Why The Mummy Was A Disaster

5. A Lack Of Compelling Female Characters

It's staggering how blockbuster cinema often still struggles to come up with compelling, meaningful female roles, most often pigeonholing them as the damsel-in-distress or arbitrary eye candy.

The Mummy isn't much of an exception, with Annabelle Wallis' Jenny Halsey having such little agency, being rescued by Tom Cruise numerous times, and worse still, being charmlessly performed by Wallis.

Though Sofia Boutella does well enough in the antagonist role, it's still an underwhelming, underwritten part that pales massively compared to Imhotep from the Fraser movies.

Considering that women are 50% of a potential audience, it's absolutely shambolic that they continue to get such a skewed treatment in major tentpole films like this, and as a result it's no surprise that women would be turned off going to see it.