Problems with Blockbusters and Hollywood (and kind of a critique of The Mummy, too)

This past weekend, I saw The Mummy, the latest remake from Hollywood and the first entry into Universal’s Dark Universe—a cinematic universe relaunching all of Universal’s classic monsters. 

Instead of simply reviewing The Mummy, I thought I’d cover some of the issues it made me think of regarding all modern blockbusters, and Hollywood as a whole. 

The two main camps of thought on The Mummy seem to either be 1) It’s bad, or 2) if you turn your brain off, it’s entertaining. I’m firmly in camp one. 

This whole concept of “turning your brain off” to enjoy a movie infuriates me. Why should a movie have to be entertaining only if you stop thinking? Why should a movie not challenge its audience? It’s a concept so perplexing and complicated, I think I’ll have to do a whole separate blog post on that one. 

I knew The Mummy was going to suck, and it ended up being exactly what I was expecting. Some people go into movies without any expectations, while others go in with pre-conceived ideas about what the movie will be like. 

The reason I think so many of us have such strong pre-conceived ideas about the major blockbusters of today is because the majority of them are remakes, sequels, or reboots. 

When I say blockbusters, I’m referring to big-budget movies—usually action movies—that people come out in droves to see (or are supposed to, anyway), because they are (supposedly) made to be seen on the big screen. 

Opening alongside The Mummy was an indie-horror movie called It Comes at Night. It’s an original movie, without any big-name actors, without a huge budget, and has not been overly advertised. Had I went to see that movie, I would’ve went in without any expectations and not knowing anything about it. It carries no baggage. Every remake and reboot and sequel has the baggage of whatever came before it to varying degrees. 

Going into The Mummy, it was impossible not to have pre-conceived ideas about it. The original The Mummy came out all the way back in 1932, and was followed up by five other Mummy movies in the 40’s and 50’s, then in 1959, Hammer Films made their own movie called The Mummy and followed it up with sequels, and then Universal made a new The Mummy in 1999, calling it a remake, despite having a completely different story and cast of characters from the 1931 version. 

The Mummy has had a long cinematic history, so it’s far from an original idea at this point. 2017’s The Mummy is, again, more of a reboot than a remake, because it once again features all-new characters in a different story-line. But that doesn’t make it feel like something brand-new. I still felt like I had seen everything in this movie before in other, much better movies. 

When people step into the cinema to see a reboot/remake like The Mummy, they shouldn’t be expected to forget everything they’ve seen before. I’ve heard that complaint from people, “it’s not fair to compare [insert movie] to the original.”

How is it unfair? What isn’t fair is the studio thinking they can get away with rehashing the same thing again and selling it to people as something new. 

It seems to be getting easier and easier to know what a movie will be like (good or bad) before it even comes out. For me, I follow many of the YouTube film reviewers, who often see big blockbusters days and sometimes weeks before the wide release dates, so I already know their thoughts long before it’s even out, and then in the days leading up to Friday’s opening night, critic reviews pour in to Rotten Tomatoes, and the site churns out a percentage and critic consensus which neatly sums up whether the movie is good or bad. Before the movie even has a chance to land with audiences, it’s already been analyzed, calculated, and filed into one of two categories, fresh (above 70 percent approval rating) or rotten (69 or less). 

I realize many people don’t check out reviews before seeing a movie, especially in terms of the YouTube critics, but Rotten Tomatoes (RT) is becoming more and more popular with casual viewers, and I get why. It offers instantaneous results. Is the movie good, or not? You click on the site, you see all the movies opening that weekend in a column on the left, with a little percentage beside each one. Oh, that’s rotten? Pass. That one’s fresh, let’s see it.  

This has become evident with opening weekend box office numbers. The Mummy, as a prime example, made just over 30 million opening weekend. The previous weekend, Wonder Woman killed it with a 100+ million dollar opening, and carried over strong in its second weekend. Critic consensus? Over 90 % on RT. 

Is it fair to compare two movies as different as The Mummy and Wonder Woman? Perhaps not. But just for fun, let’s look back at the three movies preceding Wonder Woman (a film which, like The Mummy, is part of a cinematic universe). Man of Steel (2013) RT score: 55 %. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) (giving us our first-look at Wonder Woman) RT score: 27 %. Suicide Squad (2016): 25 %. 

