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Darryl & Thor: Ragnarok
When the first poster for Thor 2: The Dark World was released, I made a brilliant observation: Thor wasn't missing anything. Hammer, check; red cape, check; battle armor, check; Jane, check; hair, check,... Okay, I didn't actually notice that his hair was still there, because it never occurred to me that Thor wouldn't have his hair, however, I did know that other things could happen, but that The Dark World wasn't going to be that part of the Thor story when it did. Now, however, we see some important identity elements missing: his hair, his hammer, and Jane. Please note, Thor stands in profile, and whenever this is done, by a character, or even a real person in a portrait, the profile-stance enhances the mystery of the person, not just what we the outsider don't know about the person, but also what cannot be known about the person, maybe even what they will never know about themselves. Given that Thor is the god of thunder, this is possible, however, it's also possible that something we haven't known about Thor heretofore will be revealed, a part of him (like why he's the god of thunder) will finally be revealed and he won't be so mysterious anymore.
Let's start with the red cape. We know that red symbolizes the appetites because red is the color of blood, and whatever is most valuable to us is what we are willing to spend our blood upon (if love is most important to us, we are willing to die for the beloved, if our anger/wrath is most important, we are willing to spill someone else's blood to appease our appetite for their destruction); Thor is a hero,and he is a hero because, way back in the first Thor film, he was put in his place by Odin (Anthony Hopkins) so he would take his role as a god seriously and not just run around, reeking havoc, kind of like what he's doing in the Darryl video. We know that Thor loves earth, he was willing to die for it in the first Thor film, and has battled significant enemies to save earth, so we can deduce that the red of the cape attests to Thor's love, so that hasn't changed. What about the cape itself? A cape rests upon someone's back, so our back symbolizes either the burdens we are forced to take upon ourselves, or the burdens we willingly take upon ourselves, and in Thor's case, that includes saving others and the earth.
Why has Thor lost his hammer? We know that in the first Thor film, Thor also lost his hammer because he wasn't worthy to wield it, and it's possible that is what happens again; how? The cycle of conversion is continuous: the battles and obstacles that you overcame yesterday, set you up so that you can overcome new obstacles today, and still more obstacles tomorrow; in other words, Thor is unworthy of a deeper level in Thor: Ragnarok than he was in Thor. He is far stronger now, emotionally, spiritually and in terms of his maturity (he has saved many planets and people from destruction and proven he is ready and willing to sacrifice himself for a greater cause, which is what a good leader does), but the thing about conversion is, you are never, ever good enough; there is always room for improvement because, as long as you are still alive, there is room for ever greater virtue in your soul (which is as infinite as God Himself because He gave you the soul you have to resemble Him as closely as possible). So the more a character is called to conversion, it's because they are capable of that degree of perfection, they are overcoming all that weakness within themselves to replace it with strength and virtue. In battling the goddess of death herself, Hela (Cate Blanchett) the film makers are demonstrating that it's because Thor is such a great guy that he is capable of battling this evil presence. In the second video below, where Thor acts like a jerk about getting a job, it's important to keep this in mind, because that video makes Thor look bad, however, the film makers are making an important point. So, Thor loses his hammer, because Thor has been using Mjolnir as a crutch; now that the crutch has been removed, Thor can dig deeper within himself to call upon power that he has never used before, hence why we really see Thor as the "god of thunder" for the first time in the second trailer below. Remember, in the first introduction to Darryl, we see Thor's "board of clues" and he shows us Mjolnir who is holding a little Thor; that's what is going to happen in Thor 3 (I think), that Thor will become the hammer (Mjolnnir) as the god of thunder while the "old Thor" will be merely an illustration of the limitations Thor allowed himself.
What about his hair? We know that the head symbolizes our thoughts because our thoughts originate within our head, so hair, hats, or messy hair, anything pertaining to the head, reflects the kind of thoughts the character is having. Thor's hair is cut off; why? We have just seen the same happen to another character, young Arthur in King Arthur: Legend Of the Sword, when Arthur has been found by the three prostitutes and they have his long, blonde locks cut off. Blonde is the color of gold, and gold denotes a king--quite fitting for both Thor and Arthur, eh?--so having their hair cut off translates to they are being forced to stop thinking of themselves as kings; yes, they are both political kings in their respective realms, however, there is also the reality that (you knew this was coming) as white, heterosexual men, they are also the "kings" of American society, because white men are considered by minorities to be the dominant power holders. So, like other white, heterosexual males in Western Civilization (it's okay if you are gay, according to minorities) Arthur and Thor are being demoted in their social and political standing. This leads us to Thor's left arm.
In The Mummy, Dr. Jeckyll (Russell Crowe) keeps a black glove on his left hand, in which he frequently injects himself with a green medicine to keep his Edward Hyde persona from coming out; in The Shape Of Water trailer, we see Michael Shannon's Strickland with a bandaged left hand; why: "the Left" has traditionally been associated with evil, and in America, recently, we can certainly attribute evil to the Left's doing (not least of which are actual Satanic invocations against President Trump), so these two characters (Jeckyll and Strickland) have a relationship with the Left and that evil (and please don't forget the poster release for The Man From UNCLE about the Nazis: both Solo and Illya look off to their Left; why? That's likely going to be where the next threat comes from). So, on Thor's left arm, we see his bulging muscles--he hasn't been physically weakened in any way--and we see the black strap he has wrapped around his left arm (we don't see his right arm). Our hands symbolize our honor, we shake hands when we give our word about something (so someone who has a weakened or debilitated hand, has debilitated honor, too) while our arms symbolize strength. In Thor's left hand, he holds the helmet we see him put on in the stadium scene where he fights Hulk. So, a translation for Thor's left arm could be something like this: Thor intends on keeping the Left (symbolized by his left forearm wrapped in the strap) contained (the black straps) by defeating Hela/death (the goddess of death, because black is her color, the same as the black straps) through his ability to fight (the helmet) and his sheer strength (his biceps). Is that all? Well, no.
If you look at Thor, then look above him, in the upper-center of the poster, there is a bright light shining on him; I don't know if that is supposed to be a spaceship, or some alien being, however, light (especially bright light such as this) is a symbol of illumination (remember in Age Of Ultron when Thor went into that pool to interpret his dream/vision and he realized they needed Vision to help them defeat Ultron? Thor seems to know how to channel the mystical, and this may come into play in this third Thor film.
Last, but certainly not least, the green color over most of the poster. Like all of the colors, green has a positive and a negative interpretation: green, usually associated with spring, means hope and new life, but it can also mean the opposite of that, like something has gone bad--really bad, like Hela herself, she has some green highlights on her costume--and we have certainly seen that in association with the Left: they promised hope (Obama, "Hope and change,") but all they delivered was a bunch of rotten policies they benefited themselves (we have seen green used politically in both Kong: Skull Island and Warcraft, and don't forget Loki himself wears a green costume) so we can perform a simple deduction (we don't know any real plot points of the narrative at this time) that since so much of the stadium is colored green, that the stadium functions somehow in a socialist manner (we certainly saw that in The Hunger Games).
I have actually been waiting a long time to do this post; nearly a year, in fact, when the first "Thor on vacation" trailer dropped,.... was it a joke? Just a little morsel to tide us over for a year until we got another taste of Asgardian lore and culture? I don't think it was. As humorous as the trailer below is, it establishes an important pattern we see in the next three trailers. So, to refresh your memory, here is the first, Darryl Jacobson and Thor Odinson video:
First of all, Thor talks about everyday "average," and there isn't anything about Thor that is average. Darryl is average, but Thor isn't. Why not? Equality, not everyone is created equal, socialists would like to make everyone equal, but that is simply one more way in which Liberals ignore reality. For example, there is simply no way that I can do what Michael Jordan can do, however, Mr. Jordan probably can't do what I can do, either, so we both have our unique talents, but that's not what liberals want: they want to force everyone to be the same, and if you are not same, you are going to be purged.
Seeing Hulk and Thor in the video above was supposed to answer the question: why wasn't Thor and Hulk in Captain America: Civil War? We see what they are doing, but this still doesn't really answer the question, why? Captain America: Civil War was a metaphor about gun registration in America: each super-hero was being targeted to "register" with the government so the government could decide when, where and how their powers would be used, or even, if they would be given a chance to help at all (please see Perfect Teeth: Captain America: Civil War for more). Hulk and Thor obviously didn't have any opinion about either side being right or wrong (Thor wanted to fight just to fight and be needed, whereas Hulk just wanted to stay out of it altogether). Thor: Ragnork presents the consequences of not being awake about what is going on and taking a side on the issue, because Hela will clearly embody the socialist threat to the whole universe and try to destroy everything, so anyone--like Thor and Hulk--who failed to be interested or take notice, will not have to pay the consequences of ending up in a stadium-fight-to-the-death because they didn't take a side when they could have.
The truth is, there are average people, like myself, who help to keep the world running in our day-to-day lives, while exceptional people like Thor occasionally save the world from extraordinary threats which ordinary people are not capable of doing. So, when we see Darryl typing an email for Thor, and Thor not understanding some of the basic rudiments of civilization in our modern world, it only heightens the specialized need we have for Thor, and the average need for Darryl. Later, there was an update on the roommates, and Marvel released this video, displaying some culture clash between the two:
This little video is probably the best way to piss off a Marxist known to man. I love it!
Don't think about "the rent" as actually being "rent" that people like you and I have to pay, rather, think of "rent" as being existential, and more like "purpose," I have to pay for my purpose now, I have to justify why I am here and that I deserve to have the life that I have,... Darryl can't use Asgardian coins to pay his rent, because is an average guy (like myself), he has to have an average means of paying his rent, like cash. Thor, on the other hand, is a hero, and as thus, he has to have heroic deeds to pay his existential rent, that is, without heroic deeds, he ceases to be a hero. Darryl would look absurd in Thor's battle armor, for example, because he doesn't "fit the bill," but Thor also looks really out of place in Darryl's workplace, because what Thor can do isn't required as a "necessary skill set" in Darryl's place of employment. So, Thor is right: those coins are worth a "gazillion" dollars, but they aren't helping Darryl because Darryl's rent is more mundane; without Thor's rent, however, there would not be an earth for Darryl to live in. Not too long after the rent debacle, the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok was released:
Thor basically ends up like a lake perch in a net, but we have the establishment of an important pattern: Hela has to kill Thor in order to recreate everything in her image (sound like Hillary Clinton? Remember, she was expected to be president now when they were making this). Remember, too, that the last time Thor saw Loki, Loki died in his arms when they were trying to save Jane from the Aether; we know Loki used his powers to get Thor to believe that, even though Loki went back to Asgard and tricked Odin; if you saw Dr. Strange's end credit scenes, you know "Thor" supposedly sought out Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to help him find Odin, but it was actually Loki looking to get the Infinity Stone Strange was guardian of. So, Strange will be appearing in this video at some point, too. And, now that this second trailer has been released, just a few days ago, I knew it was time to make some comments and predictions:
Either a). Everything is being set up to destroy Thor's identity and make Thor look really bad because he can't send an email or answer a smart phone, OR, Thor's necessity is going to be proven and he's going to have to kill Hela and everything she represents. It's going to be a tough battle, because it's ain't called "ragnarok" for nothing. But if it weren't for Thor, and Hulk, it probably would be the end of all things.
Labels: Thor 3 Ragnarok Darryl videos rent Thor Chris hemsworth Loki Hela symbols meaning images pictures thefineartdiner.blogspot.com
Signature Of Satan: The Mummy (2017) & 15 Seconds Of Intimacy
What it really comes down to is people using other people. When Nick (Tom Cruise) and Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) have a moment to talk at Prodigium, Jenny explains that she was looking for the tomb of an Egyptian princess who had been erased from history, and Jeckyll (Russell Crowe) needed the Haram site investigated; Nick responds to this revelation with, "So, you are using each other," to which Jenny quickly responds, "And now she (Ahmanet) is using you to regain her powers." "Using" defines the basic economy of the film, and the film's vehicle of motives and action which all boils down to insincerity and a damning lack of individuality; yes, please, take "damning" in the literal sense. In other words, just as Ahmanet uses Set, and Set uses Ahmanet, so, too, does Jenny use Nick and Nick use Jenny, and Jeckyll uses both. As the body of the post will explain, Jenny and Ahmanet are psychoanalytic doubles, and Nick and Set are psychoanalytic doubles, reflecting the double identity inherent in Jeckyll/Hyde, and Prodigium/Natural History Museum. In other words, (and these are important words) Ahmanet is the manifestation of Jenny's "darker" self, her own inner-monster, and Set is the manifestation of Nick's own inner-monster, just as Edward Hyde is the reflection of Jeckyll's inner-monster: these dark characters are mirrors of the soul, the darkest parts of the soul, and we are seeing Jenny's and Nick's darkest parts of their souls because, ultimately, they are the dark parts of our souls, too. How? Sex. Their casual one-night stand is far too common place in our society today, but in spiritual terms, and the terms which translate into real inter-personal relationship problems, is that we use people instead of loving them, because we are a society taught not to sacrifice for others, not to suffer for others, and it's going to keep getting worse (we discuss this at length in the post below).
