What Dwayne Johnson's Rampage Movie Actually Will Be About

If you’re anything like me (and I’m really sorry if that’s the case), you had two thoughts when you first heard that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was going to make a movie based on the 1980’s arcade game Rampage. The first thought was "oh hell yes" and the second thought was "wait...hang on...what?" The concept seems to be both tons of fun and utterly ridiculous at the same time. Well, it turns out that The Rock agrees, at least on the "fun" part.

The most electrifying man in all of entertainment took to Instagram to announce that the new film has brought on a pair of screenwriters, but in doing so he talked a bit about how the film’s setup will work and it actually looks like they’re doing a quick reverse on the game’s premise for the film.

We have a shot to raise the bar and make something cool with this one as the basic storyline is three mutated gigantic monsters (Silverback, Alligator and Wolf) destroy major cities and landmarks across the US. … If you were a fan of the video game like I was, then you KNOW how bad ass and fun this movie can be. I'll try not to screw it up.

The Rampage classic game was designed, very simply, as most games designed to steal quarters from 10-year-olds in 1986 were. Three giant mutated monsters destroyed buildings and got points for it. One was a King Kong-like ape named George, one was a Godzilla-like giant lizard named Lizzie, and the other was a giant Wolfman, who was named Ralph. The monsters would take damage from humans and if they took too much, they would shrink down to what they were before the mutation: people. In the original game the characters were people that became monsters, but based on Johnson’s comments it appears that the monsters in the film version will start as the animals, rather than humans.

From this we can extrapolate that the movie will be about the people trying to take the monsters down, rather than it actually being about the monsters. The Rock will likely play our lead heroic human, probably some sort of military man charged with stopping the monsters. I was totally looking forward to him turning into George the giant ape. Oh well.

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Also, apparently Lizzie was actually a giant alligator this whole time? Who knew? Is this apparent change a deal breaker for a Rampage movie, or just a changing of a minor detail? Let us know what you think below.

Dirk Libbey
Content Producer/Theme Park Beat

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian. Armchair Imagineer. Epcot Stan. Future Club 33 Member.