How The Rock Restored The Action Genre To Its Goofy Glory
It's official: we can all smell what The Rock is cooking.
Think about it: when did The Rock become one of the biggest stars in the universe? Even for fans, it’s hard to pinpoint. He’s only been a movie star since the early 2000s (and ‘star’ is a very loose term — some of those films were real bad) but it kind of seems like he’s always been around — like we all just have positive memories of him implanted in our brains à la Dawn Summers.
The fact of the matter is, through sheer persistence Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (he goes by both names, so forgive the chopping and changing) a former college footballer and wildly popular wrestler, has become the biggest box office star in the world. Since appearing in The Mummy Returns in 2001, The Rock has made at least two films per year. In both 2013 and 2015 he was named the number one international box office star, last year generating $1.48 billion in revenue. Every couple of days it seems like we hear about him starring in some new, high-concept blockbuster franchise.
So how did this happen? How did a guy who was primarily known for being that wrestler with the funny eyebrow raise, become the biggest moneymaker in Hollywood? An actor who has made many, many more bad movies than good ones? To my mind the answer is simple: The Rock revived the charismatic action hero caricature of the 1980s in a landscape where most ‘good’ action blockbusters had to be deeply serious and needlessly complicated. In a genre that was almost swallowed by dark anti-heroes who cannot (or chose not to) save a corrupt world, The Rock harks back to a time when the hero could save the day, and deliver an excellent one-liner to boot.
In short, in a world of brooding one man vigilantes, The Rock is the whole fucking cavalry.
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“Can You Smell What The Rock Is Cooking?”
After a stint at college football, Dwayne Johnson moved into professional wrestling, starting out at WWE in 1996. He’s definitely not the first wrestler to cross over into mainstream pop culture, but he’s probably the only one to make a seamless and lasting transition to acting (sorry, Hulk Hogan). During the late 1990s, The Rock’s popularity was immense; he was referred to as “The People’s Champion” even though one of his bits involved insulting the audience. It was easy to see why: this guy was funny, he was weird (who would have thought that a wrestler would end up playing so much acoustic guitar?) and he was willing to keep up the charade out of the ring. The Rock was always playing ‘The Rock’ and he never broke character.
When you think about it, there isn’t that big a chasm between wrestling and classic action films. Both gigs involve cartoon feats of strength, hammy facial expressions and impassioned monologues, and elaborate performances of a ramped up masculinity, that equates gender with play-acting.
“Wrestling is superhero play-acting,” says David Shoemaker, writing about The Rock’s wrestling career for Grantland. “The Rock’s entire presence, in retrospect, feels like an in-joke on the nature of professional wrestling. His moves were phoney, his personality was hammy, and yet despite all that, his act never came off as insulting… When he asked fans if they smelled what the Rock is cookin’, it was as if he was inviting them in on the joke. When he raised his eyebrow he was winking at the fourth wall.”
The skits, fake feuds and unbridled enthusiasm for professional wrestling is similar to young people cheering at the screen when Rambo takes down another enemy, or John McClane swears profusely while hunting German terrorists. It doesn’t need to feel real, it just needs to feel like a spectacle. And boy oh boy, did The Rock love to entertain.
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The 1980s And The Evolution Of The Action Blockbuster
In the 1970s, action as a genre was mainly dominated by marital arts films from Hong Kong and Japan, and gritty dramas like Dirty Harry (which did have one-liners, but not really the kind that made you want to cheer). The 1980s then saw a saturation of big-budget blockbusters that set the foundation of the genre as we now know it. Films like Bloodsport, Terminator, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Commando and Die Hard are still referenced in movies today.
It would be too simplistic to say that the whole of the ’80s was defined by one kind of action hero. Writing for Rolling Stone, David Ehrlich put forward two alternatives: “human cartoons, with biceps strong enough to carry an entire movie” (like the hyper-masculine Sylvester Stallone) and the cynical everyday guy stuck in a bad situation (like Bruce Willis in Die Hard and Kurt Russell in Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, or any John Carpenter movie really). These caricatures were connected by unrealistic feats performed by men who had been pushed too far, a loose moral code and the ability to deliver a killer one-liner while handling a machine gun.
The main difference between action films in the 1980s and now is that, back then, it didn’t really matter if the stories had no basis in reality. Real-world consequences had no bearing on the plot; these films were allowed to relish in their own silliness. Terrible things happened to these heroes, but the films were still schlocky tales of ultra-violence, designed for gasps and cheers. Sure you were worried about the fate of Sarah Connor, but you weren’t so worried that you wanted the T-101 to stop blowing up things (Was that just me? Maybe I’m a bad person).
People flocked to the cinema to see whatever Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Jean Claude Van Damme and Kurt Russell were in, because they were funny, likable in their righteousness/total lack of righteousness, ludicrously macho, and sometimes they struggled to overcome the forces around them.
