The trailer for the 2017 reboot of The Mummy is, unsurprisingly, pretty standard franchise fare: There’s an opening action set piece (straight out of The Dark Knight Rises), then a tiny smattering of plot (semi-empowered female sidekick, vengeful Egyptian princess), then a preview of a larger, climactic action set piece that will involve, of course, mass urban destruction. (Say goodbye to Big Ben, once again.)
But it does have one part that is sort of amazing. And that is when Tom Cruise dies and comes back to life, without explanation. Of course, the Mummy also comes back to life, because she is the Mummy, but Tom Cruise comes back to life, too, because he is Tom Cruise. At this point, after all our Days of Thunder and Edges of Tomorrow (not to mention countless other fake and temporary Tom Cruise deaths), we’re apparently so used to this “Live, Die, Repeat” thing that it doesn’t even need to be explained. The real surprise would be if he stayed dead.
Is Tom Cruise secretly the Mummy in The Mummy? This would make some sense, given that The Mummy marks the beginning of Universal’s Marvel-style universe where movie stars are going to play creatures like Frankenstein’s monster and the Invisible Man. (Those two fellows will be played by Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp, respectively, while Russell Crowe in this trailer plays Dr. Jekyll.) Is Sofia Boutella’s character, commonly credited as “The Mummy,” really just a Mummy? Is it significant that the name of Tom Cruise’s character is Jack Morton, which contains the French word for death? Will the final scene see Tom Cruise calling a press conference to say, “The truth is: I am the Mummy”?
These are just a few questions to ponder until the release of The Mummy on June 9.
