Filmmakers have been known to exaggerate. Few writers or directors ever admit that their project isn’t as good as they hoped, or that the movie they’ve worked on for years isn’t the greatest thing they’ve ever done. So when “Doctor Strange” writer Jon Spaihts claims that the new “The Mummy” reboot is going to be scarier than the classic Universal film, you have to take it with a grain of salt.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Spaihts said, “[The new film] is the first ‘Mummy’ film in the entire Universal canon with the true power to terrify.” That is definitely a strong statement.
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He goes on to explain, “The earliest [Boris] Karloff and Bela Lugosi ‘Mummy’ movies were scary in a small way, perhaps a dated way. They were almost parlor movies. Subsequent movies have been more swashbuckling. This one is going to have all of that action and adventure, but a legitimate power to terrify.”
Now, one could argue that Spaihts has a point. The classic films are a bit dated, due to the fact that those early films are over 80 years old, and movies have come a long way with their power to scare audiences. However, this new film stars none other than Tom Cruise as the hero, so it’s highly unlikely that the studio is going full-on horror here. It’s hard to believe that a film that is supposed to kick off a new shared universe and be one of those lovely four quadrant films will actually “terrify” anyone.
To the writer’s credit, the new “The Mummy” has a strong chance at being more terrifying than those Brendan Fraser films in the late 90s/early 00s, so that’s something. [via AV Club]