I bet if Wonder Woman had received similar RT scores to the previous DC films, it would’ve opened to less than 100 million. 

Obviously there are many other factors to consider here (when did the other DC films open? What other movies did they open against on those weekends?) in terms of opening weekends, and for the record, all three of those DC films had big opening weekends. Regardless, clearly the critical response to a film is more important now than it ever has been. Why is that, though? I think it has something to do with how many movies come out these days. 

It wasn’t that long ago when blockbuster films were delegated primarily to the summer months (May, June, July, August), but nowadays it seems a blockbuster comes out every other weekend. Marvel Studios is able to stake their claim in any month they want, whether it’s Captain America: The Winter Solider in April of 2014 or Doctor Strange in November of last year (I guarantee Thor Ragnarok will be the highest-grossing movie of this coming November, even over Justice League). 

I hope Universal isn’t surprised that The Mummy opened so weakly. How can these studios expect to have any impact with their blockbusters when there are so many coming out so often? Obviously the major moneymaking genre these days is the superhero/comic book genre. This year alone, there are nine comic book movies getting wide releases. 

But the other craze, aside from superheroes, is cinematic universes. Everything has to be connected, because that way if audiences see one movie, they’ll feel like they need to see the next one, and the next one, and on and on. 

This newest version of The Mummy is, to me, a prime example of the sort of reactive filmmaking studios are participating in these days. By reactive, I mean these studios are making movies simply because they’ve seen what types of movies have been doing well, and therefore have to try and make their own versions of those successes and hope to cash in on them. 

Universal: “Oh, Marvel movies make a lot of money? What are their main distinguishing features? They’re action movies and are all connected. Let’s try that!”

The Mummy 1932 was an undisputable horror film, as was the 1959 Hammer version. The 1999 version was more akin to an Indiana Jones adventure film, but still with some horror thrown in. 2017’s Mummy is mostly just an action movie (still with attempts at horror, but meager attempts), and that’s probably only because of the popularity of superhero/action movies over horror movies right now. If comedies were the big money-makers of today, I’m sure The Mummy would’ve been a parody, more akin to 1955’s Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy.  

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that cinematic universes weren’t a thing, and there wasn’t a Marvel Cinematic Universe or DC Extended Universe. Do you really think Universal would’ve made another Mummy movie right now? The studio remade it only eighteen years ago, and followed it up with two sequels (The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the latter only having come out in 2008) plus a spin-off (The Scorpion King), but that was all before the MCU and DCEU. 

I’m not singling out Universal here. It’s kind of like what Sony did with Spider-Man, and their feeble attempt to make a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, by throwing every easter egg they could into The Amazing Spider-Man 2. We all know how well that went…

So with The Mummy doing poorly financially, it makes me wonder, will this Dark Universe series of films even make it past this first entry? Based on international box office numbers, it looks like it will, but then I wonder how much they’ll alter their plans. Say The Mummy had made a killing opening weekend domestically. Think The Mummy 2 would have been announced by now? You bet. Wonder Woman 2 is already in development, even though it wasn’t even mentioned back in October 2014 when DC announced their slate of movies through to 2020. Big surprise there.  

Just about every studio is guilty of reactive filmmaking at the moment, and not just in terms of trying to build cinematic universes. Let’s look at 20^th Century Fox and two very different films from them, 2016’s Deadpool, and 2012’s Prometheus. These movies aren’t connected in any way, shape, or form, but the comparison demonstrates how movies really are about business first and foremost. 

Wolverine was Fox’s most-bankable superhero, which is why he got his own movie in 2009, with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In addition to giving the title character a backstory, Origins introduced other new characters, including fan-favourite Wade Wilson/Deadpool, but after the film was poorly received by fans and critics, a solo Deadpool movie took another six years to be greenlit. 

Prometheus, on the other hand, was a prequel to the Alien franchise, which had been dormant since the failure of the two Alien vs. Predator films, and the next entry (like Deadpool) took several years to come to fruition.  

