The Mummy (2017) Apr 2026

The film’s strongest element is Sofia Boutella as Princess Ahmanet. Moving away from the bandage-wrapped tropes of the past, Boutella brings a fluid, athletic, and genuinely eerie presence to the role. Her backstory—a betrayed royal who strikes a pact with the god Set—provides a solid emotional foundation. However, her agency is frequently sidelined to serve the larger plot of turning Nick Morton into a "vessel" for a god, making the titular Mummy feel like a guest star in her own movie. The Dark Universe Dilemma

Starring Tom Cruise as Nick Morton, a military scout-turned-relic-thief, the film immediately feels less like a gothic horror and more like a high-octane spin-off. While Cruise’s physical commitment is undeniable—most notably in the spectacular zero-gravity plane crash sequence filmed in an actual vomit comet—his persona often clashes with the supernatural dread the genre requires. Unlike Brendan Fraser’s charmingly out-of-his-depth Rick O'Connell from the 1999 version, Cruise’s Morton feels like a man who can punch his way out of a curse, which inadvertently lowers the stakes. Ahmanet: A Modern Antagonist The Mummy (2017)

The 2017 reboot of The Mummy stands as one of modern cinema’s most fascinating case studies in "franchise fever." Intended to be the cornerstone of Universal Pictures’ ambitious —a shared cinematic world of classic monsters—the film instead became a cautionary tale about prioritizing world-building over storytelling . The Tom Cruise Effect The film’s strongest element is Sofia Boutella as