Yes, that is the title I'm going with. Dwayne The Rock The Tooth Fairy Johnson. He is in movies.
Are they great movies? Most of the time, no, not really. Are they memorable movies?
I mean, I'd say so. Like you remember they exist. That's got to count for something.
The Rock has saved franchises and The Rock has killed franchises. He is a force of nature. We cannot stop him.
He's tried recently to escape from the type of films he usually makes. He's been a little typecast, so he wants to be a more serious actor. And that really hasn't worked out well for him.
There's a certain type of movie you expect when you think of The Rock. You might remember him in The Fast and Furious movies or Jumanji or hell, Moana. You might even remember him from the Korean romance comedy Pain and Gain.
But for every Rock movie you remember, there's like five you don't. I bet you don't remember him in Journey 2 The Mysterious Island. >> No, she's cold-blooded and attracted to heat.
That's emasculating. That's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the Rock movies nobody remembers.
The ones that were never a part of some big franchise, the ones that were utterly disposable. I hate to use the word, but there really is no better way to describe it. The slop.
I want to talk about the Rock slop. When you think of video game movies, you think of stuff like Detective Pikachu or Sonic or Need for Speed. You know what you never hear about?
Rampage. Probably because nobody remembers it was based off a game, but yeah, it was. There it is.
Wait, I've never played this series before. Is this just destruction mode in Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters? That kind of rocks.
We need more movies and games about monsters destroying cities. Godzilla can't hog the whole spotlight. Where's my Gamera movie, Hollywood, you cowards?
So, I have to be honest, Rampage is not like the other rock slop movies. I actually like this one. It's the most entertaining of the bunch, mainly because it has a wolf taking down a chopper.
And I'd also say it has the best rock of them, too. A lot of these movies just have the rock be a generic hero guy. They need to have an explanation for why the rock looks like that.
So, he's always an ex-FBI agent or spec ops or military, something to explain the batshit feats he's going to accomplish, but not really. The rock in most of these movies is just there. He's so bland.
He is action guy. Is he sort of a person? I don't know.
It feels like in every one of these, he just knows he's being watched. You can see the gears in his head turning about how he can look or act as best as possible in that moment. Come with me.
He doesn't feel like a character, he feels like the rock knowing he's the rock, which makes a lot of the moments in rock slop movies just unintentionally funny. Pretty impressive. Just doing my job, ma'am.
Go with the gentleman to go. Rampage is really the best rock you're going to get in this video. The one where he says Marvel quips.
Of course, the wolf flies. They fly now? I am so sorry.
So, where do all these monsters come from? Why is there a crocodile this big outside of Florida? Is this caused by a monkey drinking scum soda?
Man, I hope so. All of this is because of an evil corporation. >> Now, don't overreact, Claire.
There's a reason we were doing these experiments in space, and it wasn't exactly for the betterment of humanity. Why would a corporation decide to create a serum that turns animals into monsters? Good question.
betterment of humanity. They called the whole evil serum thing project rampage. Imagine if after Umbrella Corp made the zombies, they were like, "Oh, no.
Project Resident Evil has gone terribly wrong. " What was the plan here? How does it benefit a company to create uncontrollable monsters?
At least in Jurassic World, they were going to train the dinosaurs to sell to the military or something. Here, they just spend billions to make kaiju for no benefit other than to us, the viewer. They say they're going to sell the DNA or something, but like who's going to buy this?
What use are the monsters if you can't control them? Speaking of Jurassic World, The Rock is just Chris Pratt, but instead of taming raptors, he talks to a gorilla. New guy, he no laugh.
He cry. George. George the gorilla.
George of the Jungle. George is curious. He does sign language, but not like that fake sign language everyone thought Coco did.
Oh, no. This gorilla has sentience. I don't need your saving.
No. George no save thing. You didn't save me.
I was fine on my own. I'm fine. He knows inside jokes.
He pulls a prank on Huey from The Boys. This is all before he transforms, too. The movie just never acts like this is that much of a big deal.
