The upcoming reboot of The Mummy has been making rounds on the Internet over the last couple of days, with the debut of a poster and a teaser release.

As expected, Universal Pictures has just released the full trailer for The Mummy, this time starring Tom Cruise in the lead role in place of Brendan Fraser.

Here’s the full official trailer for The Mummy starring Tom Cruise.

While all the information we have on its tonality and plot is purely based off this trailer, it’s safe to say that the new film will depart from the original, taking a more action feel that we’ve grown accustomed to when we hear the name Tom Cruise.

Now, the original had a fair deal of action as well, but what it had compared to the remake is a intricate blend between horror, action and comedy led by the charm of Brendan Fraser and his chemistry with Rachel Weisz that made everything come together.

It was a perfect family adventure movie that could appeal to anyone from six to sixty-six, casting a sense of wonder and amusement as the main characters discovered ancient ruin in Egypt, all done with fairly adept CGI for its time – it was 1999 after all.

To remind you of what it was like, here’s a scene from the original The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser.

It’s hard to imagine a Mummy movie without Brendan Fraser, but he’s not the only thing missing from the reboot.

Gathering from the trailer of the Tom Cruise version, what we’ll be getting mostly is a Mission Impossible/Jack Reacher filled with “Gods and Monsters”. What that looks like is highly coordinated action sequences and an effort to make the supernatural elements seem as realistic as possible.

The problem about this is that the original film thrived on uncoordinated action scenes and embracing the silliness of the genre. There was also a significant use of humour to balance the horror elements, something clearly missing from the trailer though we’re not counting it out just yet with the comedic Jake Johnson (New Girl) set to play a key role in the movie.

Then there’s the added pressure for the film to kickstart the Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe, which is Universal Pictures’ attempt to recreate the success of Marvel’s Avengers franchise using “monsters” such as Count Dracula, The Wolf-Man and Frankenstein’s Monster.

A lot of the creative direction that resulted in this reboot could be explained by the need to open up a series of movies, making the film tie in more into a shared universe rather than for it to have its own distinct flavour. The risk of this is that it may become more Man of Steel rather than The Dark Knight.

Nevertheless, it’ll be interesting to see how the film ties in to the star-studded cinematic universe, with Johnny Depp’s Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s Monster. Russell Crowe, who also appears in The Mummy, is said to play Dr. Jekyll and will be the glue that ties in all the movies together.

 

All in all, don’t get us wrong. We like Tom Cruise and he’s been a bankable action star over the last two decades so we’re pretty sure this new take on The Mummy will make loads of cash in the box office. But  when it comes to audience and critical reception, we’re slightly more worried.

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