When people go into a Tom Cruise movie they usually know what to expect: Cruise breaking faces, and saving the day through a series of elaborate stunts. It’s what we love about the man. But with THE MUMMY, Universal is trying to start their own shared universe of movie monsters, so it’s important to remember that Cruise isn’t the biggest thing going on here. In order to remind folks of that here is a new image which shows Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton staring down the barrel of Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll
Though simple, the image can't help but stir up ideas as to what the two characters' dynamic will be, not just now, but in any future movies. On the surface it seems Cruise could just be playing a normal, average-joe hero, but the trailer hints he may have a bigger role to play in the universe moving forward. When speaking to EW Kurtzman decided to be all mysterious by saying, “there’s an origin story happening on two different fronts. I won’t tell you too much more than that…” As well, our own Jimmy O was on hand during a press event for MUMMY earlier this month, and Kurtzman talked about how they needed to make this feel like a different Tom Cruise movie, depicting him as the potential hero who knows what’s up before throwing him a horrifying curveball:
And what we came to is the idea that if you present him as somebody who thinks he knows what’s going on and then you throw the craziest thing at him in the world, which is 'Oh shit, he dies and then comes back up in that morgue,' now I go, ‘Okay, he doesn’t know what he’s into, I don’t know what he’s into, I don’t know that he’s going to save the day.’
Going back to the EW quote, our own Paul Shirey shared his own theory some weeks ago as to what Cruise could be doing in a movie of this sort during a Joblo podcast. The idea is that he is too big a star to do some sort of one-off, “normal guy” role, and his character could actually play a bigger part in everything moving forward, and Kurtzman’s quote lends a bit of legitimacy to that thinking.
No matter what, regardless if Cruise has a bigger role in this series or not, it's good to know we can still expect some Crusie-caliber action in this summer blockbuster, as it's a crime to have him in a movie and not have something large crash into the Earth. If there is something more here, and Crusie and Crowe have a larger role to play together, it will be interesting to see how the two mesh. What I'm saying is, please have Cruise go toe-to-toe with Mr. Hyde.
We will find out more when THE MUMMY arrives June 9.