![]() ![]() He is taken over by the spirit of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an ancient Egyptian princess who murdered her father, the Pharaoh, and his infant son, all so that she could lay claim to the throne. Cruise, who is cast as Nick Morton, a freelance raider of artifacts he sells on the black market, isn’t just fighting evil - his character gets inhabited by evil. I’ll herald this with a major spoiler alert (if you don’t want to know what happens in “The Mummy,” please stop reading), though it’s really the essential premise of the movie. Instead, it’s built around a chancy big trick. The new “Mummy,” you may be surprised to hear, doesn’t have a whole lot of show-stopping visual flimflam up its sleeve. ![]() So “ The Mummy,” starring Tom Cruise, raises a key aesthetic question: How, exactly, do you reboot empty-calorie creature-feature superficiality? Basically, these were movies that pelted you with CGI - scuttling scarabs, swarms of skeletons in moldy rags - and mixed the cheesy/awesome visual onslaught with a handful of actors (Brendan Fraser, Dwayne Johnson) who seemed just as lightweight at the FX. No one over the age of 10 ever confused them with good movies, but the “Mummy” franchise that kicked off in 1999 had a joyously sinister and farfetched eye-candy pizzazz.
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