It's a bigger deal that he looks like a pallet swapped Donkey Kong than the fact that he is Caesar from Planet of the Apes. Ah, it's okay. George is a chill guy.
Sure hope nothing changes that. So, yeah. The evil green goblin gas lands across America and randomly infects three animals.
George, this wolf called Ralph, and this fuck-ass crocodile. Well, that sucks. They get big, shenanigans happen, Curious George is now furious George.
I am so sorry. That sucks. That's the movie.
Like I said before, Rampage is a little different from the other movies. For one, because this is actually entertaining. You know, in that popcorn flick kind of way.
Rampage is not an arthouse film. Holy But it is a decent movie to air on FX at 3:00 p. m.
right before The Day After Tomorrow. Something you'd casually have on in the background while cleaning your house. Or you can just watch all the monster scenes on YouTube.
That's also an option. The creature designs are the best thing about this. I love how all these goobers look, especially Lizzie.
Uh yeah, that's her name. It's in the manual. Lizzie has tusks.
Ralph can fly for some reason. The plot is really just following these mini kaiju as they wreck up the place and head to Chicago to take out the noise that's driving them insane. That's right.
Not only did this evil corporation create the Rampage serum, they made a noise specifically to piss them off. What is your end game here? They're going to nuke Chicago.
Sometimes with these movies, you have to wonder what The Rock's power level is. Like he straight-up gets shot then ignores the bullet after leaving the room. Did he whip out his Pip-Boy and use a stimpack?
So yeah, after destroying the signal, George goes back to normal and him and The Rock team up to bring Lizzie down. George dies. Just kidding.
George was originally actually supposed to die at the end of the movie. Something I thought they were going to do because this monkey straight-up stops breathing for 20 seconds. I thought it was a pretty bold creative decision to do that.
But uh no. The Rock literally intervened to give this movie a more cliché ending. He said, "I don't like a sad ending.
Life brings that I don't want it in my movies. There's a crocodile the size of a football stadium. We're not making Saving Private Ryan.
" That's right, The Rock. You're literally not making Saving Private Ryan. Unrelated, but one thing I love about that quote is he specifies that Izzy isn't an alligator.
She's a crocodile despite coming from Florida, which means there's going to be a lot of comments trying to correct me because I've been calling her a crocodile this whole time. Well, guess what? Lizzie is a crocodile.
No, it doesn't have to make sense. It's the Rampage lore. you.
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There's a range when it comes to disaster movies, a range I just made up. I call it the wacky meter. Like you have those movies that play the disaster completely straight.
No fun allowed. Like Greenland, it's miserable. Then you have the crazy 2012, Moonfall, stuff like that.
>> Hollywood sign, the Hollywood sign is gone. Even when billions are dying, who cares? Look at that donut roll.
San Andreas falls into an uncanny valley, an unfortunate middle ground where the disaster is too stupid to actually take seriously, but oh man, does the movie not think this is a laughing matter. Rock is mourning his daughter who drowned to death. Oh my god, and then the next he's doing this.
GTA San Andreas is about the big one hitting California, the anticipated big earthquake that will sink Los Angeles into the sea. San Andreas is that scene from 2012 but stretched out for like 2 hours. Hell, I think it even has the same plot, too.
A divorced dad has to navigate the city to find his family. Get in the car! He wins back his ex-wife in the end because the new stepdad straight up dies.
San Andreas is kind of the perfect example of rock slop. The Rock is a charismatic guy. It's the biggest piece of dog >> In Rampage, he at least worked because he had a big gun and teamed up with a giant gorilla.
The worst Rock slop is when The Rock gets nothing. When he is only there because he is The Rock and people will watch the movie. Look at this poster.
This is about an earthquake and his face takes up most of the frame. There is no reason why The Rock is in this. Rescue helicopter pilot Raymond Gaines could have been anyone.
Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, insert another bald guy from Fast and Furious. Would have been the same movie. The Rock being a big strong man does not matter to the plot at all because he has to escape the Earth collapsing.
