The Mummy is a dumb trashy blockbuster and that’s why I liked it. I’m much more inclined to like fast moving action with constant banter, than the slow-mo and humorless action of Wonder Woman.
The Mummy is a dumb trashy blockbuster and that’s why I liked it. I’m much more inclined to like fast moving action with constant banter, than the slow-mo and humorless action of Wonder Woman. That’s my taste and it’s why I preferred the movie getting slammed by critics to the one everyone seems to love. (I will also say I have softened on my “Wonder Woman is good” stance with a little more distance. Instead hardening my “it’s not a trainwreck and that’s why it’s less interesting” stance.)
And hey some part of this has to do with expectations. I was excited for a Wonder Woman movie walking out of Batman v Superman, and there was hype build-up there. And I think I’ve made it very clear in the past that I’m looking for something more from comic book movies in general. I walked into The Mummy thinking this is probably gonna be terrible and boring, but it has Tom Cruise in it so I guess I’ll see for myself. The latter is a much safer position to hold going into a movie.
I had a good time with The Mummy because it exceeded my expectations and it was fun enough. It has problems, it’s not great, but I certainly had a positive experience.
Some of that comes from some of the direct criticisms being overblown in my mind. For a movie trying to establish a cinematic universe, I don’t think the world building stuff was that egregious. It mostly fit within the plot and was part of moving things forward. (For a really bad example of this see Iron Man 2 where it feels like the movie keeps pausing to cover its tracks in case they couldn’t get Robert Downey Jr to be in The Avengers. That was real terrible.) I also don’t think the movie was as humorless as people made it out to be. And certainty part of that has to do with me enjoying the stupidity of the movie and even some mistakes and dumb decisions throughout. Being trashy works in the movie’s favor for me.
Also there’s the benefit that Tom Cruise is a crazy person who insists on really doing the shit he does in movies so when people are rolling around in a plane spiraling out of control, just know that they really spun a plane around high up in the air with Tom Cruise in it and filmed that. I’m not sure there’s really that much value in that, but it’s neat and it’s certainly part of the appeal of Tom Cruise in an action movie.
Also I really like Sofia Boutella and every time she effortlessly kicks the shit out of Tom Cruise it’s funny.
The part that really lets the movie down is that it kind of forgoes a real action climax for an emotional one, and that doesn’t work at all. That’s a bad mistake and it means this isn’t gonna be a movie I want to revisit and also not one I would really recommend anyone go seek out. But if you happen upon it with no expectations, and you enjoy trash, you could have an ok time. And with all this tempering, I had a better time with this than I did with Wonder Woman.
Kong: Skull Island remains the king of the trashy blockbuster in 2017. If you want to see trash from this year after the fact, see that trash first.
Overall I had a good time. I enjoyed my time with The Mummy.