Although it was mocked when first released, The Mummy poster we see above is endlessly interesting for the spatial arguments it produces and re-producing social and political debates into a 2D format. Just like the London skyline, Nick Morton rises up like one of the businesses itself: to destroy the great skyline is to destroy Nick (the white, heterosexual male who has been under siege for nearly a decade now) and that's exactly what Ahmanet is doing in releasing the sandstorm upon London, she wants to destroy what men have created (the London business district) and replace it with the barren sands of Egypt which is in her image and benefits no one but herself (this theme is imperative because we see it in other films, such as Quintessa and Optimus Prime in Transformers: the Last Knight, and the destruction of earth so Quintessa can have her kingdom; we see it in King Arthur Legend Of the Sword and the socialist figure of Vortigern instead of the prosperous, just and fair society of Excalibur and King Arthur; potentially, this is also the premise of Baywatch (which I haven't seen yet, but is likely the premise in Victoria Leeds and her drug smuggling, as well as another female drug smuggler in the up-coming Kingsman: Golden Circle in Julianne Moore's Poppy,not to mention the upcoming The Dark Tower [because all those skyscrapers we see are basically "towers"] and so the Man In Black trying to destroy The Tower is like George Soros trying to destroy New York City) so, this is a big deal, the total destruction of Western Civilization and everything it has accomplished and all the people it should be supporting in the upcoming future but probably won't because it's being intentionally bankrupt. But there is another issue: as another review commented in mocking the poster, Tom Cruise's Nick Morton stands over the city like a Godzilla creature,... and this is true. "Morton" means "death" and because of the way Nick has irresponsibly lived his life, he threatens to bring down Western Civilization just like Ahmanet and her sandstorm. The sandstorm dissolves and destroys the towers/phallic symbols of the men who built them, just as the churches, like Waverly Abbey (where the Knife of Set is being kept) were destroyed by Henry VIII because of his lust for Anne Boleyn and his sexual adventures.
"What was the movie about?" someone asked a film critic.
"Sex," the critic replied.
I didn't hear that joke until my first graduate level film criticism class, but if you have read any film criticism (and no, the stuff on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic isn't film criticism) then you probably understand the ridiculous amount of time film critics spend "digging up" sexual innuendos in films that most people believe simply don't exist. In the case of Alex Kurtzman's amazing reboot of The Mummy, yes, it is about sex, and just as Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) is an archaeologist digging for clues, so, we, too, are called to dig for clues. As always, every spoiler is in this post, so it would be better for you to see the film first, and come back to read this afterwards. Further, this film is incredibly dense, it is so packed with encoded details I was overwhelmed when taking notes (I have all ready seen it twice) so there are things left out, and I apologize, but maybe I can draw your attention to things you might have missed.
Let's start with Nick.
There are three different types of soldiers in The Mummy: first, there are the Crusaders, who open the film, and we will discuss them below, they are the soldiers of God; then there is Colonel Greenway, pictured above, who is a soldier for the state/government. Third, there is Nick and Vail, "soldiers of fortune," who use their position in order to have access for financial and personal gain (Napoleon Solo was this kind of soldier of fortune in The Man From UNCLE). The three types of soldiers we see that "soldier" is not a stable term in the film, i.e., referring to one type of soldier, because there are three types, and if someone says, Nick is a soldier, we have to have that explained which type of soldier he is because the definition of "soldier" is in play. For example, when Nick and Jenny are at the pub, Nick leaves her to talk to Vail, and Jenny calls Henry Jeckyll; he tells Jenny, "Bring your soldier in," but what type of soldier does Jeckyll mean in referring to Nick in that way? Does Jeckyll see Nick as a "soldier of God," a decorated soldier (as he mentions to Nick when they first meet) or a "soldier of the state," like Greenway, or does Jeckyll all ready know that Nick was going to find the "treasure" at Haram and hold it for ransom until Jeckyll paid the price for it? What Jeckyll means by "your soldier" remains ambiguous and it isn't cleared up when Jeckyll meets Nick and reveals some of the details in Nick's file, like he has been decorated for bravery. When this kind of ambiguity exists, it's not inherently bad, unless we ignore it, and arrogantly go forth, confident that we understand the "meaning" of a word, only to allow a pothole in the road to trip us up and cause a disaster.
Colonel Greenway doesn't have a big part yet he supplies us with an important clue: how to interpret the film. When Greenway shows up at Haram, Nick and Vail tell Greenway a story about civilian hostages and how they were acting honorably trying to save others, in spite of their own self-interest; Greenway then proposes a "different scenario," and accurately tells Nick how Nick saw an opportunity to steal some antiquities and got into a mess over his personal "capitalist venture" and how Nick and Vail weren't doing anything heroic at all. Why is this moment important? It demonstrates Nick as an "unreliable narrator," and that he can't be trusted, either by other characters or us the viewers. Because the "unreliable narrator" also happens to be the main character with whom we, the audience most intensely identify, his lie becomes our lie, and we are implicated with him because of the lies we have told in our own day-to-day lives and, rather than be absolved of our guilt, we are implicated with him. What guilt? We'll discuss that below. It also demonstrates, however, how much interpretation Greenway is capable of, inserting his own understanding into "holes and gaps" in Nick's and Vail's story, and that's what we are called upon to do as well: interpret what we have been given.
When we first meet Nick and Vail, they argue about what the word "Haram" means: As Vail attests, "Haram" means forbidden, but then Nick does something interesting: Nick interprets (just as Greenway will interpret his story about him and Vail going into Haram) a different meaning to "Haram": "'Harma' is what they call 'treasure,'" and that because it must be "forbidden," is must also be worth a lot. First, that which is forbidden is a reference to Original Sin and the taking of the Forbidden Fruit. Nick, as a mortal in a state of mortal sin (i.e., "deadly" sin) is like a teenager: if it's "forbidden," that must be the good stuff, so that's what I want. Additionally, we see Liberals going after that which is "forbidden," consistently: it's almost like, if a thing isn't forbidden, Liberals won't want to have anything to do with it (homosexuality, witchcraft, transgenders, drugs, as well as the desecration and isolation of religion and religious symbols and holidays). We can most definitely see Nick Morton as a socialist figure at the start of the film, not only because of his attraction to the forbidden, but because of what he tells Vail about stealing: 'We're not going to steal the antiques, we are going to liberate them," and we saw that same "logic" used in the remake of Point Break, when Utah asks Bodhi if they are going to steal the money and Bodhi replies, "No, we're going to liberate it." Being a "thief" is a reference to The Hobbit, where Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) becomes the "company thief" of the dwarfs so Bilbo can steal back from the dragon Smaug the treasure Smaug stole from the dwarfs (in The Mummy, this is a far more complicated issue we discuss below with Jenny). So, is The Mummy a pro-socialist film since we see the hero, Nick, "liberating" antiquities to sell them on the Black Market? No, for at least two reasons. First, Jenny seriously guilt-trips Nick for having stolen the map from her because it was her "life's work," and therefore Nick had absolutely no right to take it, whereas with Liberals and "wealth redistribution" (in this case, the map of Haram being the "wealth") they have a right to anything and everything you have because you don't have a right to it to begin with. Secondly, the "black market" is never a capitalist market. Only countries where there is no capitalism or where activities are illegal, is there a black market, and even though people do make money on the black market, because it's not open, free (regarding government regulations) and legal, it's not a legitimate part of a legitimate capitalist society.
Everyone's name in the film means something, so what about "Greenway?" Of course it does. Greenway has chosen a "green path" in life, a good choice he upholds because he sacrifices himself for a greater good, instead of putting others at risk to reap gain for himself. This should remind us of another soldier we recently saw, The Blind Man in Don't Breathe (that was such an awesome movie!): The Blind Man had been a veteran, after his daughter's death, he decided he was a victim, and changed from being a soldier who served his country to being a victim who wanted his country to serve him (exactly what President John F Kennedy warned us about). So, Greenway has chosen a path of life (remember, we meet him in the desert where there is no life and there isn't anything green). So, why does Greenway die? We can look at it one of two ways, and I think both can/are accurate. First, Greenway put himself in the line of danger first to stop Vail from attacking the sarcophagus, being a threat to himself and others; Vail himself tells Nick in the ladies room at the pub that he killed Greenway to "save him" from the curse of Ahmanet, so either of these is permissible in that Greenway wasn't at fault for anything (he didn't try and get Nick and Vail to give him a cut of the money they would make from the sale of their "liberated antiquities").
When Dr. Jeckyll (Russell Crowe) turns into Edward Hyde, Hyde tells Nick that Nick's face has the "very signature of Satan" upon it, and this is why, Ahmanet, at Waverly Abbey Chapel, looks at Nick's face so closely, and his teeth, because Jeckyll confirms that Set, the Egyptian god of the death, Lucifer, the devil, and Satan are all one and the same figure (another good example of ambiguity in the film) and when Ahmanet is "examining" Nick to insure he's a good fit for the god Set to inhabit, she concludes with Hyde that Nick, is indeed, the very signature of Satan. Most critics, however, seem to disagree and believe that Tom Cruise is just too clean-cut to have a "dark side" in the Universal Dark Universe; are they right?
To some, it might seem odd to reference the most famous horror film of all, the original The Exorcist (top and middle images) however, in creating a Dark Universe, The Mummy shows how serious it is in taking its cues from the scariest film of all time. Whenever you are watching a film, and something explicitly or implicitly reminds of you another film you have seen, that's intentional on behalf of the film makers, and is called the implied viewer/reader of Reader Response Criticism. The film makers know you have seen other movies than the movie you are watching at that moment, and they want you to know they, too, have seen those same movies, so in the words of my film criticism professor, the film makers "reward" viewers for having watched other films and bringing that intellectual and artistic baggage with them, and applying it to the film you are watching now. This leads us to the second point: it can save a lot of air time to simply reference something the viewers have all ready seen, rather than go to arduous lengths to do the same thing in your own film. For example, when the film opens in "present day mode," and we join Nick and Vail in "the cradle of civilization," the ruins being ruined by the insurgents reminded me instantly of the opening sequences of The Exorcist, when Father Merrin encounters the statue of the demon he once overcame in an exorcism, but would have to overcome again, and the battle between the two dogs fiercely fighting. Why would The Mummy film makers want to remind us of that? Because they want to establish that they, too, are centering their narrative upon the ancient battle of good and evil, that old demons buried have been resurrected and are back for revenge against us, and they are quickly claiming victims. We can also be confident that, when Nick sacrifices himself and stabs himself with the knife of Set so that Set possesses Nick, the film makers reference The Exorcist once more, when Father Damien (center image) commands the demon possessing Regan to come out of her and possess him instead. Why would The Mummy need to reference The Exorcist for this scene? For at least two reasons: first, so that we know it's sacrifice and not a power-trip prompting Nick's actions, and second, so that we do, in fact, see Jenny in Regan's role as being "possessed." It's undeniable that Nick gains incredible powers when Set takes over him, and it would be tempting to interpret that Nick doesn't really sacrifice himself, rather, he takes advantage of an opportunity presenting itself and reaps the rewards for becoming a "living god on earth." When we link back to The Exorcist, however, we know that is clearly not the case, and just as Father Damien offers himself as a victim to save the girl, so, too, does Nick offer himself to save the girl. In case we have failed to understand Jenny's-Ahmanet's role in the film, tying Nick's sacrifice to that of Father Damien's also links the possession of Regan and the possession of Jenny (because, in both films, it's not just demonic possession, but sexual possession by a male as well which is at stake; The Exorcist: Absent Fathers for more.
