He’s been a super-spy, a samurai, and gone to court with Jack Nicholson. Now, Tom Cruise, actor extraordinaire, has been cursed by a ancient evil, giving him super-human strength.
In the latest trailer for The Mummy, even more information about the monster movie is revealed, including a proclamation that Tom Cruise’s film is supposed to kick off an expanded universe. I mean, we already knew that was the case, but we’ve never seen it acknowledged in marketing.
In The Mummy, the genre is tipped on its head slightly by gender-swapping the mummy, named Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who apparently went power crazy before being mummified by her subjects.
In the present day, Cruise runs around, dodging explosions, before coming across Princess Ahmanet’s tomb. There, he unleashes unspeakable evil, and is eventually “chosen” for a greater purpose.
It’s unclear what that purpose is, but it seemingly involves lots of tumbling around and confused staring.
With The Mummy set to kick off an expanded universe, expect many more movies to be announced in the coming months—after all, we’re already getting a look at Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe), so Universal isn’t shying away from dipping into the well of classic monsters, which also includes Frankenstein, Wolf Man, and Invisible Man.
You know, I don’t hate the idea of an expanded monster universe, and Cruise is still among Hollywood’s top action stars, as he’s proven in the Mission: Impossible franchise. A monster movie is semi-new territory for the actor—he starred in War of the Worlds—so it’ll be interesting to see how this all turns out.
The Mummy is set for a June 9 release.
