Reaction & Review | Rampage

 

Welcome, one and all, to the "Video Game Movie Marathon" here Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be checking out a film from 2018. That movie is "Rampage".

Now, I have a bit of a story about this movie. You see, when I was originally scheduling what movies to cover for this "Video Game Movie Marathon", I wanted to save a spot for Uwe Boll. Because it wouldn't be a "Video Game Movie Marathon" if I didn't cover at least ONE movie from him. For those who don't know who I'm talking about, Uwe Boll is a very infamous German filmmaker, who was notorious for making movies based off video games that, ironically enough, had next to nothing to do with the actual games they were based off of. And there was one of his movies that I wanted to find and review for this marathon. Sadly though, I was not able to locate it. So, a little bit of a spoiler here, you're not gonna see any movies from Boll in this marathon.

Now, while I wasn't able to find the movie I originally wanted to cover, I did happen to remember that Boll also made a movie based off the Rampage series. And I've heard good things about it, because, apparently, it was one of the only video game movies that people spoke fondly of, whenever they think of Bolls films. So, I thought, why not? I can probably find that and give it a fair shake. Now, here's where this story gets a little interesting. You see, I actually did end up finding a movie called "Rampage". However...it wasn't Bolls version of it. No, no, no. The version I found was THIS "Rampage" from a few years ago. Which, I totally forgot even existed. So...you know what? I may as well just stick with what I got, even if it wasn't intentional. And it is still based off the video game, so I can still count it for this series.

Now, for those of you who have never heard of "Rampage", the video game, the game's premise was that you get to control humans that get turned into monsters, and you just destroy shit for fun while trying to survive against the military. It was one of those old school games that you mostly played on the arcades. I didn't play it on the arcades, though. I played a little bit of it from one of those collection games for the GameCube. And it was pretty fun for a game that was originally released on the arcades.

As for the film itself that I'm covering tonight, like I said, I totally forgot that this movie even existed. I know that it stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and that's about it. I have no idea if he's the right person to be in this kind of film. I don't even know if this thing is loyal to the games. Considering that it is a live-action movie, chances are that it's not gonna be the case. But you know what? I'm still hoping for this thing to be entertaining. And that's really all I care about for movies is if they're entertaining or not. Good? I don't know. But the only way I'm gonna find out if this thing is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Rampage".

11 minutes later

All right, well, that's something I've never seen a gorilla do. I've never seen a gorilla use their middle finger to give the bird to someone. It was...kinda funny. Not ha-ha funny. But still, it was sorta amusing.

19 minutes later

So, George has been shot down by the tranquilizers from the helicopter. Well...honestly, at this point, it was probably for the best. Because what the fuck else was Davis gonna do if George was able to get away? Calm it down to death? I don't know, but, honestly, it makes Davis a little bit stupid. And, so far, the only character I actually like in this movie is George. Everyone else...not as of yet. I'm hoping that changes as the movie goes on, though.

4 minutes later

OK, that was sorta cool to see that wolf monster just jump at the helicopter and grab the pilot with it's mouth. I will say that bit there was pretty cool.

9 minutes later

All right, I have a question and I'm probably gonna regret asking this, but I want to ask it anyway. We KNOW where George and the wolf came from. Are they gonna explain at all about where the crocodile came from? Because we haven't heard a peep about it since it took a bite out of one of those canisters from early on in the movie. I know I'm probably asking a lot from a movie based off a video game, but I still want SOME kind of explanation. It's really starting to bother me a bit.

11 minutes later

So, let me if I understand this. The reason why Davis dislikes people is because poachers killed George's mother when he was a baby gorilla, and that, somehow, makes people look bad to him? I mean, OK, what they did George's mother was fucking horrible, but it's also a really shallow and kinda stupid reason to dislike people in general. I'm sorry, guys, but it makes the Rock's character look rather unlikable. And, at this point, I kinda hope he gets what's coming to him. I strongly doubt it, considering he's the main character and all, but damn it, I got to have some hope.

12 minutes later

Well, this is it, guys. We're finally getting to the part where the title of the movie is actually living up to the video game. Took the movie over an hour to get to that point, but hey, at least it's better than nothing, right? Even though the movie has mostly been boring as shit, and there's still no sign of the fucking crocodile monster. I'm not too happy about that part. But who knows? Maybe the last 40 minutes will actually make up for all that time and actually start to get interesting. I strongly doubt it at this point, but still, I can always be proven wrong.

