I’ve done a lot of terrible looking carpentry, probably for the same reason. That’s what they paid me to do.
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“Baldrick, can you smell what The Blackadder is cookin?”
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Weirdly, the thumbnail for the video looks more like Vin Diesel than Dwayne Johnson.
Shazam was dumb fun in the best possible way.
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You’re probably a much better carpenter than the Rock is an actor though. Yes, his material is often second rate, but he’s not nearly good enough to raise it beyond that.
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The guy is periodically incredible in the right thing. The big one early on was Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty that was expected to be a major hit. The movie basically bombed, terrible reviews and mediocre box office. But Johnson got raves. It had been expected to be his big jump to “serious” movies, the first time he was billed as Dwayne Johnson and they made a big point of never uttering “The Rock” during early marketing. And then it just didn’t.
It just seemed like the better material and the comedy work he was getting attention for stopped coming his way after that. It’s sorta been Punch Fest 4: More Punching. He doesn’t seem to get a lot of work worth “rising beyond”. His filmography is not good.
There’s very little point in out acting the rest of Fast and The Furious’s cast, and apparently Vin Diesel will fire you if you do. That’s kind of where this guy lives for the most part. But I’ve heard good things about Jumanji and especially Jungle cruise, two things that wouldn’t much interest me if there wasn’t buzz about practically everyone being quite good in them.
He has been in 28 films which have earned an average $96 million per film, placing him #16 among the all-time highest earning stars.
By some measures his films may be not good, but not by the industry’s measure.
I’m guessing if he wants to go the “develop my serious actor cred” route, he has the clout to push for it. He could always do the Soderberg / Clooney package of doing a big box office movie to finance his own pet project…
Sure. Kinda my point. He’s making plenty of money being The Rock, sorta but mostly following the action hero model. Which is mostly in trash and direct release things these days. He did the credibility thing, not to long ago, and it flopped.
But to all appearances he can act if it’s what’s called for. It’s just not called for in what he’s usually hired for. I just don’t think that’s why anyone is hiring The Rock, nor do I think PT Anderson is calling on a regular basis.
But the things where he does surprise people are almost uniformly comedies, and family movies. When and where he’s personally invested. So maybe this is a good match.
ETA
Oh and I don’t think it can be stressed how much of that average is carried by the Fast and Furious movies. They’re objectively terrible, but objectively entertaining as fuck. And they make absurd amounts of money. Give Marvel and Star Wars a run for their money box office wise these days, with a fraction of the budget.
But the other thing that stands out financially with Johnson’s films is they don’t lose money. Even his biggest flops tend to turn a small profit. There’s a lot there not worth watching. But no one goes bankrupt making THE ROCK movies.
The dude put in a lot of time and effort learning to sing just so he could voice Maui in a Disney movie. I admit thinking his transition from cartoonish professional wrestler to big-screen actor seemed like a joke 20 years ago but by all appearances he’s been doing the work to earn whatever cred he’s got.
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Who is playing Black Eve?
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You do know it’s not Adam and Eve, right?
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Oh well.
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