Can't bench press your way out of this one. The Rock is our no-nonsense hero, calm and collected to a fault. Like, my man, the entire city is falling into the Earth.
Can you not be a bit more concerned? Oh my god. The Rock and his wife, mom from Spy Kids, have been drifting apart ever since one of their daughters drowned in a tragic white water rafting accident.
He blames himself because it was his idea to take the trip and also he was on the boat with her and he saw her drown and his job is to save people in situations exactly like this. And so his wife moved on to a new guy, Mr Fantastic. And man, he's fantastic.
Because The Rock needs to get back together with his wife at the end of the movie, they just make Mr Fantastic the biggest dirt bag imaginable. He starts off as a respectable normal guy. Then the second hits the fan, he immediately bails on his stepdaughter.
It's like the earthquake had the magical power of changing this guy's entire personality. He then goes on a side quest over anybody unfortunate enough to get in his way. Too bad you didn't outrun the boat, you idiot.
After watching so many disaster movies, you really pick up on the clichés. Paul Giamatti is the obligatory scientist who looks at the charts and says, "Oh god. " Time's up.
He saw it coming. He tried to warn us, yet we didn't listen. He's the one saying the most basic exposition about earthquakes anyone with a third grade education should know about.
It's so funny. Everyone in this university classroom is hearing about this stuff for the first time. Professor, do you think something that intense could happen here?
I'm sorry, did you just ask if an earthquake can happen in LA? Paul Giamatti invents a device that predicts earthquakes, which isn't a thing that exists, uh but they needed it for the plot. And while he's testing this thing out at the Hoover Dam, of course, everyone dies.
Get the hell out of there! Man, this whole sequence is something. So, his friend climbs up the dam while everything is collapsing, right?
Paul Giamatti is telling everyone to run. >> I'll be behind the barriers. Like it takes a scientist to figure that one out.
And then his friend stays back just a second longer to save this obligatory girl who is far too old enough to just be standing there. And then he dies right at the goal line. He goes full Pa Kent.
So, like the whole plot is just these two traveling to find their daughter because Mr Fantastic ran away, right? They finally get to San Francisco when suddenly, uh that If the San Andreas Fault was the one that shook, why is there a tsunami going into San Francisco? Shouldn't this have gone out to Hawaii?
That isn't how these things work. Doesn't matter though, we need the other daughter to almost drown. You know, The Rock has to save her to right the wrongs of the past.
Again, it's like poetry. The last 20 minutes is just waiting for them to not kill off the daughter because we know how this ends. Even after she literally dies.
Look at her convulsing. She drowned. Oh my god.
She doesn't breathe for like 10 minutes. This isn't cutting it close. She was dead.
He literally beats the life back into her like Larry the Lobster. And so our movie ends on a pretty hopeful note despite like tens of millions dying. And it's mainly because just like 2012, our main character is now going back together with his ex-wife.
The Rock and his family overlook the bay as the American flag unfurls and they feel optimistic about the future. What now? Now we rebuild.
When I think of sequels that couldn't get the star to return, I think of Jingle All the Way 2 with Larry the Cable Guy or The Tooth Fairy 2 with Larry the Cable Guy. The Rock is Larry the Cable Guy in Journey 2 The Mysterious Island which is ironic cuz he was the Tooth Fairy. Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of those movies you watch a decade later and go, "Wow, did it really look that bad?
" Yes, yes it did. And apparently Hollywood just needed a second one because despite Brendan Fraser not coming back, we got a sequel. This time with The Rock.
We're procrastinating out of fear, aren't we? Oh, absolutely. Which means that this was the first instance of jungle rock, a trope that would be very common a few years later, a whole genre of rock in itself.
But before we're about Journey 2, we have to talk about Journey 1. Not because there's much connecting these two, there isn't, but just look at that. How can I not?
We're still falling! Do you know Jules Verne? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Well, what if he was right? What if those stories were real? That's the premise.
