Recently retired Sexiest Man Alive, Dwayne Johnson, is keeping himself busy after being succeeded by Blake Shelton. (Fun fact: Retired SMAs are neatly folded and placed into storage until they are needed again.) He has Jumanji coming out in December, and next year he has another video game adaptation on tap, Rampage. Based on the classic arcade game, Rampage is about a man trying to save his friend who is a giant albino gorilla. The first trailer has been released and it’s exactly as absurd as you’re expecting.
Rampage looks dumb as sh*t, but it looks like the good kind of dumb, the Geostorm kind of dumb, where no one is taking things too seriously. Johnson excels at turning that kind of dumb-fun schlock into solid entertainment—the worst case scenario usually results in cable camp like San Andreas. Well, Rampage reunites Johnson with his San Andreas director, and I feel like that’s enough to know that Rampage will be utterly silly but also fun.
What I really like about this trailer is how it just throws viewers in the deep end and makes no attempt to explain what is happening. The Rock is friends with the giant albino gorilla, but is that because his friend has turned into a giant albino gorilla, or because The Rock is just friends with a giant albino gorilla? Fans of the game will know, but I like that it’s a mystery for everyone else (Lainey: like me, I had no idea this was a video game and I just laughed through this entire preview), especially since it is 100% believable that there would be a movie about The Rock being friends with a giant albino gorilla. Although I’m not sure it says anything good about the state of American cinema that “The Rock is friends with a giant albino gorilla” sounds like a perfectly reasonable movie to make.
