The Mummy (2017)

iannis

iannis

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I don't know that a mummy movie could be good, honestly. The Frasier ones were probably the best treatment that can be given.

Rlm guys ripped it pretty hard. But also called it "watchable".

So I dunno. It's kinda like what do you expect out of a mummy movie. Watchable actually sounds like praise.
 
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I think RLM are pretty spot on in their criticism. It's a "watchable" movie, but sadly short of what it could have been for likely the very same reasons that'll make it a successful intl. franchise.

  • It could've had edgier/snappier/funnier dialogue, but that might not carry well in China & Co. Gotta keep the exposition on the nose, simple and preferable repeat it a few times so any 12 year old in Indonesia or whereever can still follow the plot even when the google-translate subtitles make no sense.
  • Could've been R-rated or frankly more scarier, but that doesn't sell well international. R-rated movies have to make a greater bulk of their money domestic, and that's not what they were aiming for here.
  • Could've had a more appropriate actor for the scoundrel-soldier-of-fortune than Tom Cruise, but intl. name recognition was the key.
  • It's also a surprisingly cheap movie, despite (a lower in exchange for-future-rights?) Cruise/Crowe salary, so financial risk is minimal.

It kinda works, but could've been better even though all the things I would've considered "better" probably would've made it less successful.

The weird empathy for "movie-exec-logic-for-bland-but-passable-movies" of this is kinda strange.
 
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Angerz

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I thought it was humming along pretty nicely until they got to the Russel Crowe portion, where the Dark Universe decided to go the BvS direction and introduce way too much into a movie that didnt need it, instead of the Iron Man route where they made a decent movie (well Iron man was great, but this should have been decent to above average at the pace it was going imo) and contained all the world building shit into a post credit sequence.

The movie really bogged down there going into the third act and never fully recovered. The movie definitely could have been worse, but it 100% was capable of being much better.
 
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McCheese

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Angerz said:
I thought it was humming along pretty nicely until they got to the Russel Crowe portion, where the Dark Universe decided to go the BvS direction and introduce way too much into a movie that didnt need it, instead of the Iron Man route where they made a decent movie (well Iron man was great, but this should have been decent to above average at the pace it was going imo) and contained all the world building shit into a post credit sequence.

The movie really bogged down there going into the third act and never fully recovered. The movie definitely could have been worse, but it 100% was capable of being much better.
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I agree with this. While I liked Hyde, I kind of wish they had simply had Crowe introduce himself as Dr. Jekyll, and then left it at that. That would have been a perfect equivalent of Nick Fury showing up at the end of Iron Man 1; we'd all know what it meant and it would give us something to be excited about going forward, but there isn't really any need to expand on it immediately like they did here.
 
Szlia

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I have not seen the movie, but I suspect that in a Marvel movie they work based on the assumption that people know who Nick Fury is, while in this they work on the assumption that people do not know who Dr Jekyll is. A bit like when they made the movie version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and decided to explain who Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, etc were.
 
McCheese

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That is stupid if true. Dr. Jekyll is extremely widely known, way more so than any of those others you mentioned. He's as known as Frankenstein, mummy, and Dracula. More well known than Nick Fury was.
 
iannis

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jayrebb said:
Definitely.

Shout out to Lestat too. Tom said thats the one role he had a lot of fun with and would love to see another movie made with the character, but nobody had a script worth a shit and the 2nd abortion adaptation they put out tanked the franchise. He was pretty disappointed.
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Man, people hate queen of the damned. But that movie was gother than batshit. I cannot think of any way they could have made it even more goth without resorting to near pornography. If young vampire and old vampire had had some gay BDSM sex then that's about it. And even that was heavily implied.

That movie was PERFECT in every way. For goths. For people who wanted a goth-lite period costume romp like Diary was... yeah, it was awful. And I liked Diary a lot.

But dude, watch it again. Queen is pure goth-cum all up in your mouth.
 
Angerz

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McCheese said:
That is stupid if true. Dr. Jekyll is extremely widely known, way more so than any of those others you mentioned. He's as known as Frankenstein, mummy, and Dracula. More well known than Nick Fury was.
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Nah, the exposition bomb that drags the movie down is not related to explaining Jekyll and Hyde, he just does his thing as it relates to his "monster" status.