What about the bottom image? It's either The Book Of Life or The Book Of the Dead (the Egyptians had both) from The Mummy trilogy starring Brendan Fraser. The covers of both books look very similar and it's hard to tell which one was used, but when Nick gets trapped in the Prodigium office with Jeckyll after he has turned into Hyde, Jenny tries to get to Nick and help him, by grabbing this book off the shelf and hitting Jeckyll's assistant with it so she can get to Nick. Why? I don't have time, dear reader, to go back and study those old The Mummy films to answer the question; if this were my full-time job, I would love to do that, because I think therein lies an important answer; however, I don't have that kind of luxury, so if someone knows, please, drop me a line and I will gladly give you the credit and update this spot. Suffice it to say, there is an important link here between Jenny saving Nick and the old The Mummy films and events which take place therein which fans of the original The Mummy films will be rewarded for my knowing what is happening.
The reason the critics miss Nick's "dark side," the reason Hyde and Ahmanet both see Satan in Nick but the critics don't, is because the critics likely commit the same mortal sins Nick has committed and they don't want to see themselves in Nick: critics think, "I haven't robbed a village of its antiquities like Nick has," no, but that's not the issue, and they are likely (or have been) sexually active with someone to whom they are not married, and that is a mortal sin Nick has committed, i.e., it separates you from the very face of God, that means Nick has the "signature of Satan," because the Grace of God has been destroyed within him due to his promiscuity, and this is where Jenny comes in.
Nick's and Vail's friendship clearly invokes the 1981 horror classic, An American Werewolf In London, not only in Vail's appearing to Nick as being dead as Jack appears to David in various states of decay (middle image) but also in what causes the "curse" which follows both Nick and David, which is sex (unfortunately, I haven't been able to post on An American Werewolf In London yet--in spite of at least two serious attempts on my part--but I hope to by the end of this year, because I could certainly reference the film and encourage viewers to watch it). In both films, the friend (Vail and Jack) are mere psychoanalytic doubles for the main character, Nick and David: translated, what happens to Vail and Jack have actually happened to the main characters, Nick and David, but the film makers wanted to "rescue" the main characters as much as possible, so instead the sins were committed by "throw-away" characters in whom the audience was not as emotionally invested. In other words, the minor characters, the doubles, are a part of the main character that has to die or be overcome so the main character can achieve conversion and complete their "heroic journey," whatever that might be (yes, granted, Nick Morton becomes Set and David gets shot as the werewolf, but trust me, these are all important similarities that were well-crafted by The Mummy film makers).
So, in The Mummy, when the "veil of death" is discussed, it's the character of "Vail" being referenced, and how Vail is a "veil" for who Nick really is; but then, there are also all those "veils" floating in the air when Ahmanet goes through the Set ceremony and gives herself over to the god of death. When we first meet Nick and the last time we see Nick, he wears a "veil" over his face, because he hasn't yet revealed to us who he really is: when we do meet Nick, he says, "We are liberators of antiquities," he echoes the remake of Point Break when Bodhi tells Utah, we aren't stealing the money, we are liberating the money. As a pseudo-socialist figure (another phrase of "opportunistic parasite") Nick looks out only for himself, as socialists tend to do because they have no self-respect (they will sleep with anyone, take anything, don't feel like they have to work for anything) and therefore, they have no respect for anyone else. So, what happens to Nick at the end? Vail has been resurrected,.. yes, this is a bad thing, in other words, everything Nick would have learned through Vail has basically been undone because death is the great purgation in art (part of a character dying means that part of them won't be able to come back and control them anymore); we can hope that Vail himself has been rehabilitated so the part of Nick symbolized by Vail has been converted, but we won't know until a future adventure. When Jenny, Nick and Vail are in Ahmanet's tomb, it's Vail who actually steals a necklace off the high priest of Ra (a man who sacrificed himself to stay at Ahmanet's tomb to insure she was never released from it). This is the reason why Vail is bit by the camel spider on his neck: instead of becoming a high priest [being celibate like the Crusader warriors we see at the start of the film] Vail/Nick is a thief because the neck symbolizes that which leads us in life, and Vail is led by his ability to make money off artifacts in an easy fashion (not working for it); since Vail is only a manifestation of certain of Nick's qualities, we can say that same (Jenny sees Nick about to steal something but warns Nick against taking it, so he doesn't, but Vail all ready has, so Vail is the one who is cursed). The bite on Vail's neck, of course, leads to his death, but it's the spiritual death that's important because Vail/Nick has chosen a worldly life rather than to live a life of the spirit of God. Ahmanet has two pupils appearing in her eyes because she is possessed, but Vail's eyes--as he dies on the plane--roll back into his head and there is no pupil at all, because there is no soul any longer, he's lost his soul to sin. Another validation that Vail is a manifestation of Nick is that, on the plane, we see Vail slap his face, as if he's going numb; where else do we see someone being slapped in the face? When Jenny first appears and she slaps Nick on the face, so this action, again, binds Vail and Nick as being the same character. At the end, when Nick has gone back to Egypt, he takes a hand-full of sand and lets it slowly pass through his fingers; why? The sand best illustrates what Nick has become: sand, barren, dead, worthless. Nothing grows in sand, and it really can't be used for anything purposeful. This state of existence is probably the real cause of the sandstorm following Nick and Vail as they ride off at the end, Nick is a swirl of dangerous emotions, but it's also fitting, because he had no real nobility or admirable ambitions in life, so anything good which would have been given to Nick would have been wasted.
Why does Nick not show his face at the end? He's been exposed. We would see, if he did drop the mask, the signature of Satan on Nick's face, which is why he keeps it covered up.
Nick Morton is a fairly amoral type of guy, that is, he is willing to serve himself when and how he can, and this isn't the typical role we see Tom Cruise in; if you were watching The Mummy, and felt there were references to other Tom Cruise films, you were probably right to embrace that reference because drawing attention to the usual cast of heroes Cruise portrays highlights the "lacking" of Nick and his character. For example, when Jenny accuses Nick of having "mimicked" the motions of human intimacy for fifteen seconds, that referenced Cruise's character Cage in the 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow when the invading enemy aliens (who symbolized socialism) are called "mimics." or when Nick has an extended underwater swim sequence attempting to save Jenny from drowning, you might have remembered how Ethan Hunt nearly drowned in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Ilsa had to save him. Again, these other film references serve two purposes: first, to highlight the typical hero Tom Cruise usually plays, and how Nick Morton isn't heroic, at least by Tom Cruise standards, and, secondly, that The Mummy is self-aware, it knows it's a film, and it exists within the context of other films that you, the audience member have seen; therefore, it wants to incorporate those films, meaning that The Mummy does not exist in a vacuum where it's the only film to have ever been made (not to mention the context of the other The Mummy films, and other Universal horror films, and the upcoming Dark Universe films).
On a different note, how is it that Nick can be both a pro-socialist figure (we aren't going to steal the antiques, "We're going to liberate them,") and Set and a white, heterosexual male who has been under attack for a decade? How do we reconcile all these different roles Nick Morton plays in the film (or any character in any work of art, for that matter)? That's the importance of "conversion," and how a character can earn enough conversion "energy" to get them ahead of the narrative events, even if they haven't been completely healed of all their wrong-doings by the end. The fast-paced and changing events/situations in the story line mean we have to pay very close attention to every single detail or we are bound to lose something and not be able to make sense of everything.
The entire film is a moral interpretation of what happened to Nick and Jenny in Jenny's Baghdad hotel room: from Nick telling Vale, we're going to slip in and then slip right out, just like we always do, to the curse of Ahmanet, to Nick reviving Jenny from death, all the activity of the film revolves around that one night, their "15 seconds of intimacy" they shared and the eternal consequences of it. The first strategy we must establish is the psychoanalytic double, and how--just like Henry Jeckyll having a double in Edward Hyde--so, too does Nick have a double in Vale and Jenny have a double in Ahmanet herself. Let's make sure we understand their names, first. Whenever someone says, for example, "Dr Jeckyll," the psychoanalytic double of Mr. Hyde is automatically implied; "Morton," Nick's last name, means "death," just like Set, the god of death; his first name, "Nick," is meant to invoke St. Nicholas; while most associate St.Nicholas with Christmas--and that is fitting--St. Nicholas is also the patron of unmarried women, and that is the way Nick Morton is supposed to act, but doesn't (please see From St. Nicholas to Santa Claus for more on St. Nicholas being the patron of unmarried men and women). What about Jenny? "Jenny," as you know, is short for "Jennifer," as we hear Jeckyll call her when she calls him about Nick's behavior, but "Jennifer" is a form of Guinevere (whose adultery with Lancelot brought down Camelot), which means "White Enchantress," or the way Ahmanet first appears to Nick when her sarcophagus slowly raises out of the pool of mercury, and Nick "sees" Ahmanet wearing the white, billowing robes in the distance. Ahmanet refers to the goddess with the similar name that means "hidden one," because Jenny's sexuality should have remained hidden from Nick (just as when, in the morgue, Nick is "exposed" when Jenny and the doctors walk in, Jenny exposed herself to Nick even though she should not have).
This is probably the most important part of the film. In the bottom image, we see an image of Cabiria from the the 1957 Fellini drama, Nights of Cabiria. At the start of the film, Cabiria, who is a prostitute, has been with her boyfriend by the river; he robs her, taking her purse, full of money, and pushes her into the water; she can't swim and is about to drown, headed for the sewers, and some of the local boys see her and rescue her. This is basically what happens to Jenny with Nick, even before we ever see Jenny on the screen. Like Cabiria drowning and headed for the sewer, we also see Jenny drown (middle image) and just as Cabiria latter realizes that her life of prostitution is a prison, so, too, does Jenny realize that her promiscuity is a prison and not an expression of her "liberated female" sexuality at all (when Jenny says, "It's not a tomb, it's a prison," is her realizing what she has done to her own life by being so addicted to sex, that she would have sex with a guy like Nick, just to have sex, even though he's not a good guy and he is causing her all these problems). But Cabiria and Jenny share an even more important trait: they are both concerned far more with the material goods taken from them (Cabiria with her purse and money, Jenny with her map) than with the dignity and proper self-love which the men have robbed them of (although both women were willing participants). Both Jenny and Ahmanet are women of the desert, which is anti-woman because it's from women that life comes, but life does not come from the desert, but this is where we see both women, the desert (because they use their sexuality for power rather than to give life and have children, rather like the Amazonians in Wonder Woman, where there was an island full of women, and only one child). Further, we see Jenny making a deal with Jeckyll the way Ahmanet makes the deal with Set; what Jenny finds at Haram will give her power in archaeology the way the knife of Set will give Ahmnet political power (we discuss Jenny and Ahmanet further below).
Why does Ahmanet have to kill Jenny? Jenny dies by drowning, and when the initial trailers came out, I erroneously thought Ahmanet's sarcophagus was buried in water--the opposite of the desert sand--but I was wrong, it was buried in mercury (an easy mistake to make). Water, we know, symbolizes the first stages of reflection: you are looking into yourself or a situation, and you cannot see beneath the surface, you are still having to discern what is taking place. Even this simple stage of reflection is sufficient to kill Jenny as she realizes what it is she has done: she is Ahmanet, and that's why Ahmanet is behind Jenny in the water just before dragging her beneath the surface, they are "in-line" with each other as characters. Water is supposed to give life, not take it, just as sexual intercourse is meant to give life (pregnancy and birth) not take it (spiritual death because of sexual addiction). The knowledge that Jenny is killing herself (Ahmanet dragging Jenny down into the water) is the taking-over and possession of Jenny by Ahmanet, the way we will see Set take over Nick even though Set is all ready a part of Nick. Additionally, water is the sacrament of Baptism, but Jenny hasn't been baptized, instead, water symbolizes the opposite of "cleansing" (the committing of sexual sin because of the bodily fluids exchanged during sex) and instead symbolizes the addiction to sex that Jenny has, Ahmanet dragging her down into the depths of spiritual death caused by adultery (where the corpses of virginal Crusader knights wait to drown Nick the same way, because the Light they lived their lives by has been put out with the rule of Ahmanet, so they can no longer serve that Light, they now serve Ahmanet). We will continue discussion on this in the image of Ahmanet's tomb, below.
