The general audience does not have too high requirements for the script of a commercial movie, as long as the story is passable, after all, commercial movies generally use special effects, scenes, and visual impact as their selling points.
However, due to the particularity of individual commercial films, the importance of the story and character setting is very high, and it is often the key to the success or failure of the entire film.
The "New Mummy" that I want to talk about today is such a typical movie.
The pioneering work of the dark universe
After the rise of the Marvel Universe, most of Hollywood's film industries began to form their own movie universes, and Universal Pictures had the intention to gather all its monsters in the same world view to form the so-called "monster universe" , so in 2014, it launched " Monster Universe" . The first year of Dracula, the vampire movie, is testing the market.
However, after the release of "Dracula's First Year", the results were quite poor, so Universal Pictures immediately declared that "Dracula's First Year" had nothing to do with the "Monster Universe" that it was going to set up, and later renamed the "Monster Universe". It is the "Dark Universe" , and the "New Mummy" starring Tom Tom in 2017 is the pioneering work.
And in order to completely draw a clear line with "Dracula's First Year", Universal also specially added the exclusive title of the Dark Universe to the title of "The New Mummy".
Interestingly, after the release of "The Mummy", the word-of-mouth box office collapsed across the board, even worse than "The First Year of Dracula".
In doing so, Universal Pictures was immediately stunned, and later shelved the dark universe plan. When "The Invisible Man", which was originally a member of the dark universe, was released in 2020, it not only removed the exclusive title, but also did not say that this film is related to the film. about the dark universe.
In fact, the reason why the film "The New Mummy" is so bad is because, as I said before, from the story script to the character design, it is completely useless.
Features of Monster Universe
The first thing to understand is why the story and character design are so important to a commercial film like The New Mummy.
In the traditional movie universe, the focus is generally on the protagonist group, and the importance of the villain is second. For example , in the 23 movies of the Marvel universe so far, the really popular and attractive villains are Thanos and Loki. It's just one, but the audience can still accept it. This is the characteristic of American hero commercial films.
However, the special thing about the dark universe is that its protagonists are actually the villains---monsters, but at the same time, since the monsters themselves need to be connected by human scenes, the protagonists of the human side cannot be treated perfunctory.
Speaking of which, some people may disagree. For example, the legendary monster universe only focuses on depicting monsters, because they are the protagonists. Why does the dark universe have to pay attention to the human side?
In fact, although there is only one word difference between Monster Universe and Monster Universe, they are very different and cannot be considered the same.
The core of the monster universe is the fight between monsters, in other words , the confrontation between monsters. The relationship with humans is not very big. As long as the human side does a good job of transition, the task is complete, and there can be well-characterized characters. Of course it's good, it's not a problem if it doesn't.
But the core of the dark universe is how humans fight against monsters , it is the confrontation between humans and monsters , that is, both groups are masters. If one party drags its feet, it will inevitably affect the entire movie and even the entire universe. Therefore, this type of film has higher requirements for story scripts and characters than ordinary commercial films.
And what if both aspects are not handled well? That's what happened with The New Mummy.
"Change" princess
The real heroine, Princess Ammanet of ancient Egypt, also known as the monster mummy, does not have the demeanor of a BOSS at all, and the contradiction between the setting of the movie is very serious.
The film begins with an introduction to the princess in the human period. Because her parents gave birth to a younger brother, she could not inherit the position of pharaoh, and then she was willing to sacrifice herself to the god of death in order to gain power.
It can be seen that the setting of the princess is quite patterned at the beginning. A strong woman who is eager for power and hopes to establish her own dynasty, if this character setting continues in the movie, the effect will be much better.
It's a pity that since the movie went on and the princess was resurrected in modern times, she instantly turned into a "love brain", and she has been obsessed with getting the male lead, letting the male lead gain the power of death, and then willing to be his queen.
In this way, the Mummy Princess, who was originally quite a BOSS aura, instantly turned into a little woman's character , which is really ironic.
What's worse, because there is also a heroine who likes the male protagonist in the human side, and the meaning of the princess's desire to get the male protagonist runs through the whole film, the final result is that it looks like a love triangle. The film format is further reduced.
A good monster movie, and it has been transformed into a love movie directly from the middle section, which is also really amazing.
In addition, the ability setting of the princess is also floating.
It is said that it has become a monster, but at the beginning of the chapter, it was brought down by ordinary Egyptian soldiers, and it was made into a mummy without any resistance.
However, after the resurrection, the power is so strong that it can call the wind and call the rain, and there are countless undead legions with a single wave.
It is really too perfunctory to set such a setting that ignores logic and says that it will change.
Throughout the whole movie, the only bright spot of Princess Mummy is the individual meat-selling scenes, but as a monster in the dark universe, it can only be said that it is too miserable.
love for no reason
As for the role of the human side, it is even more frustrating than that of the mummy princess.
As mentioned above, the movie has become a love triangle since the second act . The male protagonist played by Tom Tom and the female protagonist are in love with each other and become the focus of driving the plot later.
But there is a problem. If the heroine fell in love with Tom Tom because Tom had saved her life (in fact, it was quite far-fetched), when did Tom fall in love with the heroine?
The first act of the whole movie will explain their relationship very clear, there have been a not very pleasant evening, after the two men hate each other but also has been, and is not the kind of romance lovers become relatives by marriage, is it real They don't like each other.
Even at the beginning of the second act , the male protagonist even wanted to abandon the female protagonist and walk away when he was in danger. It can be seen that even if the female protagonist fell in love with Tom because of saving his life, at most it was "the concubine intends, Lang is ruthless."
But after the Mummy Princess was captured, the male protagonist instantly became an idiot who loved the female protagonist to the point of madness. It is estimated that Tommy didn't understand why there was no interaction between the two of them, and there was also a female protagonist. The master was a conflict in which undercover played him, but he just suddenly fell in love with the heroine.
Converting a monster movie into a romance is already a mistake in the first step, and then this romance doesn't pave the way for the protagonist's feelings. If you say love is love, you're wrong in the second step.
The male protagonist played by Brother Tom has no distinctive image in the first half of the movie, and the characters in the middle will change as soon as they change. In the second half, he directly incarnates as a "love saint". How can such a character stand up to the banner of the dark universe ?
Purely in terms of film quality, "The Mummy" is really bad.
However, today's dark universe also has a new beginning, and let's see when the Mummy Princess will return to the screen in the future.
View more about The Mummy reviews