Also, there's a dinosaur. This movie came out a year before Avatar. Speaking of which, sometimes you'll hear Avatar praised as a theme park ride, which means it looked nice and that's all anyone really remembered.
Well, this movie is kind of like a ride, too. Like Shrek 4D. That's not even a joke.
Like a Universal Studios ride. Please love somebody. It's more fun when you ride with your arms like these.
Those rides that always throw something at you. Your chair moves. There's smell-o-vision.
Journey to the Center of the Earth begins with this random guy dying. Trevor! It jolts Brendan Fraser wide awake, and he turns to look at that.
Turns out this badly photoshopped guy is Brendan Fraser's dead brother, who has been missing for years. Nobody knows where he went. So, like, how did he have this dream?
How does Brendan Fraser know what the cartoon dinosaur looks like before going to the center of the Earth? Is this a psychic premonition? Is this the work of the three-eyed raven?
We never find out. Ever since his disappearance, Brendan Fraser has been trying to figure out what his brother was up to, but oh no, Seth Meyers is about to cut his funding. He's the clear bad guy, because he doesn't want Brendan Fraser wasting college funds on proving that the Earth is hollow.
It's all I've got left of Max. It's been 10 years. What a jerk.
Conan would never. Anyway, Brendan Fraser's nephew, Peeta from Hunger Games, comes to town and these two have to pretend to get along despite having nothing in common. Perhaps they'll bond over their mutual enjoyment of the PSP.
Hell yeah. After having a breakthrough, these two go to Iceland where they meet Iceland girl. That's her name.
That's what I'm going with. And they'll all mutually fall into a hole like Squidward in that pirate episode. They fall into a magical world at the center of the earth filled with wondrous creatures all rendered on the PlayStation 2.
Despite the premise being about a lost world at the center of the earth, the most that really happens is they see some floating rocks, some scary fish, and get chased by that dinosaur. Jurassic Park came out in 1993. After all those shenanigans, they return home by shooting out a volcano and sledding down a mountain in a skull.
There's not much of a plot really. It's more like a series of set pieces. I guess you could say that in the end, it's all about the journey.
It's a live-action cartoon. Very Sharkboy and Lavagirl-esque, which is another way of saying everyone looks like they're in a video game and it looks god-awful. But hey, I'm sure some kids really liked it back in 2008 just like how I like Spy Kids 2 despite it looking like that.
This was meant to be watched as a 7-year-old in 4D 20 years ago and not watched at 11:00 a. m. in the year 2026 by an ever-aging man.
You don't need a big screen though to appreciate Brendan Fraser. He sure is giving it his all. He is being very Brendan Frasery.
He yells Sean a lot. He's a very good leading man. He tried his hardest and I think that's very neat.
It also makes The Rock look so much worse in comparison. They will not stop until you feed them. >> Journey to the Mysterious Island is a movie I am shocked actually came to theaters and did not immediately release on Disney DVD.
This is a sequel in really name only. This does not have the same director, nor the same writers, not even the same Seth Meyers. Nobody returned except for Josh Hutcherson.
Even his own mother left. That's rough, buddy. So, say you're an executive.
You're in charge of marketing the sequel, which isn't really a sequel at all. only guy you have left is Peeta from Hunger Games. And yeah, he's grown up, but he's not really leading man material until he fights Freddy Fazbear two decades later.
What are you supposed to do? Well, they do what any self-respecting studio does, get the Rock. You've got to do this.
And it actually worked. This made more money than the first. How?
I'll tell you how. This guy. So, let's talk about it.
Okay, okay, too much happy. That's too much happy. It's been four years since the first movie, and now Josh Hutcherson is a full-blown Vernian.
Zathura has grown up to become obsessed with all things Jules Verne. Apparently, there's a whole bunch of Vernians out there, and they send codes to each other. He even gets in trouble with the cops after trying to hack a satellite to crack a fellow Vernian's code.
Oh, lord. After getting arrested because he thought riding a motorcycle set to Green Day was cool, he gets bailed out by his new stepdad, Hank. Hey.
