{"id":1452,"date":"2017-06-11T07:38:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T07:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/?p=1452"},"modified":"2017-09-24T00:03:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T00:03:23","slug":"the-mummy-live-action-comic-book-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/11\/the-mummy-live-action-comic-book-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"THE MUMMY – LIVE ACTION COMIC BOOK FUN"},"content":{"rendered":"
SHORT TAKE: The Mummy <\/em>is a live action comic book – the trial run for Universal\u2019s new Dark World franchise. It ain\u2019t Shakespeare – or Wonder Woman <\/em>– but it\u2019s a lot of ridiculous fun.<\/div>\n
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MY TAKE:<\/div>\n
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When I was a 5 year old there was no such thing as iPods, DVDs, Nintendo, Gameboys or even cell phones. So when our family traveled in my dad\u2019s Oldsmobile from New Orleans, LA to Disneyland in 1964, in order to keep his youngest child (me) occupied, whenever he stopped for gas he\u2019d go into the station and buy a copy of every age appropriate comic book he could find. I must have read a hundred Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Spiderman, Fantastic Four,<\/em> and Wendy the Good Little Witch <\/em>magazines. So I\u2019ve always had a\u00a0 soft spot for comic books.<\/div>\n
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Jump forward 53 years. My husband and I went to go see The Mummy <\/em>– a movie 118 years in the making. No kidding. 1899 was the birth year of possibly the very first movie about a mummy – a silent short called Cleopatra\u2019s Tomb <\/em>directed by George Melies – the same auteur who directed 526 silent shorts, including the famous A Trip to the Moon<\/em>.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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So how does our trip to see The Mouse in 1964 connect with 2017’s\u00a0 The Mummy<\/em>? Well…I was puzzled by my own reaction to The Mummy<\/em>. While I love a well done scare fest, I usually spend a good deal of time watching it through my fingers and feeling creeped out and looking underneath my car before I get in it in the parking lot. But despite The Mummy <\/em>being full of staggering mummies, zombified victims, living sandstorms,\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> and other monsters (I will not now name for the sake of spoiler prevention), I came out of the movie feeling like a bouncy kid. I suddenly realized The Mummy <\/em>is not actually a horror movie – it is really an extremely well done, well plotted, well performed live action comic book!<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Wisecracking, never to be taken completely seriously leading man with flawed motives, vivid images,\"\"<\/a> wildly outrageous developments:\u00a0 massive flock of birds taking down a \"\"<\/a>military plane,\"\"<\/a> \"\" \"\"<\/a>\"\"a mysterious cavern found by chance by two mercenaries, \"\"<\/a>the dead being brought back to life as the mummy’s slave, \"\"<\/a>a pit hiding a terrible secret under a pool of mercury,\"\"<\/a> an underground secret science lab full of enough sparking and exploding electric tubes to swell the heart of Kenneth (1931 Frankenstein<\/em> prop master) Strickfaden,\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> evil incarnate in the form of a beautiful scantily clad tatooed woman. The Mummy <\/em>throws in homages or outright supporting spots to a number of other monster stories. \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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I can picture the comic book panels to almost every scene in the movie.<\/div>\n
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It has all the tongue in \u201cshriek\u201d of Hugh Jackman\u2019s \"\"<\/a>Van Helsing<\/em>, John Landis\u2019 \"\"<\/a>American Werewolf in London<\/em>, the troll in the bathroom scene from \"\"<\/a>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone<\/em>,\u00a0and \u00a0\"\"<\/a>Goosebumps<\/em> – the movie about RL Stine\u2019s fictions coming to life. No matter how much they amp up the scare factor you just can\u2019t take it seriously enough to be disturbed.<\/div>\n
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SPOILERS FOR NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS – ESPECIALLY EGREGIOUS AS THESE SPOILERS REVEAL \u201cPUNCH LINES\u201d<\/div>\n
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And how CAN you take a movie seriously when the lead, Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) has a quippy argument in a woman\u2019s bathroom with his recently deceased best friend Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) on whether Nick was justified in shooting Chris just because Chris was trying to stab everyone around him after he had been zombified by the Mummy Princess Ahmanet???<\/div>\n
