Saturday 10 June 2017

A Pinoy @ The Movies: The Mummy (2017)

The trailer was interesting with superb special effects and CGIs. It was action-packed as well! After all, it is a Tom Cruise movie.

At first, I wondered why would The Mummy series have another remake with Tom Cruise this time?

I thought it was, until the trailer showed that it wasn't certainly set in the 1920's just like Brendan Fraser's The Mummy was. Brendan's original was fun, entertaining, and had all the fascinating details of ancient Egypt: the costumes, make-up, pharoahs, and Old World supernatural powers.

This time, in the present day 21st century, Tom Cruise gets awkward trying to be the lover boy of Ahmanet, a Egyptian princess who, three thousand years before, killed her father the pharoah, his heir, and then sold her soul to Set, the Egyptian god of death. Well, that all made sense during the first 25 minutes. The film's stupidity started when Tom Cruise and his posse discovered Ahmanet's sarcophagus in Iraq.

Fantasy films play on our unbounded imagination, which we all enjoy, but I wished the writers and directors would have thrown in some sense into their fantasy. After the first 25 minutes, things went a little bit silly.

And if there was an Egyptian god of common sense, I wished it was there to enlighten me on my questions:

1. After Tom Cruise shot and cut the wire that held Ahmanet's sarcophagus down deep in mercury and came face-to-face with the coffin, he became 'the chosen' because he was the one who brought it up. How on the dessert sands could Ahmanet tell that it was a white American boy who shot the wire when she was down there trapped down in mercury with all her evil powers? 

2. How could a US military cargo train fly from Iraq to England, and crash land in the middle of Surrey without having been intercepted by the Royal Air Force? 

3. How did Tom Cruise survive the crash without any bruise, cuts, or even scratches? Even if he was 'the chosen one', how did he become one?

4. And Tom Cruise could see ghosts?

5. Russel Crowe shows up as Dr. Jekyll, but forgot to sing 'This is the moment' when he turned into Mr. Hyde.

6. If Ahmanet was resurrected as the evil pharoah and wreaked havoc in London, how could she have held court in England when we all know Queen Elizabeth II and Buckingham Palace would have never allowed it?

7. As Ahmanet, with her evil powers, turned the dead knights into her zombies, how could they have learned how to gracefully swim underwater with all their bandages and rotten limbs?

8. And for crying out loud, Ahmanet, from the start only spoke an old Egyptian language, but in the end, she was already speaking American English and was even using contractions! Impressive!

9. I still have a few more silly questions, and I'm worried they are planning a sequel as Tom Cruise becomes immortal as the Egyptian god of death, although he's American! Ha-ha-ha!

A few plots were obviously borrowed from the 1999 The Mummy, but if they knew they couldn't match the first, they should not have made this film with all the corny jokes. Tom Cruise trying to be cute wasn't funny at all.

I think the real mummies in Egypt are now turning in their sarcophagi. :-)

So save your money and time, and just watch Wonder Woman!

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