retrospect than they were in reality. More recently, I think DC tried a “Frankenstein: Agent of [Something]” which was spectacularly terrible.

I hold out hope for this movie, but only because Cruise is attached to it and he has a nose for good scripts.

Penny Dreadful seemed fairly successful at pulling that off.

It was one of the better efforts, but successful? Agree to disagree.

Three seasons with some highly respected actors you normally see in movies seems pretty successful.

Loved (most of) the cast, but felt like they were often wasted.

Penny Dreadful started out strong, but it really shit the bed by the final episode. The last season stunk with the exception of the performance from Rory Kinnear. The things I really liked about the show was the tone and wardrobe and set design. The scripts were kind of terrible and the acting quality varied a lot. Also, the perplexing use of Patti LuPone as two different, completely unrelated characters was distracting.

At any rate, it’s tough to say whether or not Penny Dreadful was a “success” at all. Prestige cable shows now tend to get a second season approved before the first season even gets to its second episode. Since they don’t measure ratings the same way regular TV does, they use less solid metrics at first. Early on, it’s all about the buzz the shows generate. It’s only later that the suits start looking at actual viewership. By that measure, Penny Dreadful got a third season and was cut off at the knees.

I haven’t seen season three yet, and am sad to know its probably not very good. Thanks for the warning, though!
Then again, Im probably one of the few people who actually REALLY likes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in its movie edition , probably mostly for what it tried to do. But I found it to be a fantastic tale, full of all the imagination and wonder I remember feeling when I read my first Jules Verne book, as a quite young child.

I’m looking forward to this.

At first I thought, meh - another effort to shoehorn old properties into a franchise. Do we really need another Mummy movie?

The answer is no, but I’ll take a good old fashioned Tom Cruise action flick with a mummy. It’s better than the overplayed zombies,even if a traditional mummy is a variation on the theme.

Just saw @Telefrog’s post from December explaining what this is. Unfortunately, to the uninitiated, this looks like it is supposed to be a reboot of the Fraser films, down to the visual effects seen on the trailer. I gather that’s not what it is, but that’s what it LOOKS like. I actually turned to my wife during the preview (at Guardians 2) and said it was like they took The Fraser movie and removed everything that made it great.

That isn’t to say this won’t be a great movie, but I think they have a marketing/branding problem.

Saw the trailer for this when my wife dragged me kicking and screaming to sit through Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The trailer for this movie makes it looks horrible. Whether the movie turns out to be good or bad, this trailer landed with a resounding thud for me. I can’t think of a trailer that has made me less interested in seeing a movie since The Circle.

It’s a Cruise film though, and except for the Mission Impossible series, I’ve pretty much enjoyed everything else he’s been doing (on screen) for the last however many years. So I expect the movie to turn out better than the trailer is letting on.

Welp, looks like early reviews are saying the movie is garbage. I guess the trailer is a pretty accurate representation of the film after all.