Rampage is The Rock’s $428 million kaiju film, and while it has many fans, it unfortunately continued a disappointing trend that began 19 years ago. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has appeared in all sorts of major franchises, including projects like Black Adam, Jungle Cruise, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungleand more. However, there is one type of franchise that The Rock has been trying to break into continuously for nearly two decades, but RampageThe fact that he has still not succeeded in doing this is proven by his critical failure.

Rampage was one of the biggest films of 2018, with the Kaiju action film made even more exciting by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the lead role. In the film, The Rock plays a paleontologist who, after a genetic experiment gone wrong, is tasked with defeating giant mutated versions of a gorilla, a wolf and a lizard. Many viewers of the $428 million box office hit are not aware that Rampage is actually a movie based on a classic video game, and that detail makes it an interesting footnote in an ongoing trend in The Rock’s career.

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Rampage was the second “corrupted” video game adaptation of The Rock

After the Fall (2005)

Despite Rampage Although the film was a box office success, grossing $428 million on a budget of around $140 million, it was a flop with critics. Rampage received consistently mixed to negative reviews, with a score of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing this article. This was disappointing for many fans of the original Rampage video game, as the franchise is so niche that another attempt to adapt the video game was unlikely. Rampage is actually The Rock’s second video game adaptation with a poor Rotten Tomatoes rating.

13 years before the release of RampageThe Rock starred in another live-action video game film in 2005 Downfall. Although the action film is part of a much larger franchise than RampageIn fact, he fared much worse than his successor. Downfall has only 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s not the only reason it failed. With a budget of $70 million, Downfall only grossed $58.7 million, meaning it was a huge box office flop. Downfall And Rampage prove that The Rock is apparently unable to create a good video game adaptation.

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Rampage was still much better than Doom

Critical and commercial

Although both films received poor reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Rampage is still much better than Downfall. While Rampage has its problems, for example the story and the characters are boring, but it is still a successful action film. The huge Kaiju fights all work incredibly wellwhich is some of the best American Kaiju action outside of Legendary’s MonsterVerse. In addition, Rampage features some fantastic CGI effects that really bring the three monsters from the video game to life.

Meanwhile, there are very few positive features about the 2005 Downfall Film. Outside of Downfall‘s surprisingly star-studded cast, which includes The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike and others, pretty much every aspect of Downfall was received negatively. The dialogue and story are boring and trite, and the action seems lackluster compared to the video games. Downfall is closer to its video game counterpart than Rampage Films, but if you judge them as films, Rampage is far superior.

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The Rock deserves to star in a good video game adaptation

Even after the two failed films

Even though he has appeared in two failed video game movies, The Rock still deserves to star in a good video game adaptation. The curse of video game movies was a long-standing pattern that existed while The Rock was making his moviesThe curse of video game movies was only broken with the release of projects like Detective Pikachu And Sonic the Hedgehog in 2019 and 2020. Downfall was a victim of this curse, as the film didn’t dare to use the elements that made the source material great.

In the meantime, Rampage was hardly a video game movie, as the film didn’t really acknowledge its roots at all. Instead, the film simply took the game’s premise and made it into a movie, leaving fans of the games wanting more. There are still plenty of video game adaptations that The Rock could star in, whether he’s in live-action or as a voice actor, and many of them could finally be the right video game movie that Downfall And Rampage were not.

Rampage

Loosely based on the video game series of the same name, Rampage stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Davis Okoye, a former Special Forces soldier and primatologist. When George, a gorilla Okoye works with, is exposed to an experimental pathogen, he becomes much larger and more aggressive. It’s up to Okoye to bring George home safely and save his friend and countless lives before it’s too late.

director

Brad Peyton

Release date

13 April 2018

Studio(s)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Sales Partner

Warner Bros. Pictures

Authors

Carlton Cuse, Ryan Condal

Duration

1 hour 47 minutes

budget

120 million

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