‘The Mummy’ Trailer: Welcome to a New World of Gods and Monsters
“Witness the beginning of a dark universe!” The new trailer for The Mummy is going all-in on this Universal Monsters cinematic universe idea. (And also throwing shade at Dracula Untold. Wasn’t that the beginning of this thing? Poor Luke Evans.)
So the official and actual start of this new iteration of the Universal Monsters begins with The Mummy, featuring Tom Cruise as a cursed hero doing battle with a new she-mummy (played by Kingsman’s Sofia Boutella). It also starts with a nice nod to the old Universal Monsters, with Russell Crowe (playing a Nick Fury-ified version of Dr. Henry Jekyll) saying “Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters,” a direct homage to one of the most famous lines in movie history, from 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.
Here’s the new version of The Mummy’s official plot synopsis:
Tom Cruise headlines a spectacular, all-new cinematic version of the legend that has fascinated cultures all over the world since the dawn of civilization: The Mummy. Thought safely entombed in a tomb deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient princess (Sofia Boutella of Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond) whose destiny was unjustly taken from her is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension.
It does feel a little weird to kick off a mega-movie universe with one of its less famous characters; you’d think you would want to start things with Frankenstein or Dracula or even the Wolf Man. Then again, Marvel started their whole shebang with Iron Man, who was always more of a B+ player in the world of comics until his movies became huge. So we’ll see what happens when The Mummy opens in theaters on June 9.