George, George, George of the jungle.
Hmn, when they said this was a based on a video game it took me awhile to recognize just what game they were talking about. I finally realized they were talking about this game:
Uhm, yeah. I remember playing that. Which begs the question…why? What screamed MUST SEE MOVIE about this game I don’t think I’ll ever know. The closest thing to reason I could come up with is that some Hollywood suits wanted to cash in on the popularity of Kaiju amongst movie goers at the moment (a popularity that seemed to be rapidly dwindling to me). But what do I know. They opted to sweetin the pot by tossing in another big beast, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson to bring a little star power to the proceedings.
The film looks simple enough, Dwayne’s Gorilla buddy comes in contact with some chemical that makes him grow huge. He becomes one of several animals that have had the same thing happen. Big massive animals cause destruction…duh. All because of ‘evil’ and or ‘dumb’ government reasons…yada yada yada. Straight out of the Hollywood template factory. An interesting note is that in the original game the monsters used to be actual humans, and under certain circumstances would revert back to humans. From a storytelling prespective that could be interesting. But it doesn’t look like they’re going that route. Ah well.
If you love to watch big creatures smash things (or really, really like the Rock) this is probably the flick for you. My only question is…will they shrink ole Georgie boy back down to regular size again?
Probably not.
Rampage starring Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Joe Manganiello and a bunch of huge hairy beasts smashes into theaters April 20th….2018.