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And somehow the terror value is (intentionally) lost when Ahmanet has Nick held down by her zombie minions and is preparing to stab him with a ritual knife. See –\u00a0\u00a0as she pulls his shirt up and rakes her fingers down his torso …. Nick starts laughing because he\u2019s ticklish!!<\/div>\n
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OK – SPOILER FREE REST OF REVIEW!!!<\/div>\n
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The above mentioned scenes come within an inch of opera buffa or even outtake qualities but fit nicely with the tone of the rest of the\u00a0movie.<\/div>\n
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And it makes sense because apparently Universal is starting its own franchise of \u201cDark Universe\u201d films of which this is the golden nail in the railroad track. I can foresee it entirely possible to put all these worlds: DC, Marvel, Dark Universe within each others\u2019 reach. \"\"<\/a>And OH what mash ups are possible.<\/div>\n
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And why not! Within the last 118 years there have been mummy link ups with everything from Laurel and Hardy to Sherlock Holmes. AND, while we’re at it – why not the Hulk with Frankenstein or Dracula with\u00a0Batman or Creature from the Black Lagoon with Aquaman? There really is no reason not to – if you can write a good enough plot and theme to go with it. If the scriptwriters can create the masterpiece that is Wonder Woman<\/em>, then I suspect not even the sky\u2019s the limit.<\/div>\n
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From\u00a0Cleopatra’s Tomb <\/em>to this year’s The Mummy<\/em>, there have been over 402 films with a mummy theme – entries ranging from Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chan, Scooby Do and the \"\"<\/a>Three Stooges\"\"<\/a>to the iconic Boris Karloff 1932 classic entry The Mummy<\/em>, to the Brandon Fraser semi-parody Mummy franchise. There have been mummy movies with Sherlock Holmes, Abbot and Costello, and even Tom Baker\u2019s Dr. Who<\/em>! There have been mummy movies which have been frightening, suspenseful, and comic – sometimes a combination and sometimes unintentionally one or the other. And there is one my husband and I have determined we MUST see sometime soon called\"\"<\/a> Bubba HoTep\u00a0<\/em>about an Elvis impersonator in a nursing home who thinks he\u2019s the original and\u00a0a black man convinced he is JFK dyed black by LBJ as part of a failed assassination attempt.The two team up to save their fellow residents from a shambling resurrected mummy – which makes some kind of sense because a mummy has a fighting chance against elderly which it would not have against more fleet of foot younger potential victims……I am SO not kidding. This is a real movie. Though I suspect NOT for the kiddies or the easily offended\u00a0– so be advised.<\/div>\n
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Obviously, this is not a topic to be taken very seriously. But I digress.<\/div>\n
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BOTTOM LINE: There are a HUGE variety of mummy movie options.\u00a0Many even with the name The Mummy<\/i>.\u00a0THIS The Mummy <\/em>with Tom Cruise is\u00a0fun and entertaining, though not for younger kids who might not be as amused as the more jaded of us by cliched over-the-top monster scenarios. Those who are panning this Mummy I think just don’t get it. The Mummy <\/em>is not intended for introspective thoughful watching. It’s simply a comic book hoot. And that’s a wrap. Mums the word. Go home now\u00a0– your mummy’s calling you.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHORT TAKE: The Mummy is a live action comic book – the trial run for Universal\u2019s new Dark World franchise. It ain\u2019t Shakespeare – or Wonder Woman – but it\u2019s a lot of ridiculous fun. MY TAKE: When I was a 5 year old there was no such thing as iPods, DVDs, Nintendo, Gameboys or … Continue reading THE MUMMY – LIVE ACTION COMIC BOOK FUN<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[211,209,212,6,208,9,213,210],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comic-book","tag-cruise","tag-dark-universe","tag-movies","tag-mummy","tag-review","tag-russell-crowe","tag-tom-cruise"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/maxresdefault-53-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6mhKV-nq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2660,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions\/2660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeschoolmommoviemavin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}