The Dwayne Johnson Monster Action Movie That’s Smashing The Streaming Competition
Movies based on video games are usually hit or miss, but only Rampage hits so hard it rips through concrete like it was paper. The 2018 kaiju battle royale is based on a popular video game series of the same name and stars the only actor big enough to stand up to a trio of mutated zoo animals, Dwayne Johnson. According to Flix Patrol, the action-adventure film has crushed the competition to claw its way up to #4 on the Amazon Prime Video streaming chart.
Before Dwayne Johnson went on his Rampage, the IP started life as a 1986 arcade game published by Midway. The premise of the original Rampage was simple: three monsters, King Kong clone George, Godzilla ripoff Lizzie, and mutant wolf Ralph, escape from the evil corporation Scumlabs and go on a city-destroying “rampage.
Up to three players could climb, punch, and kick buildings until they collapsed into rubble, all the while destroying any military or civilians that get in their way.
In the days before ultra-violent games like Mortal Kombat became commonplace, the novelty of gaining health by eating innocent humans was too cool for most kids to pass up. As a result, Rampage was ported to every home console in existence, including a laughably primitive port to the then-decade-old Atari 2600. Several sequels were released, all with the same basic mechanics: smash, eat, smash more.
The road to the Dwayne Johnson-led Rampage film adaptation began in 2009 when Warner Bros bought Midway Games for $33 million. The company announced its plan to turn the popular game into a movie in 2011.
Dwayne Johnson’s Rampage has taken the #4 spot on Amazon Prime Video’s subscription streaming service.
Producer John Rickard claims that the whole project came from a cursory search of all of the titles Warner owned due to the acquisition. Upon stumbling across the title Rampage, Rickard recalled playing the original arcade game in his youth and decided it could make a fun movie.
Dwayne Johnson came aboard the project for basically the same reason. The former WWE Superstar had vivid memories of playing Rampage first in a pool hall and later at home on his NES—the version Xennials like The Rock are most familiar with.
In fact, the theme of nostalgia runs all throughout the production of 2018’s Rampage, with screenwriter Ryan Engle quoted as saying that his intention with the script was to make a “love letter to the monster movies I grew up watching.”
Regardless, that mediocre consensus Rampage earned was enough to award it the highest Rotten Tomatoes score for a live-action video game film ever (51%) until Detective Pikachu (68%) came out the following year.
Director Brad Peyton joined the project after Dwayne Johnson was cast, possibly due to the duo’s previous collaborations, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) and San Andreas (2015). The rest of the cast includes Malin Akerman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan—together for the first time since 2009’s Watchmen. Also on board are Joe Manganiello and Naomie Harris of Moonlight fame.
The Plot loosely follows the games that inspired it. There are still three kaiju-sized animals, but now, instead of being mutated humans like they are in the games, the creatures are just normal animals that grow to a monstrous stature through genetic mutation. Dwayne Johnson plays Davis Okoye, a primatologist whose best friend is a rare albino gorilla named George.
The story is kicked off when Scumlabs stand-in, Energyne, loses three canisters containing a pathogen that not only causes animals to grow exponentially but rewrites their DNA to make them more violent. George, a wild crocodile, and a wolf are exposed to the pathogen and grow to city-smashing size. Mass destruction ensues.
Lizzie’s change from an upright T-Rex adjacent lizard to a giant crocodile was no doubt an effort by the film’s producers to make her look less like the Godzilla ripoff she is in the Rampage video games. The same thing goes for George, who is switched from a traditional brown King Kong look-alike gorilla to an albino for the movie.
Ralph doesn’t really have an existing kaiju analog but is given the new ability to fly and shoot quills from his back all the same.
Bottom line: if you like the Rock, like big monsters destroying stuff, and just want a movie you can put on and veg out to, you can do a lot worse than Rampage.
The Dwayne Johnson action movie grossed $428 million worldwide on a budget of $120 million but saw little, if any, profit after advertising and other expenses were factored in. Critically, the movie was received exactly how you would expect: brainless action movie, effects are good, and fun if you turn your brain off.
Regardless, that mediocre consensus Rampage earned was enough to award it the highest Rotten Tomatoes score for a live-action video game film ever (51%) until Detective Pikachu (68%) came out the following year.
By not being actively terrible, Rampage manages to be one of the more entertaining video game movies—although, personally, we think the 1995 Mortal Kombat is criminally underrated. It’s definitely the best video game movie starring Dwayne Johnson, although it would be pretty hard not to beat 2005’s massive bomb Doom.
Bottom line: if you like the Rock, like big monsters destroying stuff, and just want a movie you can put on and veg out to, you can do a lot worse than Rampage.
Stream Rampage now on Amazon Prime Video.
