Wrapped in DISTRACTIONS

It should come as no surprise that many major studios -- watching with longing as Disney's Marvel movies, with their contiguous Cinematic Universe, have continued to print money since the 2008 release of Iron Man -- want to develop similarly interconnected worlds, where well-known properties interact with one another. Forget endless sequels, once you can establish your own universe, you have an infinitely sustainable resource.

Having watched from the sidelines for far too long, Universal has finally entered the fray with its "Dark Universe" series. Bereft of pre-established superheroes to populate their world, they have turned instead to their own iconic property: The rogue's gallery of classic monsters they have amassed lo these many decades. In this film alone, we have the titular Mummy, a Jekyll/Hyde character, the skull of Dracula, and not-so-subtle references to a good deal more things that go bump in the night.

The thing is, Marvel's special sauce has always been their mastery of tone. Take 2014's smash hit Guardians of the Galaxy, a film many thought would be a rare misstep for the golden studio. James Gunn's movie slides almost effortlessly between action, sincere pathos, intrigue, and goofy fun, and somehow makes the whole bizarre mash-up work seamlessly: In the final showdown, just as things are about to shift into full-on Climactic Comic Movie Mode, the hero suddenly challenges the villain to a dance-off to determine a victor. It's an outrageously funny moment, peculiar and unexpected, but it also works perfectly to keep the film's tone purposefully off-kilter.

Compare that to a scene coming at the end of the first act of this film, in which our hero, Nick (Tom Cruise), first confronts the ancient, evil Egyptian queen Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), he has unwittingly unleashed upon the world. As her undead minions pin him down, she straddles him, running her gnarled fingers up and down the sides of his rib cage, sizing him up in order to plunge a mystical dagger into his chest -- only her gnarled, clawlike fingers keep tickling Nick, causing him to break out in strained guffaws even as she looms ominously over him. It's a dark scene that had been playing it for chills right up until this moment, with a villainess whom the film had previously been working diligently to make terrifying -- and it chucks all its hard-earned scary momentum for a throwaway dumb gag.

It is conceivable you could imagine a way in which this might have worked; but all it accomplishes is to throw a railroad spike into the film's own machinery. Ahmanet should be scary and unnerving. She's the evil wraith of the film, and watching Nick giggle uncontrollably at her ministrations essentially snuffs out any sense of her menace. It would be like Ripley making a joke about the xenomorph's bad breath at the end of Alien.

You can see the wheels turning for this Dark Universe, a way to introduce a bevy of "gods and monsters" such as Frankenstein's monster, The Wolfman and Dracula, but to lighten them up in order to make them seem hip and fresh. Those original monster movies weren't often horror films, per se, in the first place.

The thing is, as Warner Bros.' beleaguered DC brand can tell you, it's incredibly hard to find the right formula to ape Marvel's wild success (although the runaway popularity of Wonder Woman might suggest they're finally on the right track). Director Alex Kurtzman attempts to find a similarly elastic tone, but instead only keeps undermining himself.

Working from a screenplay by the esteemed duo of David Koepp and Christopher McQuarrie, after an extensive prologue the adventure begins in the modern day, where the aforementioned Nick, a long-distance reconnaissance scout for the military, working with his good buddy Vail (Jake Johnson), plan to sneak down into a Middle Eastern village filled with insurgents in order to dig up what they think might be a lucrative ancient tomb for them to raid. What they end up finding instead is a giant, hallowed Egyptian prison, built solely to house the stymied Ahmanet. Joined by a beautiful archaeologist named Jenny (Annabelle Wallis), the duo stumble around the chamber, acting like the quintessential Ugly Americans, stealing whatever they can get their hands on. When Nick nonchalantly fires a bullet at a restraining cable that raises the entombed Queen from a pool of nullifying mercury, he accidentally releases her evil presence back into the world and starts having hallucinations about her claiming him as a chosen partner.

Freed at last, she begins to wreak havoc, until she's captured by a team of secret paramilitary types led by the mysterious Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe), the director of a secret government installation built to contain "evil" (and in the process, very clearly giving the Dark Universe a regular home base from which to introduce all the other members of the ominous ensemble). In search of her chosen mate and the ancient stone-and-dagger combo that will allow the evil incarnate to appear on Earth after she sacrifices him, Ahmanet eventually escapes her prison and starts hunting down the accursed Nick, who is continually haunted by visions of his dead buddy Vail leading him to further danger.

This being a Tom Cruise movie, there is the usual attention paid to his continued physical prowess: We witness him running in his trademark dead sprint, holding his breath underwater for a prodigious amount of time, clearly performing a great number of stunts himself (save one involving a stampede of rats that engulf him, which is clearly a call for a motion-capture suit and whole bunch of CGI). There is also another Cruise staple in the redemption of his character: Nick starts out a callous and selfish grave robber and ends up, like Scrooge after encountering the Ghost of Christmas Future, repenting his sinful ways and acting out of pure selflessness.

As played out as that sort of transformation may be, it's about the only character arc you're going to get, unless you count Jenny's conversion from scornful one night stand to a woman desperately in love with the film's hero (this is yet another film in which roughly 60 percent of the female lead's dialogue consists of her plaintively saying the first name of the hero over and over again).

It must be said that there are, in fact, some passable jump scares here and there, and the casting of the bewitching Algerian actress Boutella pays off in spades, but Kurtzman's film is so laden down with exposition setting up the rest of the oncoming onslaught of films, and so desperate to find the right scary/comic balance to propel the entire series forward, it doesn't get to take much flight on its own.

There will doubtless be far worse films that come out this summer -- there already have been a handful -- but this one is likely to be cast onto the already teetering pile of forgettable entries whose resonance won't last until next Tuesday. It's not terrible, but it's also not a particularly auspicious start to a franchised series with so much riding on its hunched, ghoulish shoulders.

MovieStyle on 06/09/2017