From the beginning of the IMAX trailer for the Tom Cruise-starring The Mummy reboot, it almost seems like it’s trying to position itself as a Serious Film (despite being about, well, mummies) — the Rogue One of Mummy movies. That sense of gravity comes from the near-noiselessness of the first half of the trailer, which seems like a directorial choice for weighty minimalism. But then slowly it starts seeming less deliberate.
At first, the “decision” to not include certain effects — like a swarming flock of (supernatural?) birds thwacking against Tom Cruis’s plane, but without any thwacking sound — and to feature others, like everyone’s breathing, seems like a way of creating tension. But then, the further you watch, the more ridiculous it becomes, until you realize it seems it’s just a mistake. This realization likely comes around the time that, as the plane plummets towards the ground, all we hear are the lone squeals and yelps of actors trying — without the support of INTENSE EXPLOSION NOISES — to seem like they’re being thrown around a plane. And instead they kind of just sound…amusingly vulgar.
The other amusing thing is that this had been up for the public to consume for a while, actually, but since a previous trailer had already come out, the IMAX trailer didn’t initially get enough press for this to have been noticed widely, until people began to point it out on Twitter.
Unfortunately, the trailer has now been removed from YouTube, but DenofGeek pointed it out that it’s been posted elsewhere:
Vox notes that “it seems the trailer’s booming background audio, music, and ‘vocal’ tracks have been separated, and only the latter made it into this trailer.” The Mummy reboot, set in modern day, will be out on June 9, 2017.