The part he is involved with is he is a bit of a Van Helsing-type character, leading an organization that fights the physical manifestations of evil. We go to their lab, talk a whole bunch, etc etc. The movie already has too much exposition (as noted in that RLM review) and this just added more, but this actually actively detracts from the Mummy story which, in my opinion, wasn't terrible.
 
jayrebb

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iannis said:
Man, people hate queen of the damned. But that movie was gother than batshit. I cannot think of any way they could have made it even more goth without resorting to near pornography. If young vampire and old vampire had had some gay BDSM sex then that's about it. And even that was heavily implied.

That movie was PERFECT in every way. For goths. For people who wanted a goth-lite period costume romp like Diary was... yeah, it was awful. And I liked Diary a lot.

But dude, watch it again. Queen is pure goth-cum all up in your mouth.
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Alright FINE it was /r/goth9k, and it also produced some of the greatest musical works by Jonathan Davis.

So it'll always get a huge pass from me. The songs Davis wrote and performed shit on anything Korn had done lately. Its really too bad Sony or whoever blocked him from singing them on the released OST. But better believe I made sure to get those unreleased tracks.

Reading Ann Rice is hell to work with. She fucked up a deal with Universal from 2014 onward and they dropped the rights again in 2016 after offering Jared Leto the role of Lestat. After Leto's joker I gotta say I had no interest in him as Lestat anyway.

After Twilight I would have said to them you can do whatever the fuck you want, cut the check. Ride the wave. 75 years old and still hasn't recovered from the QOTD backlash. Bless her.
 
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iannis

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Just the fact that Lestat becomes a proto-grunge rock star. Because why not. He's a fuckin vampire.

I mean LOL. And it JUST GETS WORSE. God damn, the entire thing is so wonderfully ridiculous! But pure. So pure. You know 13 year old girls were discovering how to frig to that!
 
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Phazael

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Saw it last night with the wife. Wasn't bad, but there is so much awesome coming out this summer that middle of the road movies stand no chance. Primary issue was the messy third act, due to all the universe building shit they were trying to shoe horn into it, as stated by others. Action was fairly solid and had this come out during the slow season it would probably be making some descent money. Half in the Bag review really exaggerates some of the flaws, especially some of the movies they have given positive reviews to, but they are not wrong about the over the top attempt to start a movie universe out of the old monsters. I would say its a solid 5 or 6 out of ten, comparable to something like the last two Pirates movies.
 
kegkilla

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jayrebb said:
Alright FINE it was /r/goth9k, and it also produced some of the greatest musical works by Jonathan Davis.

So it'll always get a huge pass from me. The songs Davis wrote and performed shit on anything Korn had done lately. Its really too bad Sony or whoever blocked him from singing them on the released OST. But better believe I made sure to get those unreleased tracks.

Reading Ann Rice is hell to work with. She fucked up a deal with Universal from 2014 onward and they dropped the rights again in 2016 after offering Jared Leto the role of Lestat. After Leto's joker I gotta say I had no interest in him as Lestat anyway.

After Twilight I would have said to them you can do whatever the fuck you want, cut the check. Ride the wave. 75 years old and still hasn't recovered from the QOTD backlash. Bless her.
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Send me those songs
 
Oldbased

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I still don't quite get the "troubles". It is almost like Hollywood wants Cruise to fail for his views. It has a $125 million budget, is still showing and has done $294 million to date worldwide. It's hardly a flop. It didn't do well domestically we get it but hell it may even make money after what was a insane marketing budget.
There has been some nasty flops this year but this isn't one of them. Now King Arthur cost $175 million to make and has brought in $137 million worldwide and is dropping off screens. Now that is a movie in trouble. Titanic level trouble.
 
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spronk

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while i have no doubt there will be more mummy and universe movies, this is a good article on why the mummy is going to still lose money
‘The Mummy’ Will Lose $95M: Here’s Why

After consulting a number of film finance sources, the Universal Tom Cruise movie stands to lose an estimated $95M off of a final estimated global box office tally of $375M. Divided that’s $75M at the domestic B.O., and $300M from overseas.

