Rampage (2018)

'alright George, we gotta stop these things before they destroy the city'

He says after the John Hancock Center is brought crashing down. I think they've kinda done that already mate.

Another month another Dwayne Johnson movie (much like certain other franchises). The only man in cinema today who gets shot clean in the gut halfway through his movie yet doesn't actually die...or anything. He just keeps on going in invincible mode. Nothing much changes does it, its all about big arm muscles and tight shirts for Dwayne. His acting doesn't really alter much, in fact is he even acting or merely being himself? But you can sure as hell tell this is a 2018 movie. A crap load of poor CGI with a crap load of obvious greenscreen. Johnson has a black female sidekick whilst the main villain is female and she has a goofy white male sidekick, oh and a stealth bomber pilot is also female.

So another month another giant monster movie (facepalm). This time an evil female led company is basically trying to create a pathogen to be used as a biological weapon, because of course they are. Said pathogen obviously is let loose upon the US when the companies space station housing the stuff gets destroyed by a mutant rat. The stuff infects a gorilla, a crocodile, and a wolf. Said animals naturally mutate into giant monsters and start wreaking havoc. But all this doesn't stop the evil female led company though, oh no, they still have their dastardly plans which I can't be bothered to explain anymore.

So for anyone not in the know, this movie is based on a very old Bally Midway arcade game released in 1986. The designers clearly borrowed heavily from certain classic monster movies for their lead characters with the Godzilla-esque Lizzie, King Kong-esque George, and a werewolf-esque looking Ralph. The game merely involved you trying to destroy as much of a cityscape as possible whilst eating people, crushing tanks, and swatting choppers. And with that Warner Bros have thrown together what they think is a good movie?

OK so firstly this isn't a kids movie, which was surprising to me, yet Johnson still doesn't say motherfucker (he's no Schwarzenegger). But yeah this movie is relatively violent with people being eaten, stepped on and crushed, thrown through the air and off tall buildings, and some claret on hand. But whilst it was satisfying to see some adult action, in no way did it make up for the rest of it.

This is a bad movie. The special effects are generally poor with only George looking halfway decent. Ralph looks like a cartoon and Lizzie looks like a dinosaur from a Doug McClure movie. I don't understand why the giant animals actually go around killing and destroying in the first place. Sure the pathogen makes them aggressive but that doesn't mean they would just roam around randomly causing carnage. Again when the female villain turns on this beacon to attract the creatures, why do they decimate the city on their way? (because we wouldn't have a movie otherwise). Why does Ralph have the ability to shoot darts out of his body now? And that only crops up once I think, you'd think it would be shooting these things all the time. Oh and Ralph can fly too, like did the folks behind this movie ever play the fecking game??

The acting throughout is God awful, absolutely terrible. Dwayne Johnson is merely himself as usual. This guy cannot act, he's just himself in every movie (and most of his movies are the same). His costar sidekick (Naomie Harris) is also terribly plain and shows little actual talent (although her wig somehow manages to stay put throughout the action). But the worst performance has to be Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a government agent who fancies himself as a badass cowboy. We know this because he tells us in almost every scene and he sports a single pearl handled pistol on his hip in some vague effort to be 'kewl'. Can someone please explain why this guy stands at an angle in every fecking scene. Literally every scene where he delivers dialog he's standing at an angle as if one of his legs is shorter than the other or they are filming his scenes with a Dutch tilt.

Seeing as this movie is based on an arcade game where your goal is to Hulk smash everything into the ground, you can imagine how this movie ends. When I say end I mean virtually from the halfway mark. Yep that's right, one long incomprehensible mess of CGI 'action' as we follow all three of the giant monsters on their rampage, ahem. Somehow the giant crocodile is able to climb sheer buildings, for some reason not one human being cottons onto the fact that bullets can't hurt these creatures; George decides to eat the female villain whole (coincidentally when she has the serum for the pathogen), yet we don't see him do this to anyone else. He could of eaten the helicopter pilot likewise but instead just throws him away. Lizzie decides to bite Ralph's head off for some reason, the greenscreen gets unforgivably bad, oh and we're meant to believe that people named these monsters Ralph and Lizzie?? I know its based on the arcade game but you really didn't have to go that far.

Dwayne Johnson is apparently the big action star of our current time, or for the current younger generation, so I've been led to believe. I'm left wondering how this can be because aside from his physique the guy is a poor action star. Sure he's fun in silly fantasy comedies and some over the top soft-core action flicks for youngsters, but that's it. He is seemingly unable to break his self-referential nice guy comedy routine and is apparently unable to stop fixating on his own muscles. This is yet again another Dwayne Johnson movie where the main character is (the invincible) Dwayne Johnson.

Am I being too harsh on a mere videogame adaptation? Maybe, I knew not to expect that much from a movie which is very loosely based on a very loose concept. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there will get a kick outta this and that's fine. But for me this is now the umpteenth movie showcasing the exact same spiel. I can't lie about it, this was complete and utter garbage, and not even good looking garbage at that.

3/10