Importantly, if you look closely at the image of Jenny at the top, she has a gold band on her earlobe which she wears throughout the film; the very last shot of Ahmanet's fetal-position corpse, when her sarcophagus is being filled with mercury, shows that Ahmanet now wears the gold-band earring on her right ear; why? Ears symbolize our ability to hear the truths, not just to hear, but to understand with wisdom what is being said and explained to us.
A "psychoanalytic double" means a character is split into one or more other characters to reflect the actions, motivations, emotions or ideas the main character has, but must be cleansed of because it's socially, spiritually, economically or otherwise unacceptable to behave in such a way. In other words, we can often see the character functioning as the main character's double as also being a kind of "scapegoat" who takes the burden of the main character's sins upon itself and dies with those sins (in a sacrificial way) so the main character can be freed of those sins and experience conversion, thereby being readmitted into normal society once more. Besides the character of Jeckyll/Hyde, and Set/Satan/devil, there is also an important exchange regarding language between Nick and Jenny: just after Nick has been swarmed by the rats, and Nick tries explaining that he needs to find the box, and Jenny interrupts to call it a sarcophagus, and Nick says the writing, and Jenny says the hieroglyphs, both of them are right in their descriptive words (this is an example of deconstruction and the instability of language, but that is for another day) but it reveals the duplicity in words, a duplicity that is echoed throughout the film on numerous levels, including that of the characters' identities.
So, how do we know that Vail is Nick's double?
The discovery of Ahmanet's tomb is full of sexual references. For example, Nick prompts Jenny to thank him for discovering the tomb, and Jenny retorts that she's grateful the "hell fire missile" didn't destroy it (the missile dropped by the airstrike to save Nick and Vail from insurgent gun fire). The missile is an obvious phallic symbol, and the hole which is opened up (top image) is the corresponding vaginal symbol, with Vail's and Nick's bodies sliding towards and into the hole even acting as the sperm. When they go down into the hole by rope (second image down), the rope acts as an umbilical cord to signify the womb which the chamber is (please recall the intense fetal position in which Ahmanet dies at the end of the film, as a sign that she returns to the grave and is "reborn" from the evil to which she had pledged herself). The mercury dripping onto Nick and Vail as they stand in the cave is like the vaginal fluid; the protective chain surrounding the pool of mercury is like a chastity belt of old, and Nick shooting it with his gun acts as, again, another sexual act (the bullet replicating the exit of the semen from the penis) and then the rising of the sarcophagus out of the mercury (bottom image) is a sign of the orgasm (the fifteen seconds of intimacy Jenny tells Greenway that Nick gave her), her climax with the light of day falling onto the sarcophagus, i.e., the "light of knowledge" about sex (this is general, Ahmanet had a lover, the one she was going to kill when she was in Egypt, but this is the replaying of the sexual act in general and what happens to both the man and woman regardless of how many times they have had sex, because it's "knowing someone in a biblical sense" which is symbolized by light ).
Why does Ahmanet's tomb look the way it does? That is not a typical Egyptian sarcophagus, though there are typical traits, such as the stylized hair. What about the lines coming out from the head? It makes her look more of a serpent, like the serpent from the Garden of Eden; given that Jeckyll confirms Nick's hypothesis that Set is Lucifer, the devil, Satan,... Set is also the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and the headdress of the sarcophagus brings out that reptilian quality possessing her soul. This is why she was taken to Iran, Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," because this is where the "sickness" began, where the original Eden was that first tempted Eve, so it's going to be easier to confine the sickness to the origin rather than allowing it to spread to Egypt. For a discussion on the role of mercury in the burial, please see the caption below.
Later, Jeckyll tells Jenny that Nick basically killed himself when he severed the burial cord (with his gun in the third image down); why does Jeckyll say this? Obviously, Ahmanet would not have been risen, and they could have all just walked away, or at least, someone else would have been "Her Chosen" and Nick would have walked away. The point is, towards the end, when Nick steals the Knife of Set from Ahmanet's hand, and he tells her (his eye swollen almost shut from her beating him) "It's just never going to work out between us. And it's you, not me," that's what Nick should have done with Jenny: told her no. But he didn't, he let Jenny take him back to her hotel room and let her seduce him, so Nick crossed the boundary between being a man that Jenny had met. to being a man who knew her intimately, and had Nick not done that, none of the events would have happened, and when Nick tells Ahmanet, "It's not going to work between us," he's confessing that he's learned his lesson, the hard way; now, however, there is no letting go of Jenny, he has to protect and save her, because he enjoyed having sex with her as if he were her husband, now he has to fulfill the role of husband to her and protect her because he has all ready illicitly enjoyed the fruits of marriage (we will discuss this more in the scene at Waverly Abbey).
One last note: we see Vail steal the necklace of the High Priest of Ra, and we also see Nick nearly steal a ring, but Jenny glares at him and says, "Don't even think about it,..." Why? A ring is almost always going to be a sign of a covenant, that someone has made an agreement with the Divine (which may or may not include another person, such as in a marriage covenant). Nick focusing on the ring, and trying to take it, suggests that--at this point--he's possibly thinking of marrying Jenny, and she tells him, "Don't even think about it." She doesn't want to be married (remember, Vail [who is a double for Nick] really likes Jenny and wants to make a relationship happen with her and is upset with Nick for blowing it as he tells Nick in the women's bathroom at the pub). So this is Jenny willing to sacrifice Nick--because she is unwilling to have Nick as a husband, even though she is content to have Nick "play the husband" with her in bed and she admits later that she does care about him--because Ahmanet is sacrificing her lover (the guy she beat with the stick when we first saw her) just as Jenny is willing to sacrifice Nick to not be a husband.
Now, if you think I am reading too much into Nick nearly taking the ring, I understand, I really do; I knew it was significant when I saw the scene, but then I kind of forgot about it because there was so much more going on. This is an important fact about art: art does not imitate reality. It's a theory, it's a commentary, but it's never realistic, because it can't be, so if you're thinking, there is no way that Nick would all ready be thinking about marrying Jenny after just a one night stand, and she's all ready determined that she's not going to marry him, I understand where you are coming from, however, you are not seeing the film nor cinema's "work" through the proper lens: it's not meant to be accurate, it's meant to provide information to us about what the film makers want to communicate to the audience regarding various topics. So why encode the story? Why have all these symbols? Because we are more apt to listen to what they have to say if we are not being given a sermon, rather, a parable, and they are illustrating why they are saying what they are saying, rather than just moralizing on how they think things should be.
We don't identify Vail as Nick's double right away (Vail is a whiner and something of a coward, he's not a likable character), not, until, we see him on the airplane. After Vail has "died" from the spider bite on his neck, we see him standing at the sarcophagus of Ahmanet, stabbing it with a knife; why? Note how and where Vail holds the knife: about his waist where his penis would be, and the "jabbing" motions he makes with the knife echoes the sexual act with the sarcophagus. Because Jenny and Nick had just been discussing their "15 seconds of intimacy" in the same scene, we can interpret Vail's gestures to echo those of Nick a few nights before with Jenny in her hotel room. Now that we have Vail as Nick's double (because Vail duplicated the same acts which Nick had done), we can go back and interpret their raid on the village with Vail as Nick's double.
The tomb-as-prison is filled with mercury, and mercury is one of the rarest minerals on earth, so it was a rather elaborate expenditure by the ancient Egyptians to use so much mercury in Ahmanet's tomb, which demonstrates how terrified they were of her. Further, since this is the first time we have seen something like this--I don't recall ever seeing a pool of mercury used in any film heretofore--it demonstrates the necessity of expanding the visual and philosophical vocabulary of cinema because, indeed, if we are in a "new world of gods and monsters," we need new ways to defeat them, which is what The Mummy film makers are providing us with.
Why is there a pool of mercury? Originally, I thought this was a pool of water, which would have symbolized (had that been the case) that Ahmanet was condemned to eternity to "reflect" on the deep nature of her sins (because deep water, like the deep water in which Ahmanet will later drown Jenny is a symbol of deep, interior reflection within the soul, a thorough cleansing and rebirth through reflection, self-knowledge); however, it's not water, it's a pool of mercury, which is just one of the many genius--and I do mean genius--devices the film makers employ to illustrate for us the nature of Jenny/Ahmanet. Mercury, because of its color (silver) and its liquid properties, is often called "quicksilver," and was actually used in tombs for royalty in Egypt and elsewhere, but it has also historically been used as a mirror, for reflecting. This elevates the symbol from being just a pool for reflection, to something far more specific and direct in its commentary. Not only do we have a pool, and a mirror (the quicksilver), but we have the nature of silver, too. I go into the qualities of the silver in much greater detail below in the caption for Monster Squad parallels The Mummy makes, but for the moment, think of this: in Hebrew, the word for "silver," sounds like the word for "word," and that's why a Crucifix always has a silver body of Christ, because He was the Word (silver) of God made flesh. What are one of the observations Jenny makes about Ahmanet's tomb? "Absolutely no provisions for the afterlife have been made," and we later see Jenny, herself dead, in a wasteland, because Jenny made no provisions for herself for her own afterlife; in this scene, however, the pool of mercury is meant to be a means of forcing Jenny's dark sexual nature to reflect upon the Word of God and what happens to us when we don't: we don't have provisions for the afterlife, for our death, we haven't virtues built up so our virtues will stand in our favor, we have only the death of our sins. The statues of Set we see in the image, the keepers who are facing inwards rather than outwards, are literally satanic reminders of what will happen to Jenny if she fails to reflect on the Word made Flesh who died for her sins: she will face eternal death. This, however, was the choice Jenny made in spending the night with Nick.
Why, when at the end, Nick-as-Set, sees Jenny in a state of death (after she has drowned), she's in water, and there is sand, like a sandy riverbank? Because even though there is water, which gives life, Jenny abused that life (her sin of adultery) and so now she suffers eternal death (she will not awaken because no provisions have been made for her afterlife, just like Ahmanet's tomb-as-prison) so even though there is no "lake of fire" or damned souls around her, the film makers have communicated sufficiently that Jenny is in a state of perpetual death because she doesn't get to wake up and enjoy the afterlife like people who avoided sin do.
So, going back to the moment when Nick looks at Haram through the binoculars, he tells Vail, "Just like we always do, we go in and then we get out," and that's a reference to how Nick approaches women, he gets into bed with them, and then he gets out of bed; Vail doesn't want to go, because Vail knows it can be dangerous, and so, to make sure we know this is a sexual reference, Nick takes a sword and punches Vail's water bag open: the sword being a phallic symbol and the water bag, again, a reference to vaginal fluids. What about the terrorists who shoot down the monuments and then shoot at Nick and Vail when they've entered the village?
Feminists.