So, Hank, who has to go out at night to bail out his loser chud stepson, is thanked by that stepson for his inconvenience with the classic I hate you, you're not my real dad. Hey, buddy. It's just the first movie again, but instead of a Hollow Earth, it's an island.
The Rock can't connect to his almost adult stepson. How will these two bond? Oh, I have an idea.
Instead of this Jules Verne novel, it's these two. Instead of Iceland girl, we have High School Musical. The march of time has somehow made this movie even more forgettable, like a discount DVD your grandma buys at Dollar General because she thought it was Jumanji.
The Rock isn't just Hank, stepdad with a heart of gold. He is really just The Rock. He's the guy that can do anything, solve any problem.
Like he stops Sean from getting arrested by just showing up. He's not even a cop. They just listen to him anyway.
He's just that alpha. That said, The Rock is probably the best part of the movie. He's really surrounded by a cast of boring or just plain unlikable characters.
And the worst offender is shockingly Michael Caine as the grandpa. Turns out grandpa is the biggest Vernian of them all, and he was the one sending the coded messages the entire time. Ooh, I find this development really hilarious because it just makes this whole Vernian world so much smaller.
At first, I thought there was like a whole group of Vernians or something, but no, it's only this kid and his grandpa who give a about this stuff. Despite the last movie never bringing it up, the Andersons were some real adventurers this whole time. Oh yeah, the family's called the Andersons.
I forgot to say that till now. And what's incredible is that the Andersons, this family of Vernian scholars, aren't even that good at it. Sean's been trying to crack this code for a while, and he just can't figure it out.
And he never figures it out. They only solve the puzzle because The Rock casually strolls in and deciphers it in seconds. The island is real.
Are you serious? When they finally meet Grandpa on the island, Grandpa is kind of a dick. Your stepfather.
Well, maybe that's why it took so long, eh? Buddy, he figured this whole thing out. Your idiot grandson didn't.
Definitive proof that you are not an Anderson. Yeah, he's not an Anderson. He's not related to you.
That's how marriage works. The way Grandpa is just so confident in his introduction, you think, "Wow, this is a guy who has it all figured out. " Why don't you lead the way?
Oh, actually, we want to live through the night. He looks the part. He speaks the part.
But, uh, no. This guy is a idiot. You see, the mysterious island is actually Atlantis.
And Atlantis periodically sinks back into the ocean from time to time. Grandpa says that it will be years until the island sinks, like 14 years or so. Then The Rock looks at some puddles and goes, "Uh, no, this island is sinking like right now.
" This island isn't due to sink for 14 years. I kind of hate this family. Sean acts all cocky and adventurous when the most resourceful thing he ever did in the first movie was just Google on a PSP.
I mean, he did unscramble some codes at like 13, but somehow at 17, he doesn't know what coordinates are. Uh, what are those? Coordinates.
Longitude, latitude. How are you just finding out about latitude and longitude? This is your job.
Imagine if in National Treasure, instead of having that American Revolution autism, Nicholas Cage and his dad were just frauds. They solve nothing. The Rock is the one who finds the treasure.
Now, you might be asking, "Where is Brendan Fraser? Is Is rotting in an apartment? " It's kind of weird we're going on a Jules Verne themed adventure where his nephew is going to find his grandpa, Brendan Fraser's dad, and nobody ever bothers to contact the man or mention his name.
Even at the end when his grandpa is back and it's like a big happy family reunion. Everyone is here except Brendan Fraser. So, film theory.
I'm going to say that these two hate each other. At the end of the first movie, Sean ends up taking home a few pounds of diamonds from the center of the earth. Yeah, a few pounds.
That's like a few hundred millions of dollars worth of gems. But for some reason in this movie, Sean can't even afford to pay for a helicopter flight. Brendan Fraser somehow came into enough money to start his own research lab, which isn't cheap at all.
This isn't opening a lemonade stand. So, I have a theory. My theory is Brendan Fraser just stole the diamonds.
