The Mummy by genre

I probably wont need to explains Nationals genre categories to anyone, but I want to get this down as I gave it too much thought. I can give an example of different versions of a media property fitting different categories by emphasis...

Okay, I could give a lot, but this is the one I thought about a month ago when a new film came out...

The Mummy.

The Mummy (1932) is definitely Horror, and would also fit in Call of Cthulhu with ease, Cthulhu has plenty of Egyptian adventures and the film starts with an investigator failing his Sanity check.

Boris Karloff’s performance informed fantasy mummies as well, if you meet one in Dungeons & Dragons or Open Fantasy in general it might be a take on him, or the shuffling bandaged type that followed in this series which get increasingly Action And Adventure until finally Abbot and Costello bring it into Humour.

He also influenced the Mummy PCs in World Of Darkness and Chronicles Of Darkness.

The Mummy (1959) - same deal. Now period Horror, could be Cthulhu-ish.

And then...

The Mummy (1999) is Action And Adventure. (As I’ve seen said before the American party is playing Call Of Cthulhu and the heroes are playing Adventure!) Higher Weird Level than the Indiana Jones movies but the setting still keeps it out of Open Fantasy for me, it has two scenes that would count as Horror, and the PCs are still heroic normals until the second film when they get retconned magic and it becomes Supers or maybe Myths And Legends.

The Mummy (2017) I would put in Urban Fantasy due to its modern setting and hefty worldbuilding. Could reasonably be Action And Adventure but Nick has some superpowers, and as such if the Dark Universe had happened it would also fit into Supers.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) isn’t an adaptation of the same story dating back to 1932, with a different origin and motivation for the mummy curse. But it’s still called The Mummy and it’s what got me thinking here. Anyway it’s definitely Horror.

So across five films and their follow-ups we have Horror and/or Cthulhu, Action And Adventure, Urban Fantasy and Horror again, with arguments to be made for half a dozen more options and motifs appearing in several game-specific categories as well.