Imitation, it’s said, is the highest form of flattery — but the film industry has turned that approach into something unrecognizable. Franchises have been cannibalizing themselves for decades, pumping out countless sequels, spinoffs, and remakes to keep the most promising intellectual property alive. In most cases, it’s just as macabre as it sounds: one doesn’t have to look further than Universal and its flailing “Dark Universe” for evidence. The studio made a valiant attempt to reboot its universe of monsters in 2017 to no avail, and though it’s since had some success with grounded takes on the Invisible Man and Wolf Man, Universal might be abandoning that pursuit to chase a more surefire success. It’s tapped Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directing duo known professionally as Radio Silence, to bring the Mummy franchise back to life... and hopefully fix nearly 20 years of missteps.
While Stephen Sommers’ Mummy films are themselves reboots of the 1930s film starring Boris Karloff, they’re beloved enough to feel like the original trilogy. They were the formative swashbuckling adventure for many a Millennial, but things didn’t end on the best note, either. The first two films featured Brendan Fraser as the treasure hunter Rick O’Connell, and Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan, the librarian and Egyptologist who eventually becomes his wife. Their chemistry was the key to making this reboot work, but all that fell apart when actress Maria Bello replaced Weisz in 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The third film lost sight of this franchise’s charm in other ways, too, making it an installment most fans — including Radio Silence — are happy to ignore.
