Universal plans to launch a monster movie universe on the back of Tom Cruise's The Mummy.
The flick serves as a reboot of both the studio's classic scary movie franchise and the Brendan
Fraser-starring trilogy.
However, despite lofty expectations and the attachment of a huge star in Cruise, The Mummy
wasn't able to scare up many viewers in its opening weekend, debuting to an underwhelming
$31.5 million domestic gross.
As it turned out, nobody but Cruise said this:
"Show me the Mummy!"
The disappointing start for the thriller likely won't completely unravel Universal's so-called
"Dark Universe," but it definitely spells trouble.
Here's why The Mummy was dead on arrival.
Critical curse
The Mummy was absolutely trashed by critics, quickly falling below a 20 percent on Rotten
Tomatoes during its debut weekend.
Indiewire called the film "an irredeemable disaster from start to finish, an adventure
that entertains only via glimpses of the adventure it should have been."
Vulture said it hits its marks — but they're "so low and so brazenly mercenary that it
doesn't feel like much of an achievement."
Rolling Stone quipped that it's "a monster fail," while The A.V.
Club said it was "noisy but rarely exciting, heavy on whizzing and whirling special effects
but light on wonder."
"Kick her ass!"
It's hard to find anything positive critics have said about the movie — even those who
gave it "fresh" reviews mostly just deemed it tolerable, rather than actually entertaining.
With so many other options out there, viewers have little reason to head out to a movie
that critics had so thoroughly buried.
Wrongheaded reboot
The classic 1932 The Mummy is a far, far cry from the 2017 version — something classic
cinema fans surely noticed when the trailer for the new film dropped.
Starring Boris Karloff as the namesake monster, the original flick relied on quieter, atmospheric
horror that kept viewers on the edge of their seats without aggressively trying to scare
them at every turn.
The new movie, on the other hand, goes for near-constant CGI thrills that are more visual
surprises than actual scares.
Fans of the original will see almost nothing familiar in the reboot.
And younger audiences may be more familiar with Brendan Fraser's Mummy trilogy anyway.
Those movies emphasized campy fun and had help selling its story with its 1920s setting,
which gave a period-appropriate feel to the classic monster tale.
Cruise's version, meanwhile, takes place in the present day, a move that arguably takes
the film even further from the classic adventure story it's trying to be.
Rehash fatigue
Hollywood has spent the last several years turning to familiar properties audiences loved
in the past.
But the string of flops from 2017's crop of reimaginings suggests filmgoers might be getting
tired of all the modern revivals.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Baywatch, and the fifth Pirates
of the Caribbean flick all fell far below expectations.
All of these films had something in common: rotten reviews and bad word of mouth.
As successful recent remakes, reboots, and sequels like Beauty and the Beast and The
Fate of the Furious have shown, audiences are only willing to turn out to see overly
familiar films if they're actually any good.
Cart before horse
Universal's Dark Universe franchise is set to include beloved characters such as the
Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, and Frankenstein, among many others.
"It's alive!
It's alive!
It's alive!"
Well, let's not be too hasty, Doc.
The studio may have killed the whole enterprise's chances at success by announcing it before
even making a single successful film, hobbling The Mummy and making its attempt at world-building
seem disingenuous to audiences.
As many of the reviews pointed out, the movie struggles with that world-building, leaving
the narrative feeling slow and labored, with heavy exposition interrupting the action.
Launching the Dark Universe right off the bat without trying to first create a successful,
fun film played a big role in The Mummy's overcrowded feel, and could have a negative
effect on the rest of the franchise going forward.
Star power-outage
Internationally, big names like Tom Cruise still sell movies.
But at home, data shows that people just don't care as much about a movie's star power as
they once did.
Recent examples include Dwayne Johnson in Baywatch and Tom Hanks in The Circle — high-profile
flops highlighted by the surprising performances of 2017 sleeper hits like Get Out and Split,
neither of which had huge names attached.
So what gives?
For one thing, more stars are moving to movies on TV and streaming, with huge names like
Brad Pitt crafting films for Netflix and stars like Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman
making prestige TV like True Detective and Big Little Lies.
The number of films in theaters is also increasing, meaning that viewers simply have more to choose
from.
Buzz need
Marketing is important, but organic buzz is what can really make a film blow up — and
The Mummy never really had any.
A Fandango poll looking for the most anticipated film of the summer didn't even put it in the
top five, while a look at social media buzz on Twitter showed that the film wasn't among
the top five most-tweeted-about movies the months leading up to its release.
The summer box office is overcrowded with huge movies, and without positive word of
mouth, it's hard for one movie, even one with an established name like The Mummy, to break
out.
"What are you thinking?"
I'm thinking we're probably going to die here."
"I knew it!"
No wonder
Making matters worse, The Mummy faced one of the toughest competitors of the summer
during its opening weekend: Wonder Woman, the juggernaut that beat the box office with
an expectation-shattering $103 million opening.
Wonder Woman also used its stellar reviews to earn the biggest second week for any film
in the DC Extended Universe franchise thus far.
The Mummy likely couldn't have topped Wonder Woman's second-week grosses even if it had
received positive reviews.
Salvaged overseas
The box office market is very different overseas, and it's provided a rescue for quite a few
domestic flops in recent years.
This looks to be the case for The Mummy, which gave Cruise the largest international opening
of his career.
The film did best in Cruise-friendly territories like China, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, and
Taiwan, where the star's name continues to carry quite a lot of weight.
"It's not an exact science, this business."
This may offer a lifeboat for the future of the Dark Universe, which has a few other big-name
stars attached for upcoming movies, including Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.
Still, The Mummy's scary lack of domestic appeal adds a troubling wrinkle to the future
of Universal's monster movie initiative.
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