Brendan Fraser Shares His Take On Why Tom Cruise's The Mummy Reboot Failed: 'The Answer Is...'

Looking back on the last decades or so of blockbusters, few disasters stand out quite like 2017's The Mummy. The film was made to help usher in a new, special era for Universal's Classic Monsters (with plans to build an MCU-esque continuity called The Dark Universe), and it was loaded with the extreme star power of Tom Cruise... but critics hated it, and it was ultimately judged a box office bomb.

So what went wrong? Many have contributed thoughts to the discourse, and that now includes Brendan Fraser – who memorably starred in the Mummy trilogy from 1999 to 2008. The actor was a part of a recent Mummy-centric panel at Fan Expo Denver, and according to Collider, he was asked for his thoughts on what went wrong with the Tom Cruise movie during the event. At first he demurred, saying that he didn't really have an answer and acknowledging that it's easy for any blockbuster to end up being a dud because the whole process is so difficult. Said Fraser,

Thinking more about it, the Academy Award-winner then suggested that it may have been a matter of tone. While perhaps suggesting a personal dislike for the last movie in his own Mummy trilogy, he suggested that the 2017 reboot from director Damon Lindelof didn't deliver what fans were really hoping for, which was a fun and thrilling adventure. In his words:

Co-starring Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, and Courtney B. Vance, 2017's The Mummy is arguably a darker take than what director Stephen Sommers crafted with 1999's The Mummy and 2001's The Mummy Returns – and there also wasn't exactly a great deal of expressed appreciation for the aggressive worldbuilding that saw Russell Crowe introduced as a version of Dr. Henry Jekyll / Edward "Eddie" Hyde who is part of a secret order dedicated to investigating dangerous supernatural matters around the world.

With a lot of fans at the time confused and upset that Universal Studios wasn't continuing the adventures of Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell, there was a bit of backlash (a sentiment that has continued with the development of the new Mummy reboot currently in the works), and when fans don't get what they are hoping for on the big screen, that can be a key ingredient to creating a flop. Or as Brendan Fraser put it,

After reading all of this, I don't suppose many of you are in the mood to revisit The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, but if you feel so inclined and wish to do so with a couple of clicks, all you need is an Amazon Prime subscription. As for those of you who want to revisit the Brendan Fraser movies, the first two (a.k.a. the better two in the series) are available to stream with an AMC+ account.