With the upcoming "Mummy" film, we see that the antagonist's appearance will be straying away from the typical creepy bandaged walking corpse to evil-looking female sorceress queen named Ahmanet. Originally, "The Mummy" director Alex Kurtzman had intended the supernatural antagonist to be male and, after watching the post-credits scene in "X-Men: Days of Future Past," he found similarities in the character's appearance and background.
During an interview with CinemaBlend, Kurtzman revealed that "X-Men: Days of Future Past" caused him to ditch his original concept of the Mummy villain being male and transformed him into something else -- someone who we now know as the villainess Ahmanet, played by "Star Trek Beyond's" Sofia Boutella.
The character was supposed to have skin pigmentation, which caused him to be an outcast. This was meant for the audience to feel more sympathy with the Mummy than just pure fear. However, Apocalypse's version from "Days of Future Past" has had a similar background.
"I was going down that road, and then I saw the end of Days of Future Past," Kurtzman said in the interview. "And they had the character that Oscar Isaac wound up playing as a boy, and it was, I kid you not, the exact same design."
Right after watching "Days of Future Past," the director decided to change his direction of the film to a small degree, which is transforming the villain into Ahmanet, avoiding to "mess around even remotely with anything that feels familiar or feels like it's been done."
It's a good thing that Kurtzman had a backup idea of making a female version of the iconic monster ready, which he quickly shifted to.
Just a recap of what the basic premise of the 2017 reboot of "The Mummy" is: Ahmanet, the evil ancient queen, was woken up from her crypt deep underground when a team of paramilitary archaeologists go deep in the desert. It's up to Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his team to race around the globe and stop the Mummy from causing chaos in the world.
The Mummy premieres in June 8, 2017.