He just stole his 13-year-old's diamonds in Minecraft and ran. Nobody in his family ever saw him again. Sean even says something like, "Everyone I knew left me.
" I've had a lot of people take off on me in my life. What does that mean? Your dad died.
Your mom was, well, recasted, but he doesn't know that. The only person this means is Brendan Fraser, his uncle, his replacement father figure, stole his diamonds and future and left. The only priceless rock in his life now is Dwayne Johnson.
Oh yeah, they set up for a third movie where they would have gone to the moon. They never did. I'm blind, you.
Title kind of says it all. Skyscraper is Die Hard but worse. It's The Towering Inferno but bad.
I like bad movies. Like if a bad movie is at least entertaining, if it's so bad it's good, I give it a pass. But there is nothing worse to me than a bad movie that's just so boring.
Skyscraper is one of those movies. It's tedious, monotonous, a perfectly four out of 10 mid-size action romp with a lot of CGI and forgettable characters. But hey, there are still a few differences here.
For one, this one has The Rock. He's missing a leg. That's right, ex-SWAT officer The Rock lost his leg after a failed game of Rainbow Six Siege and he hasn't wanted to log back on since.
He lives a simpler life now in Hong Kong working as a security consultant for the largest skyscraper in the world, The Pearl, a city in the sky. I want to talk about my favorite character in Skyscraper, the skyscraper itself. More thought was put into this fictional building than making a likable movie.
I was obsessed with Popular Mechanics as a kid, so I just eat this up. I love fake buildings. I love stuff like this.
Ironically, for a forgettable movie, the building itself is pretty memorable. I actually just saw it in a Metaball Studios video while making this video. They got an actual architecture firm to make this concept, the same firm who made the Burj Khalifa.
But like this one's a thousand feet taller. It's a self-sustaining city in the sky. It's got a park.
It's got a waterfall. It's got a big old ball. It's got the most high-tech security in the world until it doesn't.
Oh we got a Nakatomi Tower situation and The Rock has to stop the bad guys from doing whatever they're trying to do. Who cares? They took The Rock's family hostage.
Master Chief helped them do it. That's the plot. There's so many dumb moments you would think I'd find ironic enjoyment out of like the rock using his prosthetic leg in stupid ways.
He jumps like 50 feet one time. He kicks a guy so hard he explodes. But like that's it.
That's the most entertaining part of the movie. When it tries to be a real movie with a plot and everything, it just wears you down. So the owner of this building is being extorted by some crime syndicate, right?
But he pulled a reverse Uno card and hacked them instead. Got all their names and information. Instead of giving that information to you know, the cops like a normal person or uploading it to a server in case they try to come after him, he just put it on a flash drive and hid it in the building.
So these really bad guys know where this really bad information is stored physically in one location and all it takes is taking down the building to clear their names. How did you expect this was going to go down? You need to leave now.
Security alert. So the Rock's ex-partner Master Chief teams up with them and it's really funny because you think he's going to be a bigger character, but then the Rock kills him in act one. Sorry Jimmy Rings, no new season of Halo for you.
The skyscraper the entire movie gets slowly engulfed in flames, right? All because the bad guys shut down every safety protocol to break into the building. This includes the fire extinguishers.
After all the bad guys are gone and explode, they press the fire extinguisher button and somehow it works. This building looks like this. It should be a husk, yet somehow it can still put out the fire everywhere.
How is there anything working within these walls? It's the biggest asspull at the end of the movie. So, yeah, Skyscraper, it's it's all right.
It's boring. Well, I think we learned an important lesson today. The Rock was in some pretty forgettable movies.
A stunning revelation, I know. The funniest thing about watching all of these is realizing that they would have never gone to theaters today. If a movie like Skyscraper came out today, that would have been an Amazon Prime original.
San Andreas would have been an Apple TV exclusive. Maybe that's for the best. Maybe The Rock needs these mid-size streaming movies, cuz I have a sinking feeling that with each box office failure, we get one movie closer to The Rock running for president.
See y'all in 2032.
