One of the latest movie franchises to get a reboot is The Mummy. During my childhood, I loved the '90s series of films starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah. The new trailer for The Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe dropped on Sunday and I immediately looked for how the new Mummy reboot connects to the '90s franchise. The trailer is thrilling, action-packed and filled with all the Ancient Egyptian mythology you'd come to expect from a film with that title.
After all, both films are based on the 1932 original film of the same name. The '90s movie series began in 1999 with The Mummy and continued with the 2001 movie The Mummy Returns, and 2008 flick The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. While the '90s franchise was a big hit, the new Mummy promises to have a darker tone. Screenwriter Jon Spaihts, who is known for Prometheus, told Variety in 2012, "I see it as the sort of opportunity I had with Prometheus: to go back to a franchise’s roots in dark, scary source material and simultaneously open it up to an epic scale we haven’t seen before." And that definitely appears to be the case in the new Mummy.
It doesn't seem like there are any direct character connections or it doesn't seem like the films exist in the same universe, considering that the new one is a reboot — but both Mummy movies look like they share a similar story structure. In the 1999 film The Mummy, adventurer Rick (Fraser) teams up with Egyptologist — and future wife — Evelyn (Weisz) to stop the cursed Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) and explore the City of the Dead, which is underground. The trailer for the 2017 version shows Nick Morton (Cruise) teaming up with archaeologist Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) and Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe) as they explore an underground prison and face off against Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an ambitious would-be Egyptian queen who took a dark path — and has come back to life to take over the modern world. "Because of your actions, this ancient power has return," Dr. Jekyll says in the trailer.
In another difference from the '90s trilogy, the 2017 Mummy trailer shows Nick hanging onto a crashing airplane — and then come back to life while in a plastic body bag in a morgue. I don't recall Brendan Fraser ever doing that in the '90s. "You are alive, because you were chosen...by the ultimate evil," Dr. Jekyll says in the trailer. Whoa.
Watch the the new Mummy trailer below and see what connections you can find.
The reboot of The Mummy opens in theaters on June 9, 2017.