“This was pretty much the hallmark of the ’80s hero: Losing the fight, getting totally crushed, and then getting up and carrying on despite all the broken bones and pain,” Charlie Jane Anders says on io9. “Back then, people used the word “rugged” a lot when talking about action heroes, and ‘rugged’ to me denotes the idea of being able to take punishment.”
The Rock fits squarely in this canon. The flexing muscle-man with a clenched jaw, concerned with chivalry and the concept of family, who is self-aware enough to say funny shit just to make people cheer. You can almost imagine him being an Arnie alternative — he would have nailed “Hasta la vista, baby” — if only he could keep those eyebrows in check. What’s even sweeter, is that this is a comparison that both action stars seem to dig.
At some point, what audiences wanted out of an action movie changed. This could be for a variety of reasons: perhaps by the late-1990s, the kind of masculinity exhibited in the ’80s style films wasn’t attractive any more. Franchises like Mission Impossible and the Bourne movies still revolved around impossible feats of revenge, but there were less one-liners and more brooding. The darker an action film was, the more critically accomplished it seemed. Christopher Nolan has been repeatedly praised for “rebooting the blockbuster” in the last decade, through films like Inception and The Dark Knight — stories completely devoid of knowing winks and ‘kill-lines’. Even James Bond, once the silliest action hero of them all, was turned into a grieving, weary warrior.
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“Daddy’s Gotta Go To Work”
Throughout the 2000s, The Rock kept making movies. Yes, most of them were bad. But he seemed to have an uncanny knack for making unfunny films kind of okay. It soon became clear that he was at his best when he was making fun of himself and of the concept of action heroes more generally.
In 2011, The Rock starred as Hobbs in Fast Five. It was a part that came about because Vin Diesel had read that fans of The Fast and The Furious franchise wanted to see them fight onscreen (it was worth it and just like the old ’80s action heroes, they both got plenty bloody and bruised). Although the character is meant to be a foil to our dream team of fast and furious drivers, The Rock’s over-the-top likability meant that he became an instant fan favourite. Through Hobbs, The Rock solidified his status as a walking talking bicep who did cool shit like driving an army tank around and becoming a baddie that people were actually rooting for. Fast Five had the biggest opening weekend of the franchise.
The Rock wasn’t afraid to play second fiddle and he was rewarded for it; the emotional weight was not placed on his shoulders and thus he could be as overblown as he wanted. By Furious 7, this involved but was not limited to: saving his partner by pushing them out of an exploding building, threatening Jason Statham by saying: “You just earned yourself a dance with the devil, boy”, repeatedly using the word “woman” especially in the context of telling his colleague she had done a fantastic job and he was going to write her a glowing reference (he’s an equal opportunity hero, you see) and of course, breaking his way out of a cast.
The Rock is the classic ’80s action hero but with one caveat: he has an Instagram account, in which he loves to talk about puppies, his baby daughter and how powerful and strong women are. He also uses it to connect with his fans, showing just as much unabashed enthusiasm about his films as they do. In an Instagram post yesterday, The Rock uploaded a photo of himself with a ridiculous beard and a ridiculous leather vest on the set of the new Fast 8 film, explaining that: “If I was going to return for another FAST & FURIOUS I wanted to come in and disrupt the franchise in a cool way that got fans fired up and their blood pumping to see a new version of Hobbs and his “Daddy’s gotta go to work” mentality”.
At this stage it’s kind of hard to know where ‘The Rock: the character’ ends and ‘The Rock: the blockbuster star’ begins, but maybe that’s the idea. He’s so sincere and goofy that it almost breaks your heart.
In a piece for Vulture about the new generation of action hero, Adam Sternbergh says that in his physicality, The Rock “conforms so completely to a classic conception of the action hero that now seems outdated and possibly obsolete”. I disagree that this kind of action hero is no longer relevant nor that he completely conforms to an outdated model (for one, Dwayne Johnson is mixed-race and thus is still an anomaly in the largely-white action hero genre). To say that he’s merely a carbon copy of action heroes before him also neglects how comfortable he is with is own vulnerability, particularly when discussing his struggles with depression. The Rock wants you to know that he can kick butts, but he’s also very nice. His latest film, Central Intelligence, is an action flick about bullying for crying out loud. You think Bruce Willis would have done that?
For me, The Rock is a reminder that liking excessive, dumb, enjoyable blockbusters is still okay. It’s tiring to think that film and TV is only considered worthwhile if it’s difficult to watch. In a genre where you have to constantly suspend disbelief, highlighting the artifice of comically muscly dudes with comically massive firearms by willingly making yourself look goofy, is refreshing. It makes so much sense that The Rock would star with Zac Efron (another increasingly self-aware actor, unafraid of pandering to his fans) in a reboot of Baywatch, a property that is singularly about spectacle.
Who knew it would take a bald ex-wrestler to bring back cheeseball ’80s action? The People’s Champion indeed.