9 minutes later

Wait, she actually shot Davis? OK, well, hopefully that's the end of the Rock's character. I may regret saying that later if he ends up turning alive, but, for now, I just want to enjoy my moment of "I called it", because I kinda want to be right for once.

2 minutes later

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a fucking second here! So, Davis ends up turning alive, which I figured he would anyways, and his explanation was "Well, I think they missed all of my vital organs". Um...I'm sorry, but he was SHOT! Unless if he was wearing a bulletproof vest, then his explanation is the equivalent to "fuck you, that's why"! God damn it all...I'm really to starting to hate Dwayne's Johnson's character at this point. And I really can't wait for this stupid movie to end.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Rampage". Thank God, it's fucking over. I'm gonna shut this thing off...OK. Well, I kinda had my expectations set pretty low, but I still wanted it to be interesting. And I'm gonna tell you, now, the few interesting bits in this movie are overshadowed by the bland, boring, and stupid bullshit that happens in this movie.

So, I guess I should start by talking about the writing. And I'm gonna start with pacing. I've often talked about this in the past, but pacing can either make or break your movies. And in the case of "Rampage", they certainly do the latter justice. Do you want to know how long it takes for this movie to live up it's title? The answer to that is an hour and five minutes! That is WAY too fucking long to actually get to the part where it's suppose to live up to the video game. Because before that, we don't get to see very much rampaging outside of a few skirmishes that really don't amount to much other than some decent visuals of the monsters. And, of course, we have our bare bones plot. Which, to be fair, the video game didn't really have much of a plot anyways, so I wasn't expecting Oscar worthy material here. But because this is a big budget film from Warner Bros., they had to stretch it out to almost an hour and 50 minutes, so we can have something resembling a story. And that would've been fine, expect, again, the pacing for this movie is fucking awful because of how long it takes to get to the actual part where it lives up to the video game. Now, to give you a comparison, I'm gonna compare this with another movie put out by Warner Bros. that came out a year prior to this one. And that would be "Suicide Squad". You see, in "Suicide Squad" it took over half an hour to get that group together so that they can form the Suicide Squad. But the difference between this movie and that one is that, in "Suicide Squad", they actually took the time to establish who our characters are, their backstories, and why they were chosen. And it took roughly about 35 minutes to do that. Now, could they have shortened the time? Oh, most certainly. That was one of my only issues I had with that movie at the time. But looking back on it, I actually think it helped fleshed out the characters more. And then after that 35 minutes goes by, the film actually kicks off it's plot. Now, I know a lot of people really didn't care about "Suicide Squad", but I actually thought the movie was pretty good. Again, they could've shortened the time to get the actual group together, but, overall, it was just a minor complaint in the end. So, "Suicide Squad" handled it's pacing pretty well for the most part. This movie, on the other hand, just feels way too fucking long. And when you take over an HOUR to get to what your movie was living up to, then you have already set yourself up for failure, because your pacing is fucking dogshit! And that is depressing on a whole host of levels.

Now, as for the writing itself, something really bothered me as I was watching the film. And I mentioned it earlier, but I have to mention it again here. And to explain this, I have to start at the beginning. So, at the beginning of the film, we see a survivor trying to escape from a space station that was about to explode. But she can't escape unless she retrieves these canisters that contain pathogen. So, she does go and retrieves three of the pathogen canisters. Keep that number in mind for a little later. Now, she's not alone, because there was some mutated monster that was experimented on this space station that's still alive. So our lone survivor makes it, and the space station explodes along with the monster. However, because the monster did so much damage to the window of the shuttle, it ends up breaking apart as she's killed, and then the three canisters all get shot to different parts of the U.S. One of them lands at a Wildlife Sanctuary in San Diego, which is where Geroge is living. Another one lands in the middle of bumsville Wyoming, where the wolf presides. And the other lands in some swamp, where the crocodile eats it. Now...about that crocodile. I am not kidding when I say this, but before it reaches Chicago towards the big climax of the movie, NOBODY mentions this fucking crocodile at all from anyone! They mention George and the wolf, but not the crocodile. I have no idea WHY they don't mention it. Because remember, there were exactly three canisters of pathogen that were shot towards the U.S. And our lone survivor was told to retrieve all three of the canisters. Did our two painfully evil corporate villains at Energyne forget that there was a third canister that had entered Earth's atmosphere? I guess they must've suffered brain damage, because they don't even bother to go and try to find the location of the third canister. Now, one could say that "Well, the crocodile ate the third canister, so there was no need to go find it". Yet, they were able to use their resources to go and locate George and the wolf, who were exposed to the pathogen, mind you, but nobody bothers to go and find this crocodile. Hell, even when the movie finally explains where this fucking crocodile was located, nobody before that bothers to mention that there's some giant monster swimming around the coast of Florida. Why did nobody around the Florida area bother to mention that there's some huge monster swimming around the coast? Better yet, why didn't anybody in Florida report any of this shit to the military? I honestly have no idea. My guess is that it was either the monster was swimming deep underwater that nobody could see it, or the people in Florida are really that fucking stupid. Again, I have no idea, but that shit really bothered me, because it's something that should not have been overlooked.

