The first film in what will be a whole shared universe of Universal monster flicks, The Mummy takes the Tom Cruise action vehicle’s withering body and wraps it in just enough layers of archaeological-adventure gauze to loosely cover the what’s beneath.
The reboot sees Cruise himself bundled in his usual slightly-too-open shirt to do all the sort of things that have defined his recent career. He commits to a crazy airplane stunt; he leaps from explosions; he scampers from a collapsing building’s plumes of dust. (Unsurprisingly, the script comes in-part from Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, and M:I 6 writer Christopher McQuarrie.) Over that familiar little form, we’ve got the equally familiar swaddling of Indiana Jones and 1999’s The Mummy. The front of a sandstorm transforms into the mummy’s gaping face; Tom Cruise and his blonde friend find a watery refuge beneath an overturned sarcophagus; Cruise gets covered in rats. This mummy’s curse has come as a swarm of so, so many things we’ve seen before.
We’ll see what other ancient blockbusters have re-awakened when Mummy: Impossible and the Last Cruise-ade opens on June 9.