While both movies were part of well-established franchises, the studio was much more confident in Prometheus than Deadpool, and for good reason. Even though it was a comic book movie, Deadpool himself was an untested character (this version, at least, which was nothing like the one in X-Men Origins) from an untested director, with a low budget (58 million, quite low for a superhero movie), whereas Prometheus was part of a well-known franchise, had a huge budget of 120+ million, and director Ridley Scott at the helm—a director who, in addition to making many successful movies and continuously proving he was a bankable name to slap on the trailers, was the director of the original Alien.

What ended up happening was Prometheus didn’t do the box office numbers the studio was hoping for, and Deadpool far-exceeded expectations, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of that year. 

Fox didn’t greenlight a Prometheus sequel right away (this could have had something to do with Ridley Scott’s busy schedule, but if Prometheus had been a runaway hit, I’m sure they would’ve got him on the next one immediately), and when the sequel did finally come out five years later, in the form of last month’s Alien: Covenant, it bore little resemblance to Prometheus. 

Once again, this is an example of reactive filmmaking. “Make the next one more like the original Alien”, is what the studio thought the fans were saying when Prometheus received a mixed response, but obviously that’s not what the fans wanted, because Covenant has done very poorly at the box office—so poor, in fact, I doubt there will be a sequel at all. 

But what about Deadpool? As soon as it opened huge in February 2016, a sequel was announced, and that sequel is scheduled to come out next year. Go figure. 

Why Deadpool had so much more success than Prometheus may have come down to the advertising more than anything. Fans were unsure whether Prometheus was an Alien film or not, whereas the trailers and posters for Deadpool clearly conveyed what kind of movie it was going to be, and clearly it was one many people wanted to see. 

Trailers are a major part of a film’s success or failure. Trailers used to be simply for announcing a new movie and getting people aware of it. Nowadays, people are aware of movies being made years in advance of their release dates, and when certain trailers hit the web, it’s like a mini-event. 

A great example would be the trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII, which currently has just under 100 million views on YouTube. Think about that. A two-and-a-half minute compilation of footage has been seen almost 100 million times. 

We live in an age where fandoms rule. Fandoms demand more movies, then members of those fandoms come out of the woodwork to see those movies over and over, generating billions of dollars, which generates more and more movies. Star Wars fans watch the trailers for the newest entries in the series hundreds of times and analyze every frame before seeing the movies. DC fans flock to see the DC movies even if they have low RT scores or questionable trailers. Marvel fans head out for the latest adventures of Iron Man and Thor and Captain America and the rest of the Avengers year after year after year. 

But how long will this age last? 

All of this reminds me of the scene in Jurassic Park when they’re sitting around discussing the implications of dinosaurs being alive alongside humankind. Dr. Grant says “The world has just changed so radically, and we're all running to catch up.” And that’s what I can see happening when I go out to see these blockbuster movies, week after week. Perhaps it’s not Hollywood that needs to change its ways, it’s us, the viewers.    

Let me bring this all back to The Mummy. I knew it was going to be bad before I saw it. Even before I saw the reviews from Schmoes Know and Cinemassacre and RedLetterMedia, before I saw the Rotten Tomatoes score (16 % as of writing this), even before I saw the trailer (which, for the record, looked bad), just the concept of kicking off the Dark Universe with yet another Mummy movie and making it more action than horror movie was enough to put me off. 

Some might say I judged this movie too early on, and had a preconceived idea about it which hindered my ability to enjoy. But that’s not true. I even tried the ludicrous “turning my brain off” method, and still, I was unable to enjoy the movie simply because it was as bland and as generic as these kinds of movies come. 

Maybe I’ve seen too many movies. Maybe someone fresh to the Universal classic monsters will get a kick out of it. But to those people I say, please, don’t see this movie, just watch the original 1932 version instead.  

So what's my point, going over all this blockbuster and Hollywood stuff? I just find it interesting, observing how blockbusters have changed since the explosion of comic book movies, and how studios have responded to their success. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but I’m certainly growing tired of seeing superhero movies and remakes and sequels and reboots with bloated budgets rake in the money even when they aren’t very good.