Well…

Too bad the franchise was ruined by Tom Cruise’s Mummy and now there will never be a sequel. 

Did I really want to sit through another two hours of jarring shots and frustrating storylines though? I guess not. But the last five minutes had me wanting to see where the story was going. There’s no guarantee that it would have paid off. That the plot I pictured in my head would come close to what they created - I’m getting used to disappointment. We don’t need another TROS incident. 

To fill you in, Dracula Untold was supposed to be the jumping off point for a whole new franchise from Universal called Dark Universe. They were going to take the classic monsters that we know and create a type of Suicide Squad. Even though Dracula Untold had average reviews, they decided to make the launch official with a different movie. Yup… that horrible thing called The Mummy. Not the great one from our childhood with Brandon Fraiser. No. It’s the one we forget exists with Tom Cruise. After the horrible reaction to that movie, our favorite monsters aren’t going to be coming together anytime soon. 

So what went wrong? Why didn’t they think they could hang their hat on Dracula Untold? And who gets to make these movies? 

I don’t have the answer to any of these questions. Sorry. But here are my thoughts on the whole thing. 

First off, from what I saw after my quick skim of the script, there was a lot more substance to the story originally. The general idea of things is delivered in the movie, but something always felt like it was missing. Not to the fault of the actors. They acted their little butts off and are the only reason that I enjoyed even some of the movie. 

Where the movie did go right was in the idea of Vlad the Impaler, the original and very real Dracule. Oh you didn’t know Dracula was real? Well then… I’m sorry to give you nightmares. I’d recommend not Googling him. However, in this version they played up his humanity too well. This bloodthirsty ruler suddenly had a family and was peacefully living in his kingdom. Um no…. That’s not how the story goes. And with how hard they were pushing it, the ending was very clear. Now if we didn’t already know so much about this historic figure I might have been okay with the ideas they ran with, but that’s not the case.  

That does not mean that I didn’t shed a tear when he finally became the monster that we all know. Like I said, the actors really tried to do their best. 

I haven’t even touched on my biggest grievance of the whole thing. Mehmed, the Turkish Sultan, wasn’t acted by a Turkish person. Nope. They took some British guy and made him look Turkish. How rude is that? How hard is it to find someone that actually looks like the nationality? It’s not like we have the whole planet, or an entire nation to choose from. 

The problems with the movie come down to two very simple things, the choices in the writing and the filming. There were many moments that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief. They were asking too much of the audience, even for a supernatural movie. If one guy, even with superhuman strength, goes into a sea of soldiers to fight them on his own, wouldn’t most of the soldiers just keep attacking the castle? The sea isn’t going to turn to attack one man in the middle. And why does every vampire want to turn on Vlad? He made them. He said no about one thing, but that was it. It’s all so confusing and boring and not something that I plan on recommending to anyone. 

So disappointing because I’m a huge Dracula fan…

Happy Watching

Love Kait