'The Mummy' Featurette: Tom Cruise Braves Zero Gravity and Punches Russell Crowe
The Mummy (in theaters June 2017) looks like part old-school monster movie, part Mission: Impossible–style action flick in a new behind-the-scenes featurette (watch it above). The first of Universal’s planned series of classic monster reboots, The Mummy stars Tom Cruise as a soldier pitted against an ancient evil. Algerian-French actress Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond) plays the monster, a 5,000-year-old princess who has emerged from her crypt with sinister intentions.
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In the video, Boutella says that director Alex Kurtzman wants to give “proper honor” to the original Universal horror films of the 1920s through the 1950s, which introduced audiences to terrifying-yet-sympathetic characters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Invisible Man. But while the sets are properly Gothic and atmospheric, much of the footage shown — including a dazzling anti-gravity airplane sequence, also featured in the trailer (watch it below) — looks more like a classic Cruise action film. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kurtzman explained that the star would not be playing his typical hero role in The Mummy; rather, his character will be cursed, and sometimes under control of evil forces.
Watch the trailer for ‘The Mummy,’ in theaters next summer:
“The Mummy is making you do things you don’t want to do. You’re cursed. You don’t know what’s going on. Suddenly, you made a very unreliable protagonist. When you do that, all bets are off,” Kurtzman said.
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Kurtzman also confirmed that Russell Crowe, glimpsed in the featurette in scenes with Cruise, would be playing a role in the Universal monster universe akin to that of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in the Avengers film. Crowe makes his debut in The Mummy as a character familiar to horror fans: Dr. Jekyll.