The plane this takes place upon is important: it's a Hercules C130 (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is): why is this important? One, because of "Hercules," for example, in Murder On the Orient Express, our hero is named Hercule Poirot after Hercules; there have also been at least two Hercules films lately (one with Dwayne Johnson, the other with Kellan Lutz) and there was a character named Hercules in Pacific Rim; then, in Olympus Has Fallen with Gerard Butler, it was on a Hercules C130 that the socialist terrorists flew in to terrorize Washington DC; why? The C-130 Hercules is one of the longest serving air crafts in American history, and it was absolutely instrumental in the wars against socialism, including the Vietnam War and throughout the Cold War, and today, so it's a symbol of American military power, might, strength and innovation. This aircraft is a symbol of American masculinity (not necessarily a phallic symbol, but the plane pulling out of the blurry and chaotic sand storm can certainly be read as sexual). In the top image, what do we see? The ancient, the feminine and the un-developed. Progressives, liberals, socialists and communists all want to do away with technology; why? Technology requires the free market to be innovative, it drives new and better designs and demand pushes down costs, while increasing investment opportunities. In other words, the free market (capitalism) and technology go hand-in-hand, and in order to brainwash people into believing that socialism is good, they have to digress to a state without technology: we see this in films such as Jack the Giantslayer, The Lone Ranger and Gravity, Wonder Woman (among many others). Just as Ahmanet's power brings down the plane and destroys it, so socialists want to do the same to the American economy and the global network (it's easier to control populations that are isolated and can't share information with each other).
his is a great scene, even without the zero gravity stunt thrown in! We just saw in Wonder Woman how Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) pierces through the protective barrier of Diana's island when his ship crashes and she has to save him. In that situation, Wonder Woman film makers are claiming that the failure of men (Steve losing control of his plane) had invaded the feminist world (Diana's island) and feminists would not have gotten involved in the American civil war of the Obama administration (and still going, this is represented by World War I in Wonder Woman) had it not been for mankind's desperate need of a savior (Diana). In this scene for The Mummy, (when the airplane begins to crash and we see the zero gravity stunt) we are seeing the exact opposite of that scenario from Wonder Woman: in The Mummy, the plane is the "ship of state," and the windshield you see in the image above is equivalent to the protective barrier surrounding Diana's island (we saw similar barriers in both Oz the Great and Powerful from several years ago, as well as Thor: the Dark World when the Dark Elves pierced the protective barrier of Asgard). In the image above, the windshield doubles as the "protective barrier" for the ship of state; why? Being made of glass, the windshield symbolizes the ability to reflect, to understand and meditate about an event or situation. Because this is the front windshield, and not the rear windshield (which would symbolize reflecting on the past), this instance allows us to understand the importance of reflecting on the future; and what's there to see? Blood. There is not only a massive crack in the windshield ("destruction" of the self, in this case, the "self" is the government,and the government's inability to reflect upon what it's doing) but the blood we see is smeared across the windshield (making it difficult to "reflect" about the coming menace of the other birds); what does the blood symbolize? In this case, civil war. How can we determine that? The birds and the plane are "similar," in that a plane is designed like a bird, with a body and wings, and meant to fly like a bird, so they are similar even while they are dis-similar. The flock of crows attacking the plane are the same ones we saw hanging dead and upside-down in the ceremony room where Ahmanet sold her soul to Set, so these birds are the "birds of death." On the other hand, the airplane is technological, it's transportation, it helps people and has become a necessity of the modern world. This is what the civil war in America is about: the agents of death (the Left) and the agents of technology and advancement (conservatives). It's my understanding that this plane is actually Nick's (he's a soldier and this plane is his squad's) so the plane being attacked by these birds of death is actually Nick (the proxy of white, heterosexual men) being attacked, just as he is attacked by rats later in the film. The crows bringing down the plane reveals the Left's attempt to bring down the economy and the government protecting it, and to destroy all those within it (remember, the "binding spells" against Donald Trump aren't just directed at him, but against all of us who support him). The zero gravity which turns the plane, literally, upside-down, reflects how the Left has turned this country upside-down: from gender identification (I'm neither male or female, is now an acceptable legal statement, and if gender isn't stable, then what is?) to the law of the land and people being held accountable for the crimes they have committed. Being "upside-down" is important in the film because when Nick is being over-run by the rats, and Ahmanet comes to begin her possession of him, Nick sees her as being "upside-down," meaning, her very rule is upside-down (who murders their family for power? Oh, yea, Vortigern in King Arthur: Legend Of the Sword). The same kind of chaos and darkness we saw Arthur fighting against with Vortigern is set to be the enemy of Ahmanet's reign. Now, if you don't believe me, there are two imperative details in this scene which support what I'm saying: the first is the tattoo Vail has on his arm that we see the moment his eyes roll back into his head: on his left arm (yes, the left) he has "10/17" on his bicep; why? The American Presidential election was taking place, and the month of October saw some surprises, which everyone was expecting. Then, as the black birds appear and are ready to crash the plane, the pilot puts out a distress call and he says, "November fourth!" and, November 4, was, of course, the day of the election. In other words, the birds attacking the plane to take out the "ship of state" is what conservatives expected to happen November 4 but, God be praised! It didn't.
In the middle image of Jenny, this is a great shot of her (if you click on the image you can enlarge it for better viewing): she wears glasses (the only time in the film we see her wearing glasses), headphones (again, the only time) and some rings on her fingers. The glasses imply that she has "focused her vision," and (possibly) she's even in a state of spiritual insight. The headphones show she's listening intently; why is this important? It shows that Jenny has the ability to study the Word of God, and to hear the Word of God, she chooses not to spend her time doing it, rather, in studying the "old gods," as she tells Ahmanet later, even though she knows the "old gods" can't do anything to save her and help her prepare for her afterlife. What about the rings? She has rings on each of her fingers,... except her ring finger. No ring there, because she's not married, and she wouldn't let Nick take the ring in Ahmanet's tomb to propose to her. So this scene validates that Jenny has not spent her time wisely.
Why does Nick shoot Vail three times? "The third time was unnecessary," Nick admits in the pub ladies' room, when Vail reminds Nick of what he did. The third time, however, reminds us of the Holy Trinity, in other words, Nick was genuinely afraid of Vail and what was happening, so he invoked the Holy Trinity by shooting Vail three times, meaning that, the third shot was absolutely necessary. It would not have accomplished Vail's death to have only two shots, because Vail acted like he might still have some life left in him, so it was only three shots that insured the "evil" Vail had become was put down.
"They're trying to erase 5,000 years of history!" Nick tells Vail, watching the insurgents shooting down ancient statues. We'll talk about "erasure" in a moment with the body of Ahmanet, but for the moment, we should remember that Nick and Vail are doing reconnaissance on terrorists who are ransacking the country and taking people hostages. That's what feminists have been doing for decades: feminists claim men have been silencing the voices of women for centuries and use that claim as justification to now do the same to men; the truth is, there just aren't any women who accomplished anything in that time. The few women who did weren't that great, so their work didn't warrant to be saved and applauded just because a woman did it, nor was it silenced because they were women; people didn't bother with it because it was mediocre.
This might seem like an odd place to discuss the Knife of Set, but I think you will see the connection in just a moment (if you want to see it again, just look at the next images, there is a picture of Set handing it to Ahmanet). The Knife of Set looks like the backbone, the spinal column of vertebrae, why? The person who would seek out Set's help in such a manner does not have enough "backbone" to carry their own burdens. Ahamnet, for example, doesn't have the backbone to bear the burden of not becoming Queen of Egypt, and since she obviously couldn't handle such a disappointment, she proves she doesn't deserve to be queen. The back symbolizes the burdens in life we have to carry and are willing to carry, and when the sarcophagus of Ahmanet is lifted out of the tomb-as-prison, we see the backside of that sarcophagus having stitches where the back is, as if the spine had been removed and sown back up; it has. Ahmanet refuses to carry the burden of not being Queen of Egypt because she's "entitled" to be queen, and so she refuses to accept reality, which is exactly what Liberals today are doing and why it's appropriate to discuss the Knife of Set here with the rats.
In the top image, we see Ahmanet walking on all fours like an animal; to even get to this point, she had to suck the life out of the emergency responders, i.e., she had to take the breath of life that belonged to someone else, and appropriate it for her own use. We have seen this device used to communicate socialism to us before in Warcraft with the Fel magic (which symbolized socialism). In order to give life to things that couldn't support themselves, the evil orc overlord would take life from something else and put it into something else, always managing to benefit himself in the process. Why is it that Ahmanet took the life of the emergency workers? They are government employees, so they are ones all ready in a kind of socialist working environment and most susceptible to becoming full-fledged socialists and feminists (even though they were all men, just like Tony Stark {Robert Downey Jr] as Iron Man in Marvel films). Ahmanet, then, gains life for herself, but she's still no more than a crawling animal, because that's what socialism does to people, it robs you of your individuality (like when we see Ahmanet with double-pupils) and it turns you into an animal; how? Socialism denies that you have a soul, so if you aren't created in God's image, you are an animal, like a rat. The rats we see overwhelming Nick are Liberals attacking and overwhelming white, heterosexual males to turn them into rats like themselves. It's important that Nick tries to get back into the pub, but the door is locked; why? White men have been "locked out" of the public sphere and are being pushed to the margins (the alleyways) so they can't contribute anymore to what is happening or defend themselves. Nick tries to get through the gate, but it's locked too; the rats can get in though, why? Because the Constitution (the locked gate) that once protected all citizens has been taken advantage of by minority groups to slowly but surely suppress and enslave the white majority.
So, who are the rats? Liberals.
You had to know that was coming!.... Not only do they mimic the behavior of Liberals in their "swarming" and identity-less mob mentality, in their destruction, but also in how they don't contribute to society except by being a burden. Remember, when they were making this film, they believed that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next US President, at least that's what we were all told, so Ahmanet is very much an image of Hillary and her followers. But remember, this is also what socialism and communism wants to turn people into: rats, because socialists don't believe in God and the soul, so we have no dignity to them, we're literally animals, and especially Christians and Conservatives, the favorite groups of Liberals to hate.
When we see the great work of a woman like Madame Curie, for example, no one tried to silence her, because she did great, valuable and important work benefiting everyone. The inherent mediocrity in the work--and the work of countless men as well over the centuries--has been the cause of authors being silenced, not their vaginas. Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and others, have successfully managed to EARN their own places in the literary canon because of the quality of their work, not because feminists lobbied on their behalf.
This brings us to Ahmanet.
When Ahmanet performs the Set ceremony, she reads the "forbidden text," then she slashes her wrist and lets the blood drop into the white liquid (top image); why? These gestures demonstrate what it is Ahmanet is actually doing. The forbidden text is that which is "outside the canon," it's that which has not been approved because what lies within the forbidden text will bring ruin and destruction to all because it catapults one over the good of the many (Ahmanet puts herself before the rest of Egypt). When she's completed the bargain with Set, so powerful is this forbidden text, that it becomes a part of her very identity, being written on her body and face. What text is it that is written on her face and body? Marxism. I know, I know, it's easy for me to insert my own prejudice against socialism into an "undefined" text in the film, but consider this: how many feminists do you know who are NOT socialists/communists? Marxism is a text that seeks to alleviate suffering by alleviating individuality. "Feminists" are a group, they aren't individuals, and that "collective identity" which they have taken for themselves is about stealing identity from others to enrich themselves, like Nick and Vail stealing antiquities to sell on the black market. In other words, the "forbidden text" written upon Ahmanet's body and face is "forbidden" because it destroys inviduality, it destroys the human being--which is why we see her eyes with a double-pupil, her soul has been possessed and is no longer her own, because she now has nothing of her own, and that's being powerless, not powerful. Women like Ahmanet do not have a proper self-love of themselves, they do not see that they are worthy of love in-and-of-themselves, they feel that they have to be "worthy" of love, either because they are feminists who live out this ideal other feminists aspire to be, or because they have managed to achieve something; the problem is, they want to achieve what someone else has achieved, they aren't satisfied with their own achievements, or they aren't willing to put in the work to be as successful as what they want; this is when the competition is removed so there is no competition; like Rachel Maddow becoming #1 in cable news ratings after Bill O'Reilly and other successful male news anchors ahead of her were removed so she would become the top news anchor: she didn't become number one, it was given to her by the liberal Murdoch brothers running Fox News. That's how socialism works, and that's exactly what we see Ahmanet doing, removing her competition instead of proving that she was the one most worthy to lead Egypt, and she didn't do that because she couldn't: she wanted to be a ruler and get her way, she didn't want to be a real queen who sacrifices and loves her people.
