Brendan Fraser Knows Why Tom Cruise’s Mummy Movie Flopped
Brendan Fraser stated that the Tom Cruise Mummy movie failed because it wasn't "fun."
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Brendan Fraser is currently engaged in his comeback to Hollywood, as the man is doing plenty of press appearances for his upcoming venture, The Whale. During the interview for that film, he revealed he would be interested in appearing in a fourth installment of The Mummy franchise, but also revealed why the Tom Cruise Mummy movie failed to captivate audiences in the same way that his portrayal of Rick O’Connell did. According to Fraser, “It was too much of a straight-ahead horror movie.”
The biggest missing component of the Tom Cruise-led Mummy movie was that it lacked “fun.” Brendan Fraser added, “The Mummy should be a thrill ride, but not terrifying and scary.” To his credit, The Mummy movies that Fraser was part of were certainly a ton of fun, and they painted Rick O’Connell like a pseudo-Indiana Jones, leaving him and his family to constantly run amuck with the dangers of ancient magics and artifacts.
Fun and adventure are certainly two big components that exist in most of the archaeological wonderment properties that are concocted. Take video games, for instance, Uncharted was much of the formula that Brendan Fraser has spoken about. The games starred Nathan Drake as the adventurer who constantly attempted to find lost cities and treasure, but he was always in peril while on his wild adventures.
That game series was so fun that it had been turned into a prequel movie that starred Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Sully. The movie adaptation would go on to gross $401 million in worldwide box office numbers. That could be because the same thrill ride that Brendan Fraser spoke about is deeply embedded in that movie.
The issue with the Dark Universe that Universal was attempting to build was something between the classic monster movies but adding a bit too many horror elements. Tom Cruise is not a terrible actor, but The Mummy from 2017 just didn’t allow Cruise to take on the wild adventurer role in the same manner that Brendan Fraser had.
For now, we can all hope that someone is going to come through and pitch the right idea to get Brendan Fraser back in the role of Rick O’Connell. The Mummy franchise that he was part of was highly successful, though many would like to forget about the third movie entirely. Still, Fraser is quite a beloved actor, and everyone would love to see him return to the franchise that turned him into a superstar.
We nearly got to see Brendan Fraser take on the superhero villain role, as he was meant to portray Firefly in the Batgirl movie, which was unceremoniously canceled. That could have been the role that skyrocketed him back to the action-adventure genre, but with Fraser stating his want to return to The Mummy franchise, we could see some brave writers put together the right script to bring him back.
Tom Cruise has his Mission Impossible franchise to keep him busy, which is set to end quite soon. Also, the possibility of another Top Gun movie, as the sequel has been massively successful. When it comes to The Mummy, let’s just leave it in the hands of Brendan Fraser.
