THE MUMMY vs. THE MUMMY: A Guide to MUMMYfication

This critical comparison of The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy (2017) was commissioned by Carson Rebel.  Many thanks to Carson for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Stephen Sommers
Writers: Stephen Sommers, Lloyd Fonvielle, Kevin Jarre
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor
Runtime: 124 mins.
1999

Director: Alex Kurtzman
Writers: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman, Jon Spaihts, Jenny Lumet
Cast: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson
Runtime: 110 mins.
2017

The Mummy (1999) was released by Universal to mixed positive reviews, and has since achieved a passionate cult following. The Mummy (2017) was released by Universal to near universal vitriol. This is a critical comparison of the two films. To guide the conversation we will employ the eleven steps of Mummy Creation, as articulated by this mylearning.org article.

1) Insert a hook through a hole near the nose and pull out part of the brain

Both Mummys are brainless blockbuster entertainment. Heroes chase MacGuffins, punch goofy corpses, and outmaneuver a singleminded ancient evil. We don't watch these movies for accurate Egyptology, plausible archaeology, or a sensitive treatment of various cultures' views of the afterlife. We watch for the adventure.

The crucial difference is that M99's nonsense is silly, while M17's nonsense is banal. When Brendan Fraser skewers a skeleton head and uses it to explode another skeleton head, we cheer, and when Tom Cruise beats on some undead CGI monsters with their own limbs, we shrug. Why is that?

2) Make a cut on the left side of the body near the tummy

Much like an invasive incision, our entry point into a movie is of utmost importance. Beginnings dictate how invested we will be in the characters and the plot. They also teach us how to watch the movie.

M17 rushes through its first act, eager to shepherd us to its big plane crash setpiece. The film knows that it has nothing but cotton candy thrills and artificial tension to offer. Conversely, I was surprised by how long it took M99 to get to its spooky haunted house tomb. Some of the first act could be edited down without losing much, but I admire the film's commitment to setting up its characters before putting them through the ringer.

This highlights another disparity between the two films: M17 is largely the Tom Cruise show, with appearances from a handful of other actors. M99 is much more of an ensemble piece, introducing a half dozen main characters as well as multiple other factions of ruffians sucked into the same adventure. It makes the world feel fuller. We love watching familiar faces succumb to grotesque deaths.

3) Remove all internal organs

If you remove the content of M99 and focus on the form, you find a sprawling adventure film bolstered by action, comedy, and romance. Adventure is a vanishingly rare genre these days, made scarce by changing tastes and by lower tolerance for lazy exoticization and whitewashing (pitfalls that M99 certainly plays into). M99 is a throwback to much older pulp adventures, the same stuff Indiana Jones pulled from: stories of white colonists ravaging the culture of indigenous people. But there is a great potential for a new breed of Adventure movies that provide fun and discovery without the colonial bent.

If you remove the content of M17 and focus on the form, you find... not much of anything at all. The film is nominally action adventure, but I don't think it's possible to experience these dingy corridors with anything approaching adventurousness. In some senses it's more of a supernatural slasher, with Sofia Boutella's mummy pursuing Tom Cruise relentlessly. Mix that with a post-Dark Knight action blockbuster model, the kind where a suspicious organization captures the villain at the end of the second act, only to have them destructively mastermind their own escape. The tension is shapeless, the structure is muddled, and the homages are all surface level.

4) Let the internal organs dry

To complain about the structure of M17 is also to complain about its content, for they are painfully mismatched. The movie sets itself up to be a grimdark remix of the other Mummy movies, this time adhering to a contemporary shared universe model, but the acting writing and blocking are all trying to tap into the lighthearted camp of M99. The result is a movie in which none of the jokes land, and all of the dread is undercut.

Meanwhile, M99's internal organs all play so well into the genre structure that they rise above its trappings. The dialogue is just witty enough to be delightful, but not quite ironic enough to become sour. The effects are solid for pre-21st century CGI, and just corny enough that laughter and horror play together. The design is like a fun house, artificial in a way that does not detract or distract. Most of all, the acting carries M99. The performers aren't trying to be anything but stereotypes, but they play their toolbelt of cliches winsomely.

5) Place the lungs, intestines, stomach, and liver inside canopic jars

Movies like this are fueled by their action. It is the breath, the bile, the blood. One moment in M99 impressed me especially. Early in the film, O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) enters a room in a boat lit by candlelight. The action scene that follows uses that subtly established prop not once, but twice. First, O'Connell reacts to an armed intruder just in time because the breeze from the opening window flickers the candle flame. Second, Evie breaks out of a restraint by jamming the same lit candle into the assailant's eye. The entire shape of what's to come is dictated by the fact that the boat is now on fire, and all parties must react accordingly. This is a generative and organic way for an action scene to grow, and it's all rooted in character. Note how the razor's edge of O'Connell's suspicion informs his quick reaction time, and Evie's burgeoning resourcefulness begins to establish itself through environmental awareness. Every action beat in M99 achieves these two holy grails of action storytelling: specificity of character and specificity of environment.