The image at the top, the blood dropping into the thick, white substance, is the binding element of the pact with Set; why? It is Ahmanet's promise that she will not bring forth life into the world, but will, instead, bring forth death; in this way, Ahmanet becomes the anti-woman, a feminist, and this is the key to understanding how Jenny shares in Ahmanet's murder of her family. When Nick accuses Ahmanet of having murdered her family, she replies, "Those were different times. All I ever wanted was my father's love," but we have to ask, is that true? No, it's not, she saw her father as a means of gaining power through the throne, and she put her values and priorities on power, not love and family, and that is exactly what Jenny did. Just as Pharaoh gave the throne to Ahmanet, but the brother took it away, so Jeckyll gave Jenny the coordinates to Haram, and the Jenny (an archaeologist) was robbed of discovering Haram by her "brother" in antiquities Nick (who searched for antiquities, as an archaeologist does, but for profit). Being the one who discovered and proved that there was, indeed, an Egyptian princess deliberately erased from the history books would have greatly elevated Jenny over her male peers in archaeology, which is what she wanted, her life's work (finding this tomb), which Nick stole from her just as the baby boy stole the throne of Egypt from Ahmanet. Jenny, then, has dedicated her life to death--archaeology is the study of dead civilizations and dead people, not the living--just as Ahmanet dedicated her life to death and Set; Jenny, in pursuing her career in archaeology, did not marry, nor did she have children, just as Ahmanet promised she would not have children in offering her blood and milk to Set, a symbol of her feminine fertility. Jenny, then, murdered her family that she would have had, in favor of her career, just as Ahmanet murdered her family in favor of the throne; so these aren't different times than ancient Egypt. It's an important allusion, as well, to Ahmanet killing the baby bay: we see the blood splatter onto her mouth, stating that she has a "taste for blood" and bloodshed, but this also insinuates that, at some point in her life, Jenny likely became pregnant and had an abortion, murdering her baby. One doesn't have to read it this way, however, there is the definite parallel that, instead of giving birth to a child, Jenny gave birth to a monster, the discovery of Ahmanet's tomb and her selfish drive to have the sarcophagus excavated from the tomb/prison (this is also supported by the scene on the plane when Jenny reaches for her stuff and her shirt lifts to expose her stomach and Nick sees how flat it is, i.e., that she has not had a child).There is also the murder of Ahmanet's step-mother, the queen: Jenny murdered that part of herself that would have become a wife and a mother, choosing instead to have illicit sexual relations to satisfy her animal appetites, and being a "career woman" instead of mother and wife.
The reason she is naked when she does the ceremony is so she is vulnerable; the reason she's naked after the ceremony (like when she slits her father's throat and kills the rest of her family) is because then she has been "exposed" as having entered into an illicit relationship with evil itself. Back to the ceremony, the reason Ahmanet slashes her wrist with the knife is two-fold: first, anyone wanting to kill themselves by bleeding out will slash their wrists because that's where the veins are, so there is a lot of blood there, and that blood symbolizes that, even though Ahmanet thinks she is gaining life through the power she will get from Set, she's actually killing herself; secondly, it's a ritualistic sex act as well (I told you the film was all about sex). The knife is, of course, the phallic symbol, and the punctured vein is the hymen, with the blood spewing forth as the broken hymen, the sign of virginity. It's a consummation with death. Espousing herself to death, Ahmanet allows the blood to drop into the bowl with the white liquid (pictured at the top); again, Ahmanet gives birth to the dead: Ahmanet does become a mother, a mother of death, she gives "birth" to the dead police officers, and her other "soldiers" of death whom she raises, and the black birds that escort her are the birds of death, rather than the Holy Spirit of Life (which is symbolized by a white dove).
Is Ahmanet a feminist because she wants power? Actually, no. Is she a feminist because she tries to take power? Not quite. She is a feminist because she's blaming someone else for her problems and not taking responsibility for herself; she's a feminist because she feels entitled to something: her "birthright" to be queen wasn't something she earned; it was given to her, and when something is given to us (like a socialist government giving us food and necessary supplies) then it can also be taken. The baby brother born didn't take her birthright away from her, the ancient laws of Egyptian government structured the line of inheritance to prevent chaos and destruction of Egyptian society. What does Edward Hyde tell Nick? He has a taste for chaos and destruction, just as feminists attempting to behead the traditional governments of the world in their own favor. What would have happened if Ahmanet did become queen of Egypt? The same thing that would have happened if Hillary Clinton had become President of the United States Of America: death, destruction, chaos. Now, we are in a position to understand Jenny Halsey's character.
Dr. Henry Jeckyll establishes the pattern of the film: duplicity. We all know, watching the film, that Jeckyll is also the nefarious Mr. Hyde who "hides" within Jeckyll's respectability, waiting to unleash chaos and destruction that "Jeck-kill" wants to unleash, but can't because he's a doctor. Jeckyll tells Nick the story of how a "physician" Jeckyll new developed a sickness, etc., the point being, Jeckyll doesn't admit to Nick that he, himself, is the one with the evil pathogen, whose experiment went terribly wrong, rather, he creates an alter ego for himself with the story; why? So we, the audience, would know there are other "alter egos" in the film (Vail for Nick, and Ahmanet for Jenny, for example).
We can't help but notice the black-gloved hand of Jeckyll, where he gives himself injections. The first detail is that the glove he wears over that hand is black; black, as we know, always denotes death, but there is good death and bad death. "Good death" is when, like the Crusader knights, we die to things of this world so we can be alive in our spirit and to the promises of the afterlife (we make provisions for our afterlife, in other words, unlike Ahmanet-Jenny); "bad death" is when we are dead to things of the spirit and, instead, alive to the appetites of the flesh; as Hyde himself tells us, he loves chaos, destruction and the causing of pain, so Jeckyll's gloved-hand clearly symbolizes "bad death" with which Jeckyll is infected, which is why he has to have an injection of the four serums, symbolizing the Four Cardinal Virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. What's the other important quality of Jeckyll's gloved hand? It's his left hand, as in, the Left. The four Cardinal Virtues have to be injected into the left hand (the Left) because it's death-drive kills all the virtues, and all that remains is the death and destruction of Edward Hyde. We see Hyde when Jeckyll wants to sacrifice Nick because Jeckyll doesn't believe that people are capable of making "a sacrifice for the greater good," because Jeckyll himself didn't sacrifice his illicit desires, rather, he gave into them, and now they control him if he doesn't make an artificial barrier (the injections) to keep them contained; Nick is able to give Hyde the injection in the chest, because this foreshadows the sacrifice Nick will make for Jenny that will convert Jeckyll's feelings towards Nick "from the heart" and for all humanity, that even a reprobate like Nick Morton, who has the very signature of Satan on his face, can be saved and save others. (We also see another man hiding his left hand in the trailer for The Shape Of Water in the character of Strickland portrayed by Michael Shannon; likewise, in Captain America: the Winter Soldier, it's the left arm of Bucky Barnes--a communist agent--that is corrupted). When Nick injects the medicine into Hyde, it's the same as when Nick stabs himself with the knife of Set, and just as Jeckyll and Hyde struggle for control over Jeckyll's body, so Nick and Set struggle for control over Nick.
There is an important gesture which both Hyde and Ahmanet make regarding Nick: they both examine his rib cage; why? It was from Adam's rib that Eve was created, and in both these "agents of evil," Ahmanet and Hyde, emphasizing the divine creation of a husband and wife, it not only points to the importance for Nick, and what Jenny gives him that he lacks in his own life--a reason to live, so he can protect her and give her life--but also for Jenny, that what is important isn't her "life's work" symbolized by the map and Knife of Set, rather, life itself. When we see Nick has stolen the Knife of Set from Ahmanet's hand and she calls him a "Thief," it's the same as when we first saw Jenny and she slapped Nick in front of Greenway and she accuses Nick of stealing the map; when Nick steals the Knife of Set, however, he's doing it to save Jenny, rather than to pad his wallet like when he steals the map. Nick tells Vail something interesting about the map Jeckyll provided for Jenny: whatever this is, this Henry guy obviously wants it pretty bad, so he's going to have to pay double for it now; in truth, it's Nick who has to pay double for the sin he committed with Jenny, because of all the times that he has to save her throughout the film, and then the price he has to pay to "wake her up" at the end when she has drowned.
On a last note here, Nick being called a "thief" is interesting because it reminds us of another thief: Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. What Bilbo steals, the Arkenstone, is not so different from the Knife Of Set which Nick steals because both are stealing from the devil (Smaug the dragon for Bilbo and Ahmanet the consort of evil for Nick) who stole the respective object to keep humanity from eternal life.
When Jenny enters the scene, what does she do? She slaps Nick's face and accuses him of stealing. The face, as we know, is the seat of our identity, and Jenny slapping Nick's face means she is "smearing" his reputation (when the hand [symbol of our honor] hits the face, it's not a punch, but it slides across the skin of the face, and the "smearing" of white men and their honor is exactly what has happened the last ten years). She accuses Nick of stealing from her just as feminists accuse men of having stolen from them for centuries by oppressing their voice, their experience, and "her-story" in favor of "his-story" which is why Jenny is an "archaeologist, she's a feminist type "re-writing" his-story" with "her-story" of Ahmanet being intentionally erased from the history books, just as feminists are participating in "wealth redistribution" of American culture, taking traditionally male symbols and replacing them with female symbols or erasing the male symbols all together. But the next detail is the real kicker: Jenny unabashedly confesses that she and Nick had sex together in her hotel room in Baghdad, and she isn't the least bit embarrassed by her lack of modesty, just as Ahmanet stripped for Set, the god of death to perform the ritual, so, too, did Jenny strip for Nick whose last name "Morton" means "death."
But, ladies and gentlemen, that's not all,....
This first scene, at the top, is interesting, because it's the first time we see Ahmanet, and what is she doing? Using a stick to beat a man who also has a stick. I know, my powers for observation are amazing, aren't they? Ha ha, but seriously, the stick acts as a "false phallus," it's a phallic symbol, and a false one for Ahmanet because she is not a man, she's a woman, but using her false phallus, she overcomes the man with a phallic symbol, i.e., a natural man (not a transgendered woman) who has a stick symbolizing his natural phallus, but he isn't able to overcome her. Why is this important? This man is Ahmanet's lover, and also her "Chosen," the man she is going to give to Set for a mortal body. This scene mirrors the scene later in the film when, after the ambulance crashes in the woods with Nick and Jenny, Ahamnet appears, and Nick picks up a wooden stick from the side of the hill, in an attempt to beat her up, just as the man in the image at the top does; Nick, of course, loses terribly. So how does this reflect Jenny-as-Ahmanet? Jenny was probably the more "aggressive" pursue-er in the initial meeting between her and Nick, i.e., she went after him and initiated the "mating ritual," knowing she wanted to have sex with him that night, and it didn't take much for her to persuade Nick that she was "easy."
In the second image down, we have the definite evidence for Jenny-As-Ahmanet: "Jennifer," as discussed above, means "White Enchantress," because it's a form of Guinevere (so in King Arthur: Legend Of the Sword, we don't have to hear that The Mage is named Guinevere, because "Guinevere" means "White Enchantress," as a member of The Mage bloodline, she is an enchantress, and because of her purity, she always appears being very pale, so this is a means of connecting both The Mummy and King Arthur, through the women). When Ahmanet's sarcophagus is raised from the pool of mercury and Nick immediately begins having "visions," he sees Ahmanet, in the desert sands, walking towards him in a billowing, white gown; why? She's the "White Enchantress," Jenny. Just as Ahmanet holds her hand out to Nick and calls him, "My chosen," so Jenny, in their initial meeting, "held her hand out to Nick," in initiating flirting and enchanting him because Jenny had 'chosen" Nick to have sex with her later that night; this is part of the reason why, at the pub after Nick has been drinking so much and he goes to the bathroom to talk to Vail, he goes "into the chick's room," because Nick became the passive participant in their "mating ritual," and so the gender roles were reversed: Jenny, exhibiting the masculine qualities and Nick exhibiting the feminine qualities. Just as the male in the top image is "dominated" by Ahmanet in the fight they have, he was also dominated by her in sex because she took the top position, which is always the position Ahmanet takes when she "mounts" Nick, the top position which is traditionally seen as being the more dominant position during intercourse. At the end, when Jenny has died and Nick tries to wake her, it's imperative that Nick is on top of Jenny, because Nick has "taken back" the dominant partner position for himself and put the world in "right order" with him as the male being in the dominant position (we will discuss this more below, but it's a theory we are seeing more and more in cinema).
