‘The Mummy’ Blu-Ray Review: Incoherent Reboot Feels Like A Waste Of Energy

Reboots are generally either an exciting new spin on a well-established franchise or a deplorable rehashing of a renown universe, story and set of characters.

The Mummy Blu-Ray Review

Writer-director Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy, a reboot of the 2000s trilogy, falls in the latter category.

This version sees U.S. military Sergeant Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his partner get attacked in the Middle East, and the battle causes the resurrection of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), a betrayed Egyptian princess who was entombed under the desert for thousands of years. Morton must thus stop Ahmanet as she begins an enraged rampage through the streets of London. 

The writing in this film is incredibly sloppy, and Cruise comes off as the stereotypical smooth gunslinger who is more interested in action than conversing and learning things. The plot is also very inconsistent in many forms and even Russell Crowe is not really convincing or menacing as Dr. Henry Jekyll of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll supposedly leads a secret organization named Prodigium that is dedicated to tracking down monsters.

The special effects are unsurprisingly more lavish than those of the original franchise, but this means nothing if the story is not original enough or if the characters are developed sufficiently.

Special features include a commentary with the director, a featurette called “Meet Amanhet,” a recreation of the plane crash scene, and an analysis of the animated graphic novel Ahmanet Reborn.

Even the action sequences themselves are not nearly as fun as those from the original franchise. And really, what’s the point of a reboot if it doesn’t provide as great or superior thrills as its predecessors?