Most of the action in M17 involves Tom Cruise running really fast away from CGI clouds and swarms.

6) Place the heart back inside the body

It's instructive to compare the leads of both films to understand why M99 has so much more heart. As for the actresses, the comparison is unflattering. Rachel Weisz is a phenomenal actor who can play tough, naive, hapless, clumsy, efficient, brilliant, and bloodthirsty, often switching between them on a dime. Annabelle Wallis, meanwhile, is married to Chris Pine. She's also in the movie Annabelle! I learned these things because I had to Google her to remember anything about her. Even when I try to hold her image in my head, from one moment to the next it is gone like vapor. Her two modes in M17 seem to be 1) placid 2) mildly consternated.

The male leads are a more interesting comparison. Cruise has top notch action chops, and is pound for pound a better actor than Brendan Fraser. He's trying his best, but it ultimately means very little when the movie provides him with no scaffolding to work with. M99, meanwhile, is built to maximize what is great about Fraser. Savvy casting, focused directing. Fraser's charm shines through with every exasperated expression and harebrained maneuver. M99 works because we are genuinely rooting for O'Connell and Evie to succeed, whereas the blank slates of *checks notes* Nick Morton and Jenny Halsey are begging to be forgotten.

7) Rinse inside of body with wine and spices

In the spirit of wine and spices, it's worth mentioning that M99 was a sexual awakening for many people, myself included. Everyone in the movie is not only really attractive, but they're personable and relatable too. John Bloomfield's costume design helps. O'Connell's man's man adventuring gear and Evie's series of cute action dresses make for a thirsty bisexual's dream team. It's the kindness in both of their eyes that really does it. I would be remiss if I didn't also share that Anck Su Namun's opening scene fishnet "dress" may have been responsible for launching me into puberty.

M17 is so anonymous and drab that I struggle to imagine anyone getting wobblekneed for it.

8) Cover the corpse with natron (salt) for 70 days

Although many masterpieces have been forgotten and many trashterpieces have been canonized, a movie's legacy tells us a lot about how its ideas were preserved against the test of time. The fervent love for M99 has survived 20+ years, a mediocre sequel, an atrocious sequel, and a painful Rock-launching spinoff. Meanwhile, mention the Tom Cruise flick and people's eyes already glaze over in confusion. Remember Dracula Untold? Remember I, Frankenstein? M17 is the next to be forgotten.

9) After 40 days stuff the body with linen or sand to give it a more human shape

The core truth of narrative is that you ultimately have to be telling human stories. Otherwise, what's the point? We want to see a gruff survivalist with a heart of gold struggle with falling in love. We want to see a woman driven by passion slowly discover that the world beyond her narrow academic purview is dangerous and exciting. We don't want to see a cynical origin story about a man who is 90% motivated by 'running from danger.'

10) After the 70 days wrap the body from head to toe in bandages

What makes a movie iconic? Neither of these Mummys can claim to be original in any sense of the word. They're both drawing from a century of film iconography, from the bandaged shambling mummies of the 30's to the adventure serials of the 40's to the high octane action sensibilities of the 90's. M17 even draws specifically from M99 in several lazy homages. What matters is whether you can activate your stale ingredients in a way that makes the remix fresh. You can't just look at the success of the 1999 Mummy movie, look at the success of the Marvel shared universe, look at the success of The Dark Knight, and blend them up in an algorithm soup to achieve success. You need good dramatic structure, human characters, and a creative team with a modicum of passion for the thing they are creating.

11) Place in a sarcophagus (a type of box like a coffin)

The Wikipedia entry for M17 calls it, pitifully, "the first and only installment in Universal's Dark Universe franchise." I can only imagine the dollar signs in the executives' eyes when they came up with the idea to link their catalogue of famed movie monsters into a money-pumping shared universe. The result was dead on arrival. Somehow, piles of rotting shared universes haven't convinced film studios to first make a product that is appealing before using it to advertise for more products. What's less appealing than taking iconic characters known for horror and jamming them into paint-by-numbers superhero origin stories? M17 is hamstrung by sweaty promises of future adventures, and a hilariously out of place cameo by Russell Crowe as a Nick Fury-esque version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's embarrassing, frankly, and reason enough to put this film and franchise to sleep forever.

The Mummy (1999) - 3.5

The Mummy (2017) - 0.5