The Connection Between The 'Mummy' Remake & The Original Films

If you've seen the trailer for the upcoming Egyptian supernatural movie, you might have been excited, but also confused. After all, with a whole new protagonist in place, the 2017 Mummy film's connection to the original Mummy is a little unclear. While it's being billed as a remake, the real question is which The Mummy movie it's recreating.

If you're hoping for the Brendan Fraser version, then, given the fact that the 1999 movie was set in the 1920s, while this has a modern-day setting, you might be disappointed. However, The Sydney Morning Herald reports that it "harks back to the horror of the 1932 version starring Boris Karloff," something echoed by Observer, who describe it as "a loose remake of the 1932 horror film."

However, since the 1999 film, starring Rachel Weisz, was itself intended as a remake of its 1932 predecessor, there's still a chance that the two most recent films could have a connection. This said, it's a very slight chance. For one thing, the tone of the two films look totally different. Salon describes the 1999 film as having far more emphasis on humor than the '30s original, stating that "it does get the self-mockery that was essential to Hollywood swashbucklers."

Meanwhile, the Tom Cruise movie seems to be jacking up the scariness quota, with Russell Crowe, who also stars, stating that ,in comparison to the 1999 film, “This one is kind of more designed to seriously scare the sh*t out of you.”

Still, while the two films have totally different characters and settings, both movies seem to boast the same trope of modernity awakening a mummy. In the Rachel Weisz movie, her character reads a page of the Book of the Dead aloud, accidentally awakening Imhotep, while, according to the Radio Times in the 2017 movie, "Nick discovers the Mummy's tomb while struggling to run away from enemy gunfire" and wakes her up. Then, much like Imhotep (who brings the 10 plagues back to Egypt), she proceeds to unleash "horrors" on modern-day London.

And if the two films seem totally different, there's a reason for that. According to The Verge, "it’s meant to kick off a massive cinematic universe for the Universal Monsters." Pretty much what Marvel is doing for superheroes, but with "the classic monsters from the Golden Age of Hollywood" with the site reporting that "Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, Abraham van Helsing, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and even the Bride of Frankenstein" all have movies in development.

So if you're into the idea of a new cinematic universe, don't despair. This new movie may not have much connection to the 1999 version or the original 1932 film, but that's so it can sow the seeds for an ambitious new series of movies. That's got to be a good thing.