Why do we see Ahmanet's fingertips and foot-tips blue? This is an absolutely incredible detail the film makers put in. Blue, as we know, is both the color of depression and, in its positive manifestations, the color of wisdom, because wisdom only comes from the sadness and trials of our lives. Under normal circumstances, when we see Ahmanet's eyes highlighted in the intense-blue make-up she wears (second image down), we could say that she "sees with the eyes of wisdom," because our eyes are the windows of the soul, so she would be a woman who welcomed wisdom into her soul and she sees the world through wisdom she has gained from her experiences in life; that, however, is not how Ahmanet behaves, because making a pact with the devil, murdering your father, his wife and your half-brother is not the behavior of someone who is wise, rather, a psychopath. What we have in Ahmanet is, instead, someone who has had difficult trials but has failed to learn the lessons those trials offered to teach her, so she thought she was taking the easy way out in amassing power for herself through her pact with Set, but instead, only buried herself in death. This is why her eyes, fingertips and feet are painted blue: she sees the world (her eyes) as being against her; she uses her honor (her fingertips as a part of her hand, but also another location of her identity because of her finger prints, like with Prodigium's identification security, and it accepting Jeckyll's identity but denying Hyde's identity) and her identity to alleviate her suffering rather than learn from it and be transformed into a better person who then is a worthy-ruler; her will (feet), therefore, is directed towards retribution and taking what she feels was denied to her. How can we tie this in with Jenny? When we first see Jenny, and she slaps Nick's face, she wears a blue scarf around her neck (the color of which matches her eyes) and what does Jenny say? She blames Nick for "stealing her life's work," just as Ahmanet blames the birth of her half-brother for robbing her of her "life's work" in preparing to become Queen of Egypt; in other words, both women blame males for what has happened to them, just as feminists blame men for what has happened to them throughout his-story. Just as Ahmanet kills her baby half-brother by slashing his throat, so Jenny tries to kill Nick by telling Nick's boss, Colonel Greenway, how Nick treated her so Nick will lost his job (the purpose of Ahmanet killing her half-brother was so the baby boy would "lose the job" of becoming Pharaoh in Ahmanet's place). Jenny's scarf matching her eye color reflects the blue make-up under Ahmanet's eyes, and Ahmanet having a will (her feet) tempered by her sadness and losses in life is the same as Jenny being led to find an "Egyptian princess intentionally erased from the history books" because Jenny-as-a-feminist feels she herself is that princess erased from history, but Jenny isn't a princess, she's a whore, a slut; Eliza, who is described as a "princess without voice" in the trailer for The Shape Of Water, IS A PRINCESS because she becomes wise and her life follows a path of wisdom; The Mage/Guinevere in King Arthur: Legend Of the Sword is worthy to be a princess (if they do future installments) because she has sacrificed and risked her own life to help Arthur and others; Jenny/Ahmanet seeks only help herself (please see The Shape Of Water for more on Eliza who is called "The princess without voice," and The New Feminism: King Arthur Legend Of the Sword for more on The Mage/Guinevere).
After she has drowned, Jenny throws up the water the same way Ahmanet throws up the mercury that Prodigium pumped into her, meaning, that because we see the two characters committing the same gesture (vomiting) we are meant to tie those two scenes together. (Consequently, the Prodigium worker who gets Ahmanet's spider in his ear and destroys the security system containing her is named "Pete"; why? His name isn't "Peter," which would mean that he's living out his full potential of holiness, but instead, he's only living part of it, which is why it's so easy for Ahmanet's little spider to control him [and please remember what Jeckyll tells Nick about Prodigium: we study, analyze and destroy evil, so the whole purpose of Prodigium is to combat evil, but Pete hasn't lived up to his vocation to be "Peter"]). Now, we can understand what the real "curse" of the film is and why the Crusaders are such an important part of it.
It might seem strange to have these images in this blog for The Mummy, however, we know the film makers reference numerous others film throughout the narrative, and I'm certain Monster Squad (1987) is one of them (more on the bottom image in a moment). In the top image, we see the amulet which protects the world from the apocalypse and Armageddon surrounded by crosses and relics so that Dracula can't get it and take control of the world forever. We see this device used in The Mummy at the Waverly Abbey where the knife of Set has been kept (this is discussed in the caption in the next image below). Why? Monster Squad was clearly about teaching kids the importance of sex and its dangers, the "monsters" it releases when kids don't say no to having sex (please see The Forms Evil Takes: Monster Squad for more). So by referencing Monster Squad, again, The Mummy expands its cinematic vocabulary to assure engaged viewers like us know we are on the right track in decoding their message.
The middle image of the Wolf Man is also taken from Monster Squad; why? It demonstrates why mercury is so prevalent in The Mummy. It takes silver to stop a werewolf (in the middle image, Dracula's cane is topped with a silver skull, which is why he points it at Wolf Man, so Wolf Man can't attack him); the question is, why does silver stop a werewolf from attacking, or even killing a werewolf? Because in Hebrew, the word for "silver" sounds like the word for "word," meaning "The Word," the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ. That is why so often, when you see a Crucifix, the body of Jesus will be in silver, when the rest of the Crucifix is wood or gold (for much, much more on this topic, please see my post on The Wolf Man, which Universal is making into their Dark Universe, and which is undoubtedly an important reference for the film: The Bright Autumn Moon: The Wolf Man). Back to The Mummy, "mercury" is known as "quicksilver," because of its color and the way it moves, and its properties (it was actually used in burials in not only Egypt, but Aztec, Chinese and Tibet, as well). The prevalence of quicksilver in The Mummy, and that Prodigium fills Ahmanet's body, then her coffin (at the end when she's really dead) with quicksilver, suggests what kind of a monster Ahmanet's mummy really is: a werewolf. In other words, when Jenny talks to Ahmanet--Ahmanet chained up and quicksilver being pumped into her body--Jenny tells Ahmanet, "I have studied the old gods," which is ironic, because Jenny obviously hasn't studied the "new God," Jesus, but she has gone back and read gods who don't exist ("Set," as Jeckyll tells us, is just another name for Satan, so "Set" exists, but this is Satan taking the form of Set to exist to Ahmaent, in other words, she didn't make a pact with Set, she made a pact with the devil), so even though Jenny speaks to Ahmanet about "gods," they are pagan gods, meaning, that Ahmanet being pumped with quicksilver isn't doing any real good to lead her to a discussion about The Word ("silver" in Hebrew), even though it has induced Jenny to discuss with herself (her darker self as manifested by Ahmanet) religion. Jenny wants to know what is on the other side, what happens in death, so we know Jenny has a interest in knowing what is going to become of her, but Ahmanet isn't going to tell Jenny the truth about damnation, because that would mean that Jenny would destroy Ahmanet (Jenny's sinful self) to insure she gains salvation, stop studying the "old gods" and take up studying the real God.
We have seen an increase lately in female werewolves; Dark Shadows, The Cabin In the Woods and Underworld are just three examples of films exploring how women's increase in sexual appetites have led them to become werewolves like men: those who cannot or will not control their sexual appetites. This is why "silver" is required to stop a werewolf (a silver bullet, or anything silver) because it symbolizes how only the Word of God can heal someone addicted to sex, which Jenny/Ahmanet is, as well as the other females in the films just named. Again, this is another cinematic technique The Mummy brings forth because this is a "new world of gods and monsters," where women who have been "liberated" sexually by the Left are now candidates to succumb to werewolfism.
What about the bottom image? We discuss the importance of names above, and I am confident that Jenny's last name, "Halsley," references the American singer/songwriter pictured above; why? When we first hear her name, it's from Nick who addresses her as "Miss Halsley," putting more emphasis on her last name than on her first name ("Jenny," the "White Enchantress"). Halsely's song The Devil In Me closely illustrates the events of the film pertaining to Jenny (possession themes with the devil being inside you and the song's constant refrain of "waking up") and, in the image of Halsely we see above, her white eyes remind us of what happened to Vail after the spider bite on his neck and his eyes rolling back into his head, turning white (the absence of pupils against the double-pupils of Ahmanet). But Halsey's better known song, The New Americana, is clearly a condemnation of what's happening to America because of Leftist "values" eroding the daily life of our society, which the film makers obviously agree with in standing against the Left.
The film opens with fire.
It's the first thing we see; why? Because we either subject ourselves to the "fires of purgation," or we shall be condemned to the "fires of damnation," like Ahmanet and the fire at the Set ceremony she performs. The Crusaders have subjected themselves to the fire of purgation, and their example is what is being held up for us today. When we see the Crusader being buried, the stone of the Set knife is buried with him; why? It's not difficult to imagine the Set knife as a phallic symbol, and when we first see it, Set holds it at waist level for Ahmanet to take it from him, so it's literally the god of death's penis she takes as her own (false phallus because she doesn't have one of her own, which is why she's there, the baby brother was born who does have a penis and so he will rule instead of Ahmanet). But what about the stone?
That's the lust.
THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT: when the film opens, we are told the year is 1127 AD; a specific year such as this isn't given unless the film makers consider it to be important, so what is so important about 1127?? Nothing, at first sight, however, if you notice that William IX, Duke of Aquitaine died, just as the Crusader died, then we are onto something. William was a leader in the Second Crusade, but there was nothing at all holy about his life: he lusted after many women, and was a terrible husband, and his horrible example of manhood is in stark contrast to the peaceful and holy Crusader warrior we see being buried, the "jewel of his virginity" still in tact, in contrast to William who is remembered for all his philandering. In other words, if Nick had been a "soldier of Christ" instead of a soldier of fortune, like he became, again, we wouldn't have this terrifying story of death, possession and destruction, but like William, Nick chooses to live for himself rather than for God as the Crusader knight chose. Just as the jewel of Set's Knife disintegrates after Nick has sacrificed himself, so, too, has Nick's virginity and purity. The Crusader sacrificed his life through his holy vows, but Nick had to sacrifice his life through an actual sacrifice, and had Nick chosen better, no one would have had to endure the trauma of the film.This leads us to the events at Waverly Abbey.
Earlier, in the prison-tomb of Ahmanet, we saw Nick about to steal the ring of a High Priest of Ra, and Jenny told him, "Don't even think about it, Nick," because a ring usually denotes a covenant, especially of marriage (so the High Priest had "married himself" to Ra the same way the Crusader knight had "married himself" to the Church, they both sacrificed themselves for the "greater good," as Jeckyll encourages Nick to do himself, and that's how Nick becomes one of the "Watchers" in the tomb-prison, like the priests who were buried with Ahmanet). So, back to Waverly, usually, people go to church to hear the Word of God, to get baptized, married, buried, or confess their sins,... which leads us to some interesting history about it was part of the 1536 Dissolution of Monasteries by Henry VIII, another man who, like William, Duke of Aquitaine, lived by his passionate lusts rather than the Word of God; with the dissolution of Waverly by Henry VIII, there could no longer be the hearing of confessions or the dedication of one's life to God through the sacraments because there was no priests left to perform the sacraments, like annulments, so instead of people getting annulments, they got divorces and multiplied their spouses, and their sins of adultery,befouling the marriage bed because people subjected God to man's laws, as imposed by men like Henry VIII and Martin Luther, rather than allow themselves to be subjected to God's laws, like the Crusader knight. So, one sin quickly leads to another, and there is no such thing as a 'private sin," because not only did Henry VIII suffer because of his adultery, but all of England and the whole world because of his break from Rome so he could sleep with whoever he wanted. So, why has Ahmanet lured Nick to Waverly?
Sacrilege.
We actually saw a de-sanctified church play a crucial role in the the Sherlock episode The Abominable Bride, because that is where all the Victorian-era feminists gathered to perform their unholy rituals of male-bashing, self-pity and self-glorification; Ahmanet is doing the same thing in Waverly. There are two witnesses to what happens between Ahmanet and Nick in this scene: one is Jenny, who stands amazed at what is taking place, and Nick tells her to run ("Jenny, run!" because he wants her to run away from him so he doesn't release Ahmanet during their sexual encounter in Baghdad, remember, the "Cradle of Civilization," i.e., the Garden Of Eden where Original Sin happened) but there are also the zombies,.... who are the zombies? Us. The viewers. Not so much you and I, dear reader, because we are actively engaging the film's dialogue, so we are being the opposite of zombies, we are "reflecting" just like the stained glass windows behind the main events of this scene, but nearly everyone else watching this scene are zombies, because they are watching without realizing what is happening, how it fits in with the agenda of the film and how they are actually being implicated along with Nick. If you are a zombie watching this scene, you are holding Nick down, keeping him from being able to make the "sacrifice for the greater good," because you are dead in your own sins, notably, adultery. Most of the reviewers (and I don't mean to judge, I am just making a logical conclusion) who complained that Tom Cruise doesn't have a sufficiently dark side to portray Set, are the same ones who don't see that there is a problem with sleeping around and offending God, in other words, their very sins make them zombies because--like zombies--they have lost the power to reflect upon themselves and their own life, which leads us to the windows.
