As long as the profits keep coming in from big-name franchises, Hollywood will continue to churn out sequels and reboots, even if the gains are marginal. Recently, there have been two, and both further dented the legacy of their brands.
To start with is the reboot The Mummy that stars Tom Cruise as ex-military man Nick Morton, Annabelle Wallis as former archaeologist Jennifer Halsey, Sofia Boutella as a long-dead Egyptian goddess who rises as a powerful mummy, as well as Russell Crowe who plays the famous character Dr Henry Jekyll.
The Mummy has some excellent special effects. This is a good-looking film by Alex Kurtzman who actually doesn’t have much in the way of directorial experience though he has plenty of writing experience, but more on that later.
As far as movies with huge CGI set pieces in which cities are annihilated go, The Mummy is easy on the eyes for the popcorn filmgoers. But that’s about all it has to offer. Unfortunately, this is yet another film that’s taken the dark and moody route, as Hollywood seems to believe that is all that fans want. And while I did like the visuals, they admittedly follow the customary gritty grey colour palette that gets boring, fast.
The Mummy shouldn’t have risen from the dead. The only jokes Dead Men Tell No Tales tells are terribly unfunny
The original Mummy films starring Brendan Fraser weren’t particularly good either, but they certainly carried a low-brow goofy charm. On the other hand, this reboot has none of it, though Tom Cruise certainly gives it his best in the lead role. The largest problem with the film is the pacing, where the inexperience of Kurtzman is evident. To make matters worse, the script is awful, with obvious plot holes and poor characterisation. Some of the supporting actors have little to do except act as eye-candy.
You might be curious as to why The Mummy carries so many jarring scenes of long exposition. Well, that’s because Universal Pictures is trying to set up a Dark Universe franchise, where you’ll have heroes battle some of the most famous supernatural horror characters in history. It sounds interesting in concept, but by evidence of this film alone, The Mummy shouldn’t have risen from the dead.
Rated PG-13 for violence, action, scary images, suggestive content and partial nudity
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Then there is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which leaves you wishing the series would take a hint from the title and stop telling tales. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow) was often intoxicated while shooting Dead Men Tell No Tales. I’m guessing that that is what it would also take to enjoy this film.
If you’ve seen all of the movies in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Dead Men Tell No Tales feels like the latest season in a sitcom that should have ended many seasons ago. Nothing exemplifies this more than the star character Jack Sparrow, who was once fresh and amusing with just the right level of goofiness, but is now like that sad once-popular comedian who hasn’t changed his shtick since the Partition. Watching Dead Men Tell No Tales, I realised Sparrow has not shown any progress in his character, and has in fact regressed.
This is especially sad because Depp was once considered one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood who, with pictures such as Ed Wood and Edwards Scissorhands, showed himself to be a daring artist. If there was one actor considered anti-franchise, it was Depp.
Dead Men Tell No Tales had a massive budget of 230 million dollars, and the majority of this clearly went towards the special effects, which are tedious and feel like a waste. It should have gone towards a better script, because the only jokes Dead Men Tell No Tales tells are terribly unfunny, while the storytelling is convoluted and the dialogue uninteresting.
The only parts of the film where I wasn’t wishing I had walked in with my friend Murree was when Javier Bardem (Captain Armando Salazar) was on screen, playing an undead roguish pirate hunter. The rest of the time I was left wishing the franchise were dead.
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and suggestive content
Published in Dawn, ICON, June 18th, 2017
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.