As for our characters, well, just about all of them incredibly shallow and lifeless. And, you know what? For an action movie, that is totally fine. Because you're not really expecting a ton of depth when it comes to this type of genre. But at the same time, you still want a reason to care about these characters. And I'm gonna tell you, the only character who has any semblance of depth and likability is George the gorilla. Because you really do end up caring about George, especially knowing that he ended up getting caught up in this pathogen bullshit that made him go on a rampage (pun intended of course). And you hope that he ends up getting cured in the end. Well, I'm not gonna spoil that part if you're really curious about seeing this movie. But on the other hand, you really have to get through the other characters. And on that note, I have to talk about Dwayne Johnson's character Davis. Davis is a primatologist who communicates with George through sign language, and he actually is his friend. And some of that is OK. But it's where his reasoning for not liking people is something that I kinda have a problem with. You see, as I mentioned earlier, we get a flashback to when George, as a baby gorilla, sees his mother being killed by poachers. And Davis is explaining this to Kate, one of our other main characters. He says that because of that moment, and because he had been in wars and killed a lot of people, he realizes that people can go to any lengths to get what they want. And that, somehow, is enough to make him want to dislike people. Now again, I am not going to defend the actions of the poachers that killed George's mother. I am NEVER going to defend that. However, I also can't defend Davis's reasoning for disliking people. Why? Because poachers are a fucking minority group. I don't care what anyone tells me, poachers are a minority group at best, and that shouldn't be enough of a reason to dislike people in general because of one horrific action that happened. Now, he mentions that he was in wars back when he was a member of the military, and I can't really answer that part as to why he dislikes people, but again, this one lone reason shouldn't be enough of a reason for him to dislike people. Because when he's at the Wildlife Sanctuary in San Diego, he's interacting with other people that are interested in studying animals. So obviously, he has some kind of a bond with those people. And that, at least to me, kinda kills this "disliking people personality" because he's getting along with other people at the Wildlife Sanctuary.

Oh, and I can't forget the most obvious thing that bothered the shit out of me in regards to what happens to him, such as when he got shot by our painfully evil villains. He ends up getting shot from a pistol, and he falls to the ground. And then about 2 minutes later, he's back up and running like nothing's happened to him! Mind you, he was SHOT somewhere around the stomach area, so that tells me that he should've been bleeding like crazy. That, or he was wearing a bulletproof vest after he and Kate left the military base. Well, guess what? He wasn't wearing one, and his answer as to why he's still standing is because "Oh, well, I guess they must've missed all of my vital organs". I'm sorry, guys, but there's this thing called 'the suspension of disbelief'. And you can only suspend that for so long, until a movie like this starts to insult your intelligence! When a character is up and about with no real explanation as to how he survived a fucking gunshot wound, then the only answer that the movie wanted to give out was fuck you that's why. And that is bullshit! Not only that, but it makes Davis look like a Gary-Stu. Unless, again, he was wearing some sort of bulletproof vest that we never see, and the fact that we never saw him bleed from that gunshot wound. But since the movie wanted to give out the half-assed reasoning of fuck you that's why, then that makes Dwayne Johnson's character all the more unlikable. While I'm on the subject of characters, well, like I said, nobody here has any real depth or personality. Which, again, for an action film, that's totally fine. But you still want to have a reason to care about these characters. And the movie couldn't do that. We have Kate, who's pretty much along for the ride. Russel, who has a Texan accent, and is a federal agent. And we have our two painfully evil corporate villains at Energyne. In fact, they're so painfully evil that they would've been laughed out of COBRA if they attempted to join up with them. So yeah, our characters mostly suck, with the one lone exception being George.