One of the dominant elements of the scene are the stained-glass windows directly behind the alter (these windows were added by the film makers because there are no windows in the ruins of Waverley Abbey today): windows, we know, symbolize reflection, so reflection is the invitation we are being given in this scene; the "stained glass" is unique because large sections of a piece of glass is colored to form an image, so each color in the window forms the path of reflection we are meant to take, to arrive at the whole, which is the image, for example, St. Michael the Archangel which is depicted on one of the windows. "Michael," of course, means, "Who can compare to God?" because that is what he said when he flung Satan into hell during the great battle of heaven. So, that is what each of us is meant to meditate upon when we are presented with temptation, but what temptation? Sexual temptation.
Ahmanet pins Nick to the alter (again, that no longer exists at the ruins, so it was added by the film makers); why? The alter is the "alter of sacrifice," it's the place where we are meant to remember how Jesus Christ gave His life for the life of the Church, His bride, and men are called to give their lives for their brides, their wives. There is an angel statue on either side of the alter; why? It's meant to invoke the image of the great Ark Of the Covenant, because it's at the alter that covenants are made; what is the covenant we are called to make with God? To give our lives to him, either in a vocation to religious orders, or in marriage, but we are called to do it at the alter, in the presence of the witness of the saints and God. In other words, the alter is sacred, and what is found there? The Knife of Set. As we have said, the Knife of Set is a phallic symbol (like Excalibur, or the great sword Optimus Prime uses in Transformers: the Last Knight, or the Trident of Poseidon in Pirates of the Caribbean) so that transforms the alter into the marriage bed, but because the church has been de-sanctified, but there is still an alter, and there are the "witnesses" of the Saints in the reliquary where the Knife is kept, it is an act of sacrilege, or, an intentional insult to God. The Knife is kept in the reliquary to sanctify it, make it holy, which is what the purpose of marriage is: to make the sexual act a holy act that has the purpose of binding the husband and wife, and bringing forth the fruit of life from their union; when a couple has sex outside of the bounds of legitimate marriage, they are doing the same to the covenant of marriage that Ahmanet and Nick are doing on the alter: desecrating the sacred. Again, we can either take note and reflect on what the film makers are telling us, or we can turn our heads and be zombies so we don't have to reflect on what we are being warned about. And this leads us to the stone; why can't Ahmanet complete the ritual? There is no stone; why not? Nick doesn't lust for her, which is what the stone symbolizes.
"But you said the stone was the "jewel of virginity," you might be thinking, dear reader, and I did, you are correct; the stone is the "jewel of virginity" for the Crusader knight, because that's what he lusted for: perfection, and he achieved it. Nick, however, lusts after women, but seeing Jenny-as-Ahmanet, and Ahmanet, not as the White Enchantress (the way she first appeared to Nick in her tomb-prison), rather, as a decomposed carrier of eternal death, Nick has no lust for her, and so the ritual can't be completed because seeing her as she really is, he knows better than to get involved with her. This is true of all of us and our sins: if we saw what sin did to our soul, if we could see the consequences, we would never sin, NEVER, but we don't have accurate vision, our spiritual sight is clouded by Original Sin, so we make these mistakes, and sometimes, we make them over and over.
When Ahmanet examines Nick,we see her decomposed nose, the gaping hole in her cheek, and her nasty, knotted hair. Each of these details reveals why Ahmanet is "dead": the face is the seat of our identity, who we are and how people recognize who we are, and being the most prominent feature of our face, the nose reveals our character, how sturdy of an individual we are and what we value and how we incorporate our values into our lives. Not only is part of Ahmanet's nose missing on her face, but it's also partially missing on the statue of her in her prison-tomb: that means her character is missing something; what? That leads us to her deteriorated cheek. You know the Scripture, "Turn the other cheek," (Matthew 5: 39) but that's not what Ahmanet did when her brother was born, rather, she took revenge, and because she has no tolerance for humility, she is rotten to the core. Seeing these traits in Ahmanet, Nick realizes he doesn't want anything sexual to do with her, and so he has no lust; at the end, when Nick is about to destroy the stone ("No stone, no curse,") Ahmanet promises him that if he doesn't destroy the stone, he will become all powerful, and she was telling the truth: any man who can control his lust and not give into his sexual appetites, becomes all powerful. Nick gains control over his appetites when he sacrifices himself for Jenny--not just at the end when he becomes Set, but also the countless times in the film that he saves her (like when the double-decker bus comes at them, and he pushes her out of the way, or zombies come up behind to attack her, or he fights off the soldiers to save her) because he does what Christ commanded the man do for his wife: lay down his life for her as Christ laid down his life for the Church (this is why the stone dissipates after Nick has stabbed himself with the Knife).
In an of itself, the penis isn't bad, in spite of what feminists try to convince us: the penis is just a part of the body. It's when the penis is being controlled by lust that it does become bad, but women are just as easily controlled by lust as are men, that is why Jenny and Nick reason, "No stone, no curse," that if we control ourselves and learn to discipline our passions instead of giving into them, we will not be cursed with the enslavement to power or sex which plagues everyone else today.So, what about the Crusader who was buried with the stone?
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," could be the subtitle of this sequence when Nick and Jenny try escaping Ahmanet at the church. Nick wants to get away from Ahmanet, but at the same time, he doesn't: Ahament offers Nick a lot, and he's a fairly weak man to begin with, so it's easy for her to control him. First question first: was Nick actually going to leave Jenny at the church and just escape on his own? It's entirely possible. When Jenny tells Nick how she knows he is a good man because he gave her the only parachute when the plane was crashing, and Nick replies, "I thought there was another one," we actually don't have to take his word for it because he's all ready been established as an "unreliable narrator," and we don't see him look for another parachute or hesitate when putting the chute on Jenny; we could even deduce that, given the plane's status as a military plane, there should have been more chutes on board, and Nick should have started looking for another chute but didn't, implying that maybe he all ready knew he needed to sacrifice himself at this early stage in the narrative and that was what he was planning on doing (he saw what happened to Vail and knows something has gone terribly wrong). With the church, we could follow the same line of reasoning, that Nick knows Ahmanet is after him, so getting away from Jenny will lure Ahmanet away from Jenny so she will be safe as long as Nick leaves Jenny,.... however, this doesn't really come up, and given that the zombies start attacking the yellow ambulance, and coming through their windows, this makes it harder to buy, but there is another option,... Nick realizes at this point that Ahmanet is Jenny's double, and the "sexual act" committed on the alter in the church was sufficient for Nick to see that Ahmanet and Jenny are the same character, so to get away from Ahmanet, Nick also has to get away from Jenny (remember the part in the airplane when Jenny reaches above the seat to get something, and her stomach is bared, and Nick stares at it? That scene suggests that Jenny was active in "luring" Nick to her room, that Nick might not have noticed Jenny had she not sexually "baited" him in some way, and that supports Nick getting away from Jenny/Ahmanet to save himself, knowing that just as Ahmanet directs Nick's driving away in the ambulance right around and back to the church, so Jenny does the same thing in causing her and Nick's paths to keep crossing). In other words, Nick reasons, if I am going to save Jenny, I need to get away from her so we don't have sex and none of this happens, and that is why he asks her, "Did you see that?!?!" because that is the explanation of why he would leave her there, so they don't commit the sin displayed on the alter of the church.
So, they leave the church and then what happens? They get into the yellow ambulance. "Yellow," we know, symbolizes dignity, so after the disgraceful what they committed sacrilege at the alter of God in the church, it's important to re-establish dignity and why it is that God loves us, because that helps to keep us from sinning further. The ambulance is for sick people, and Nick and Jenny realize they are sick, Nick realizing that Ahmanet is Jenny and Jenny also realizing that she is Ahmanet (when Ahmanet attacks her, Jenny hits her on the head with a candle stick holder: the head is the place where our thoughts originate, so Jenny has been thinking, and the candle stick holder (because candles provide light which symbolizes illumination) also symbolizes illumination, so Jenny realizes she has seen, stripped of its passion and lust, the sexual act she and Nick committed in her hotel room in Baghdad. So, instead of acting like animals in heat, they need to remind themselves and each other they are the children of God, created in His image, which is why they get into the yellow ambulance, but things aren't that easy.
Who attacks them? Zombies. The zombies, just like at the church, symbolize us, the viewers, because we "aren't reflecting" on what has happened the way Jenny and Nick have (not you and myself, dear reader, because we are reflecting, but like, you know, the people who were sitting next to you in the theater, those people). These are people literally trying to hold back Nick and Jenny in the conversion process; why? Because those zombies don't want to be converted themselves. They go through the front windshield (so "reflection" symbolized by the window, and the future, symbolized by it being the front windshield at the front of the car, the direction in which they are going, as opposed to the back windshield, which is where they have been, the past) so these zombies "know" that if Nick and Jenny are converted, the zombies, too, will be called to conversion and they don't want to give up their sins. While Nick is being attacked by a zombie, Jenny uses her feet to kick the zombie, and Nick yells at her, "That's my face! That's my face!" but Jenny sees Nick as a zombie now, just as Nick saw Jenny as Ahmanet's decomposed corpse in the church when Ahmanet was about to stab him. Jenny is nearly dragged out of the ambulance by one of the zombies, because she's weak, and she is almost lost to becoming a zombie herself, that is, not caring what her sin is, but because she was so shocked by what she saw at the alter, she puts on the seat belt to keep her in the ambulance; what does the seat belt symbolize? A chastity belt. I know, it's old fashioned, however, we were just inside a Renaissance, Crusader church, and the even by strict historical standards, chastity belts were heard of at the time of Waverly Abbey. Her "chastity belt" keeps her inside the ambulance when they "fall" which is a fascinating detail of this sequence.
Nick drives off the road, and the ambulance tips over, with Nick falling out of the door, but Jenny strapped inside; why does this happen? This sequence is definitely about their "fall from Grace," but the film makers are saying what we said above: now that Nick and Jenny have seen what it was they actually did in having sex, they aren't going to make that same mistake twice, so when they "fall," they don't do it together, they go through that temptation, but Jenny's "chastity belt" keeps her strapped into the ambulance (the vehicle for the sick to remember their God-given dignity) even though Nick falls out; why does he fall out? They are in the woods.
Anyone who has read Dante's Inferno knows that the "dark wood" symbolizes sin; why? The woods are the opposite of the Cross. The Cross has been fashioned just for one, specific person, but the woods is where everything is left to grow wild, there is no one looking after it and wild animals live there, so for Nick, he has such a "forest of sin" that just one act of penance isn't going to strengthen him, and the film makers are quick to supply the reason: Nick hasn't protected his manhood. Nick picks up a stick--a phallic symbol--and he intends on showing Ahmanet "who is the boss" and Jenny cheers him on, encouraging him to "Kick her ass!" but we know that Ahmanet hits Nick once and he is out for the count; why? Nick has allowed himself to be dominated by women, because that was the easier road to take. He can't put his life in order when he's being bossed around by these dominant women, and they can dominate him because of all his sins weakening his resolve. Men only have authority when it comes from Christ, but a man who has not submitted himself to Christ is dead in sin and so he has submitted himself to the devil, and the devil's servants instead.
That red stone symbolizes the "jewel of his virginity," that is, this warrior and scholar--who achieved so much with his body and with his mind--also saw the beauty of virginity and died victorious in the battle of lust, never having yielded, and this is the opening sequence we see in the film because, if more of us were like him, the rest of the story wouldn't have to be told at all. This film is truly a masterpiece, not only of storytelling and visual vocabulary but in terms of its cultural commentary as well. At this posting, I have seen the film three times in the theater, and I know I didn't catch everything; if there is something you were interested in that I haven't addressed, it's a legitimate point, I'm sure, I just wasn't as smart as this film is, which is exactly the way great cinema should be: it exceeds our capacity to understand it so we have to work at engaging with it so our minds, our hearts and our souls will be expanded to an ever greater understanding, not just of who we are, but how we fit into God's glorious purpose.
(This film was so in-depth, that there was an obvious point I missed regarding the zero-gravity scene, so I just created an appendix for the scene, which you can read by clicking on this link here).
Labels: The Mummy 2017 Nick Morton Jenny Halsley what does mean symbolize images pictures Ahmanet Knife of Set Jeckyll Hyde 1127 AD England Mercury thefineartdiner
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