I’m sick of nostalgia bait.
I’m sick of legacy sequels. I’m sick of studios dragging old franchises out of retirement, dusting off the original cast and asking us to applaud because we recognise the music.
And yet, the prospect of Brendan Fraser returning to The Mummy, with Rachel Weisz back alongside him, has me embarrassingly excited.
There it is. I’ve become the very audience Hollywood has spent years trying to manufacture.
Remember this? Please buy a ticket.
Hollywood has turned recognition into a marketing strategy. You don’t even need to explain the premise of a legacy sequel anymore. Show us an old costume. Recreate a familiar shot. Let the soundtrack tease a melody we haven’t heard in twenty years. Then wait for everyone to post that their childhood has officially returned.
It works because nostalgia is an extraordinarily efficient shortcut. A new film has to convince us to care about its characters. An old franchise only has to remind us that we once did.
That isn’t automatically a bad thing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with revisiting a world or a character when somebody has a worthwhile story to tell. The problem is when the reunion is the story. A film becomes an expensive exercise in pointing at things, and the audience is expected to provide the emotion from memory.
We’ve all sat through films that seem to stop every ten minutes so someone can say a familiar line. The pause afterwards is almost audible: go on, clap. You remember that one.
Then Brendan Fraser walks into the room
Which brings us to The Mummy. The 1999 film is exactly the kind of movie people mean when they complain that Hollywood doesn’t make them like that anymore. It is a gloriously entertaining mix of adventure, horror, comedy and romance, with two leads who make the whole ridiculous enterprise feel effortless.
Rick O’Connell is cocky without being insufferable. Evelyn Carnahan is clever, curious and capable of causing absolute archaeological chaos. Fraser and Weisz have the sort of chemistry that can make a film about an undead Egyptian priest feel, somehow, like a romantic comedy.
It’s also a film that knows exactly what it is. It doesn’t apologise for being silly. It doesn’t spend its running time preparing the audience for seventeen interconnected spin-offs. It wants you to have a brilliant couple of hours at the cinema, and then it lets you go home.
So when you tell me they’re coming back, of course I’m interested. I can already feel the part of my brain that has been trained to reject nostalgia bait quietly packing its bags.
We’ve already seen what happens when you take the nostalgia out
Universal tried launching a new Mummy with Tom Cruise in 2017, positioning it as the beginning of its planned Dark Universe. The problem wasn’t simply that audiences wanted Fraser instead. It was that the new film seemed far more interested in setting up a cinematic universe than in being a great Mummy film.
That is what makes the return to Fraser and Weisz so fascinating. On one hand, it’s an admission that the characters and chemistry of the older films are what people remember. On the other, it’s the most obvious nostalgia play imaginable.
And I’m buying it. Happily. With almost no resistance.
Are we excited for a new film, or an old feeling?
That’s the question I can’t quite shake. Do I actually want another Mummy film? Or do I want to be back in 1999, watching two ridiculously charming people flirt while ancient Egypt tries to kill them?
Because those aren’t the same thing. Fraser and Weisz can return, the music can swell, and the marketing can recreate every beloved image it likes. None of that guarantees a good film. The new story still needs to justify itself. The jokes still need to land. The adventure still needs to be an adventure rather than a guided tour of our memories.
There’s also something slightly depressing about how rarely Hollywood seems willing to give us new characters to fall in love with. If the best argument for a film is that we loved a different film twenty-seven years ago, perhaps we should be asking for a little more.
But I’m not going to pretend I’m immune. Seeing Fraser back in this world is exciting. Seeing him with Weisz again is even better. Some reunions genuinely are worth looking forward to, and nostalgia can be part of the pleasure rather than the entire product.
The trick is whether the film gives us something to love now, instead of merely reminding us what we loved then.
I’ll see you on opening night
So yes, I’m sick of nostalgia bait. I’m sick of legacy sequels. I’m sick of Hollywood digging up beloved franchises rather than creating something new.
But if that familiar music starts playing and Rick O’Connell walks back onto the screen, I’ll be there opening night.
And that’s precisely why Hollywood keeps getting away with it.