Trivia / The Mummy (2017)

---

• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, it's not the first time we hear Toshiyuki Morikawa voicing a guy named Nick. And it's not the first time he had to deal with the undead either or mummies once again.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Christopher McQuarrie evidently hates this movie, to the extent that when someone asked him for writing advice he simply said "Don’t write ''The Mummy''"◊.
  • Whenever director Alex Kurtzman thinks about his experience behind-the-scenes, he calls it "painful" and says "It wasn't what I wanted it to be" - which would explain his reason to leave the Dark Universe. He would state that the failure of the movie gave him more experience and knowledge as a filmmaker.
• Creator Killer: Alex Kurtzman hasn't directed a film since this one and instead refocused on television with Star Trek: Discovery.
• Dawson Casting: Russell Crowe calls Tom Cruise, who is two years older than him, a young man. This was notably called out in the Variety expose article as an example of Cruise's vanity. Cruise turned 54 years old during the filming.
• Fake Brit: Dr. Jekyll is being played by Australian Russell Crowe.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Like The Mummy (1999), the actor playing the title villain is African, but not Egyptian, as Sofia Boutella hails from Algeria.
  • Chasty Ballesteros is playing an American-Chinese woman, but is actually a Canadian of Filipino descent.
• Follow the Leader: The movie's ambitions of establishing a Shared Universe franchise is admittedly inspired by the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though it's worth noting that the classic Universal Horror movies became the first "cinematic universe" franchise, so this is fully intended to be a new spin on that.
• Older Than They Look: Thanks in large part to advances in digital de-aging technology, Tom Cruise in his mid-fifties pulls off Nick Morton, who seems to be in his mid-to-late thirties, based on his rank and the age of his love interest. Looks like someone's taken a page out of Ahmanet's book.
• Playing Against Type: Sofia Boutella as the Mummy herself, Princess Ahmanet, who's the exact opposite of Jaylah, and a definite promotion from Gazelle.
• Remake Cameo: A very bizarre one happens in the Japanese dub of the film: the main hero Nick Morton is voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa, who also dubbed Rick O'Connell, the main protagonist of the 1999 film and sequels. This is because Morikawa is the regular dub voice of both Tom Cruise (Nick) and Brendan Fraser (Rick) in Japan in their respective films, so it was pure coincidence.
• Stillborn Franchise: At first, it looked like this movie wouldn't end the Dark Universe before it began, thanks to its impressive box office haul in foreign markets, but its disappointing critical and domestic box office performance certainly forced Universal to rethink their strategy. Later reports claimed that after both Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan departed from the franchise due to this film's failure, the Dark Universe is in peril of being shelved permanently as it remains "rudderless" (with empty offices). And then a death blow ensued once would-be follow-up The Invisible Man was reworked into a low-budget thriller with no franchise connection, that ended up being much more successful than this film.
• Wag the Director: Variety's expose revealed that Tom Cruise had a lot of control over the film and these include:
  • Early drafts of the script gave about 50/50 screentime to Nick Morton and Ahmanet. But Cruise brought in writers he was more familiar with (David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dylan Kussman) to make changes to the script, including (but not limited to) increasing Nick's screentime at the expense of Ahmanet's screentime and development. Given that this was one of the most heavily-criticised aspects of the film (see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot on the YMMV page) this could qualify as one of the most-destructive examples of this trope in recent history.
  • Alex Kurtzman was director in-name only, as it was essentially Cruise who was the actual director of the movie. In all fairness to Cruise, Kurtzman's inexperience in directing big-budgeted action blockbusters was showing through, giving even more incentive for Cruise, who's worked on these type of films for a good portion of his career and knows the ins and outs of them, to take the reins.
  • The whole production team basically falling in line with whatever Cruise said, going as far as overseeing the editing of the movie with his preferred editor, Andrew Mondshein.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hardy and Javier Bardem were considered for the part of Henry Jekyll before Russell Crowe was cast. Bardem would later sign on to portray Frankenstein's Monster in the Dark Universe before the film was scrapped.
  • Jamie Chung, Brooke Shields, Gwen Stefani and Lindsey Stirling were considered for Ahmanet before the casting of Sofia Boutella.
  • Len Wiseman and Andrés Muschietti were initially attached to direct the movie before Alex Kurtzman was hired. Wiseman dropped out the project due to scheduling conflicts, while Muschietti departed due to various Creative Differences.
  • The Mummy was originally going to be male like the traditional depiction, but the original design was apparently too similar to that of the titular villain in X-Men: Apocalypse. This forced them go back to the drawing board, so the crew decided to Gender Flip the Mummy, ironically inviting comparisons to the Enchantress from Suicide Squad instead due to her being an ancient Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with supernatural powers.
  • An early draft written by Jon Spaihts featured the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, who appropriated Egyptian mummification techniques and mysticism in a bid to live forever and conquer the world.

---