Pirates of the Caribbean). There is a line to be drawn between being an homage to a predecessor and copying some of the format and scenes. Jungle Cruise walks the line as its similarities to The Mummy become increasingly noticeable in its bid to recapture the latter’s spark.
In The Mummy, Weisz’s Evelyn Carnahan is a librarian and scholar who ventures to Egypt from London to find the mysterious City of the Dead, recruiting Fraser's Rick O’Connell to aid her and her brother Jonathan on their journey. The premise of the film is replicated in Jungle Cruise, which sees Emily Blunt’s Dr. Lily Houghton traveling to Brazil to find the Tree of Life, a mythical tree that harbors magical healing petals, and s up with Dwayne Johnson’s Frank Wolff, a world-weary tour guide who doesn’t intend to take Lily to her destination until her determination changes his mind. It sounds eerily familiar, especially considering Lily also has a brother, MacGregor, who, like Jonathan, is the comedic relief on the journey.
Beyond the basic plot structure and character comparisons (Lily, like Evelyn, has also been denied hip into an elite scholarly society), Jungle Cruise even replicates a scene from The Mummy, only this time it’s Lily who is struggling on top of a ladder in a room full of artifacts and books. Jungle Cruise even tries to emulate the CGI villain — namely, Aguirre, the conquistador, has large swaths of his body missing entirely like that of the mummy when he’s initially resurrected. Plus, Lily and Frank are in a race to get to the Tree of Life before Prince Joachim does, which is similar to Evelyn and Rick’s attempts to get to the City of the Dead before a group of money-hungry rivals get there first.
The Disney film also tries to reproduce the same tone and spirit of Stephen Sommers’ movie — something many reviewers have pointed out in their criticisms of the film — by keeping things lighthearted and adventurous despite the dangerous situations the characters are in. Everything from the character dynamics to the curse from an ancient civilization ultimately echoes and retreads a lot of the same beats as The Mummy, right down to Jungle Cruise’s romance, which is full of quips and initial mistrust before loyalty sets in, between two people from entirely different worlds. Lily does receive the validation she’s been craving from other scholars in the end, but, like Evelyn, decides to reject them to go her own way now that she’s proved to herself she doesn’t need to a group who didn’t believe she was previously worthy.
But while Jungle Cruise desperately tries to be The Mummy, it isn't able to recreate the spark and adventurous gusto that made the 1999 film such a standout. Much of that could be due to Jungle Cruise being far more restrained, struggling to develop its own personality beyond mirroring The Mummy and other fantasy adventures. While it draws the most from The Mummy, insofar as it copies many aspects of its plot and scene structures directly, Jungle Cruise doesn’t recapture quite the same amount of magic.
