In 1999, actor Brendan Fraser became a superstar with his role in the blockbuster “The Mummy”. He recently gave his opinion on the reasons for the failure of the 2017 remake, also called “The Mummy” and with Tom Cruise in the lead role.
The comeback of the superstar of The Mummy
Brendan Fraser is back this year, and what a comeback! Featured in The Whalea new film by Darren Aronofsky in which he plays a depressed and isolated 272kg man, the 53-year-old American-Canadian actor delivers phenomenal performance, hailed by the press and the public of the festivals in which the feature film was presented. It will be released in France on February 22, 2023. In addition, we will also see it in Martin Scorsese’s next film: Killers of the Flower Moon.
The Whale therefore marks the return to a leading role for the actor, which had not happened to him since 2013 and the very dispensable Breakout. And thanks to this film, he may return to the Hollywood A-List. A restricted circle in which he had made a good entry in 1999 with the great success The Mummy. A cult adventure film for an entire generation, it grossed nearly $416 million around the world and attracted to theaters more than 3 million French viewers.
The film recounts in the 1920s the association between a young librarian and Egyptologist (Rachel Weisz) and an adventurer (Brendan Fraser) to find a mythological city, the city of the Dead. Their expedition obviously includes many adventures all crazier than each otherwith the competition of a group of rival explorers and the intervention of supernatural phenomena. The Mummy has two sequences: The Mummy Returns in 2001, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. In these two sequels, Brendan Fraser reprises his role as adventurer Rick O’Connell.
Brendan Fraser tackles the remake with Tom Cruise
In 2017, Alex Kurtzman tries a remake with Tom Cruise. This new movie The Mummy must open the Dark Universe, Universal Pictures’ cinematic universe in the style of the MCU. Financial success ($409 million in total revenue), the film nevertheless attracts very bad reviews. The reboot of the franchise goes into oblivion. And in a portrait dedicated to him recently in Varietyactor Brendan Fraser gave his opinion on this film, and the reason according to him for its failure.
It’s hard to make this movie. The ingredient we had for our movie “The Mummy”, and which I didn’t see in the 2017 one, was “fun”. That’s what he lacked. It was too much of a horror movie in the first degree. “The Mummy” should be a thrilling experience, not something terrifying and scary.
Jumping with both feet into the trap of ridicule, The Mummy with Tom Cruise missed what the 1999 film had succeeded in: generating the frank amusement of his audience by diverting the codes of a fantastico-horror genre. This, moreover, was underlined Critic Roger Ebert at its output : “I can’t argue for the script, the direction, the acting, or even the mummy. But I can say that I was not bored and some moments gave me unreasonable pleasure. There is a bit of immaturity lodged deep in the skulls of even the most sagacious of us, and we should cherish it.”
To erase the failure of 2017, could Brendan Fraser reprise his role in a fourth movie ? He’s not against it. More specifically, he states:
I don’t know if that would work. But I would be open to the idea if someone came up with the right concept.