So, with writing out of the way, let's get into the acting. Now, I will start by saying that I'm not the biggest fan of Dwayne Johnson's film career. When compared to his stuff during his days in the WWF/WWE, it's almost non-existent. Because when he was "The Rock", his promo work was so fucking legendary, that it made him one of the top stars during the Attitude Era. Unfortunately, by the time he left WWE, his acting in his movies were definitely toned down. And most of his acting sounds very stale to me. Now, when I say it's stale, I don't mean all of his acting is horrible, but what I'm getting at is that I'm not a fan of his acting style. It just feels so standard and safe that he really doesn't stand out to me as this big actor that should feel more important. And I would probably feel more out of his performance if he actually tried. But in this movie, it just feels so bland and uninspired that it really feels like it was phoned in. And I don't know if it was because of the script he was given, or if he wasn't given enough to work with for his character. But either way, the acting from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson just doesn't feel right to me. As for the rest of the cast, most of them did OK, but it wasn't anything that I would call memorable. At least some of them were trying to work with their given characters. And even though just about all of them were completely shallow, they were still able to try and make them work. And that's kinda sad, especially when you consider that Dwayne Johnson gets the top billing in this movie, and he phones in the weakest showing. Words cannot describe how depressing that is.

Special effects in this thing are great. Obviously, all of the monsters are rendered in CG, and all of that looks really good. I really liked some of the shots in this thing where you get to see the monsters just do what they do best, and that is to destroy shit. The wolf monster actually kinda surprised me a couple of times, such as when we get to see him jump towards a helicopter and use his mouth to pull out the pilot, and watch as the helicopter goes down. That looked pretty cool. What I'm also impressed by, and I don't know if this was accurate to the games or not, is when the wolf monster, at one point, sprouts out wings. That shit almost took me by surprise. Now I admit, it's been a long time since I last played the Rampage video game, but I don't remember the wolf monster ever sprouting wings. I could be totally wrong on that, but again, it still looked really fucking cool for, like, the one time that it did that. Who knows, maybe I might look up some gameplay videos of Rampage and see if that was actually a thing or not. But anyway, the special effects in this thing are great. And the final act is certainly pretty cool, if you're able to tolerate the horrendous pacing to get to that point.

Camerawork here is great. Lighting is great. Sound-mix is mixed perfectly. The music is incredibly forgetful. I couldn't tell you a single piece of music that was memorable. It was just a very generic score that you're not gonna remember the film by. So, all of the technical stuff works fine. But then again, this is a big budget film from Warner Bros., so someone over there would have to commit a horrible sin if they got any of the technical shit wrong.

But I also have to consider that, even though all of the technical stuff works great, it's not really gonna be something that nobody is going to remember this film by. The one thing that matters most in movies is the writing. And that's where this movie falters completely. So, with that being said, can I recommend "Rampage"? No. Unless if you're someone who is a die-hard fan of Dwayne Johnson's film career and you absolutely have to watch every movie that he stars in, then there's no reason for you to watch this thing. As a video game movie, it sucks. As an action film, it sucks. It's just a shitty, boring action movie. And after thinking about it, I kinda wished that I found Bolls version of "Rampage". I doubt it would've been good, but it certainly would've been better than what we got here. And after I said that I totally forgot that this film existed, well...I kinda wished it would've stayed that way, because this thing just sucked ass so much that I'm gonna have to find something else to watch that will, hopefully, get this horrible thing out of my mind. And you know what? I just recently bought "Godzilla: The Series", which was an animated series that I happened to remember watching back in the day, and I ended up rather liking it. So, I'm gonna go marathon a few episodes of that. Because since it does involve monsters and destruction, it's probably gonna be a hell of a lot better than what was shown in this movie. And I can't wait to trade this stupid thing when I get the chance.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.