10 Movie Endings That KILLED Franchises For Good

Tom Cruise's The Mummy evaporated from the collective pop-culture consciousness so fast one can scarcely believe it only came out five years ago.

The reboot was intended to kickstart a new cinematic universe - yuck - centered around classic Universal monsters called the Dark Universe, but in an infamous case of a studio putting the cart firmly before the horse, The Mummy decimated the prospective franchise before it even really got going.

If the movie as a whole was panned for its thoroughly naff script, mediocre direction, and even a weirdly somnambulant performance from Cruise, what sealed its fate in the eyes of many was a deeply baffling ending that few could've seen coming.

At film's end, Cruise's protagonist Nick Morton becomes fused with Set, the ancient Egyptian god of death, effectively giving him all of the Mummy's supernatural abilities yet without any of the accompanying evil.

Basically, they turned Tom Cruise into a damn superhero, and thought this would be a compelling setup for a Mummy sequel.

Instead, it came off as a cynical attempt to cash-in on the popularity of superhero movies, rather than simply making a compelling Mummy movie people would want to see more of.

This baffling head-scratcher of an ending no doubt helped annihilate the film's word-of-mouth, ensuring it grossly underperformed at the box office and subsequently caused Universal to scrap the entire Dark Universe. Ouch.