This demo lets you search for clues in some of the early areas of the game.

Despite the short demo, Mystery of the Mummy looks like fun. In the game, you play Sherlock Holmes as he investigates the disappearance of a famous Egyptologist. Mostly, that entails poking around a mansion until you use the second key you find, at which point the demo ends. The first puzzle requires a bit of thought and some exploration, but it's not too much of a challenge. Though the demo lacks an introduction or instructions, the mouse controls are elementary. If you click on everything you can, you should get through the demo in no time.

The game has a few problems besides a short demo. The installation, from a ZIP file, is inelegant. The camera swings around with the cursor, which got us a bit woozy. The audio level is comfortable, but we still would like volume control. Also, turn off your instant-messaging application before playing--interruptions caused our demo to black out and crash during testing. Mellow kids and undemanding gamers should find some pleasure in The Mystery of the Mummy.

95/03/22B, Korea) • Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (Ver. Arcade rom sets.

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There are few actors in the world as powerful as Tom Cruise. In an age sorely lacking true movie stars—those select few who can carry a variety of films on their backs—Cruise is something of a rarity. He knows it, and so do the studios, which give Cruise a unique level of power on all his film sets—a rare gift that appeared to blow up in Universal’s face after the surprisingly low domestic turnout of The Mummy. The actor reportedly had “excessive control” over the film, Variety reports, which ultimately steered the launch of Universal’s Dark Universe into the ground. (Domestically, at least. The movie is an international hit, which means The Mummy 2 could rise from the dead before you know it.)

QMilch does not. Though the process of converting spoiled milk into fabric has existed since the 1930s, it previously involved chemicals. What is milk silk material.

Excessive control is nothing new for Cruise, who commands millions of dollars per film and has a tight hand on all his franchises—like the still-lucrative Mission: Impossible films. But The Mummy might have been the perfect example of Cruise control gone wrong. The film received incredibly negative reviews (it has a 16 percent on Rotten Tomatoes right now) and made about $32 million in the U.S. in its opening weekend, a disappointing sum when set against the film’s rumored $125 million budget—though Variety pegs the actual budget even higher at around $190 million, with an additional $100 million for marketing and worldwide release. The film has made about $172 million worldwide, which is a good sign and a testament to Cruise’s global fame, but that might not be enough to repair the damage that’s already been done.

So, what did Cruise’s alleged level of “contractually guaranteed” excessive control entail? Apparently he had a hand in “most aspects of the project, from script approval to post-production decisions,” Variety says, according to unnamed sources. “He also had a great deal of input on the film’s marketing and release strategy, these sources said, advocating for a June debut in a prime summer period.” Cruise reportedly also spent a lot of time in the editing suite, bringing in folks like longtime editor Andrew Mondshein to touch up the film once it was done. However, the level of Cruise’s involvement wasn’t always welcome, with some on the lot wondering if his recommendations were “improving a picture that had been troubled from its inception or whether they were turning a horror film into a Cruise infomercial.”

In a statement to Variety, Universal defended Cruise: “Tom approaches every project with a level of commitment and dedication that is unmatched by most working in our business today. He has been a true partner and creative collaborator, and his goal with any project he works on is to provide audiences with a truly cinematic moviegoing experience.”

Representatives for Cruise have not yet responded to V.F.’s request for comment.

There’s no doubt that Cruise has a staggering level of influence, the sort reserved only for the most bankable stars. In the past, he’s even been able to pick out directors for his projects—as on the Jack Reacher films—and has instantly scaled up the level of attention on films that were originally intended to be small, like Bryan Singer’sValkyrie. In this age, only a handful of actors could command such power, and even among that group, few of them have had as much sustained box-office success as Cruise. It also helps that the actor has built a reputation for being an unusually amiable movie star, like a camp counselor who goes out of his way to make the experience memorable for everyone around him. “He’s a perfect co-star,” Mummy actor Jake Johnson recently told Thrillist, calling Cruise a Michael Jordan-like leader who enjoys the pressure of carrying a movie “all on their shoulders.” But there’s a downside of carrying a movie on your shoulders: if the movie fails, it comes crashing down on you.

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