This despite the fact that the movie was the biggest global opening ever for Tom Cruise at $169.3M. However, relative to the production investment here which we are informed is estimated at $345M in total production and global P&A spend (broken out $195M production cost and $150M distribution/ad expenses), those records –and even this weekend’s No. 1 overseas hold of $53M — are not enough to get Mummy over these hurdles.

The above estimates do not include residuals, non-theatrical or any Cruise bonuses. Our non-Universal finance sources tells us that cash-break-even occurs at $450M. There is a 40% cash break-even pool for most of the above the line talent, “but this film isn’t going to get to cash break-even,” insists our source. There’s another model from another financial source where Mummy clears $400M worldwide and loses significantly less than $60M, but this is factoring that home entertainment makes $85M, as much as Rogue Nation. Many believe $375M is the right end game for Mummy.


Still, its Hollywood jerking itself off in a lot of ways, as a bunch of that production and distribution "cost" is Hollywood companies just paying themselves. Warner Bros pays Warner Studios an interest fee for the $195m they "loaned" them, they pay Warner Distribution $20m to "print" and digitally send the movies around the world (which really costs them $1m but there is no competition!), Warner pays CNN/CW/TBS/etc advertising fees but they are all owned by Warner, yadda yadda. So the stars keep working, hollywood is happy, just the people who thought they'd get a big payoff from a movie making a profit are screwed.
 
Araysar

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spronk said:
This despite the fact that the movie was the biggest global opening ever for Tom Cruise at $169.3M.
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this sounds comically pathetic in this day and age of $250M opening weekends.

also, this Dark Universe of frankestein, dracula, the mummy, whatever, - sounds so desperately pathetic. each of those characters had like 10 fucking reboots in the last 80 years. WE DONT CARE. FIND SOMETHING NEW.
 
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Lanx

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Olebass said:
I still don't quite get the "troubles". It is almost like Hollywood wants Cruise to fail for his views. It has a $125 million budget, is still showing and has done $294 million to date worldwide. It's hardly a flop. It didn't do well domestically we get it but hell it may even make money after what was a insane marketing budget.
There has been some nasty flops this year but this isn't one of them. Now King Arthur cost $175 million to make and has brought in $137 million worldwide and is dropping off screens. Now that is a movie in trouble. Titanic level trouble.
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it sounds like it's on track to make a lot of bank.

this sounds like ppl just hate on Cruise and it's character assassination, a la Trump.

One, believes a dead fat science fiction writer whom cosplays as a sailor is God,

While Trump is the God Emperor.
 
kegkilla

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Olebass said:
I still don't quite get the "troubles". It is almost like Hollywood wants Cruise to fail for his views. It has a $125 million budget, is still showing and has done $294 million to date worldwide. It's hardly a flop. It didn't do well domestically we get it but hell it may even make money after what was a insane marketing budget.
There has been some nasty flops this year but this isn't one of them. Now King Arthur cost $175 million to make and has brought in $137 million worldwide and is dropping off screens. Now that is a movie in trouble. Titanic level trouble.
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The general rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make back twice it's budget to break even. The budget doesn't reflect the true cost of the movie. For one, it doesn't take marketing expenses into account, which were pretty huge for this movie. Additionally, the amount a movie grosses in ticket sales isn't the amount of money that the studio collects. The theaters get a cut off that as well. And very important to note in this situation is that the theater's cut of ticket sales is considerably higher in overseas markets, meaning studios get less bang for their buck on international ticket sales than they do on domestic.
 
Oldbased

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Lanx said:
it sounds like it's on track to make a lot of bank.

this sounds like ppl just hate on Cruise and it's character assassination, a la Trump.

One, believes a dead fat science fiction writer whom cosplays as a sailor is God,

While Trump is the God Emperor.
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It won't break any records but it'll make everything back and some change when said and done. Just saw so many articles in the last week calling for the end of Cruise. Stick a fork in him, he didn't make us 500 million profit stuff.
 
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