Video game adaptations are almost universally bad. Not just bad, terrible. Today's film, Rampage, is an adaptation of a video games. One with which I have a personal connection, as Rampage: World Tour was one of the games I played the most for my Nintendo 64. It was great. Knowing the game (there were others before World Tour), I'm either the target audience of this one or most likely to hate it since I'd know at least some of what's been changed. Guess it's time to find out!
Rampage stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the main character Davis Okoye, while Naomie Harris and Malin Åkerman round out the human cast. Jason Liles portrays the main kaiju of the film, George the albino gorilla. A director who's worked with Dywane Johnson several times, Brad Peyton, is the director on this one. There's very little interesting background on this, as Warner Brothers acquired the rights to the video games and decided to make the movie as a cash grab (as most Hollywood productions are). These intro paragraphs aren't going to shed a lot of light on why these films were made, it's an obvious reason. But the important thing is whether the film is any good despite the history of video game adaptations working against it, so let's skip to that.
If You Haven't Seen it Before
- In 1993 (real life), CRISPR was invented/developed as a potential treatment for various genetic disorders. In present day aboard a space station, laboratory mice begin to mutate and eventually destroy the entire station as a result of their mania.
- The debris of the exploding station lands across the US, affecting a crocodile, wolf, and gorilla.
- The gorilla in question is George, friend of former special forces and primatologist Davis Okoye.
- As George grows larger and more aggressive every moment, we discover that the mutation is caused by CRISPR technology which has been modified into a bio-weapon by the Energyne corporation.
- A private military unit is sent to retrieve the wolf affected by the bio-weapon and find themselves eaten by a gigantic wolf instead. George is captured by the government and put on a plane against Davis' advice.
- The evil sibling duo leading Energyne try to attract their experiments gone wrong by using a giant antenna to bring them all to the same location in the hopes of collecting the data from their bodies for development of the CRISPR bio-weapon.
- Predictably, George crashes the plane he's on when the antenna gets his attention. Ralph the Wolf and Lizzie the giant Crocodile also head the same direction.
- When Ralph arrives in Chicago, George and Ralph go on a Rampage as they destroy the city in an attempt to stop the infernal antenna. To make matters worse, Lizzie arrives so now there are 3 giant animals wreaking havoc on the city.
- Davis and his new scientist friend attempt to steal an antidote from Energyne, but find out that it really only reduces aggressiveness and none of the other effects of the CRISPR weapon. They manage to get this antidote into George.
- With George back to his normal personality, Davis and George decide to take down the other monsters before the entire city is hit with a military strike that will likely kill everyone left in the city. Now we've got a kaiju battle baybee!
- The Energyne twins (they may not be twins, who cares) are victims of their own hubris and are alternately eaten and crushed to death by the havoc they've caused.
- George barely manages to stop Ralph, using Lizzie's giant croco-jaws to take his head off. He is impaled in the battle against Lizzie, managing to take her out but only after doing great damage to himself.
- George survives (though perhaps barely), and begins to help clean up the city he destroyed. Davis is now besties with a giant gorilla instead just a normal bigass one. End film.
Kaiju Notes
- George is a giant ape. Albino, so at least he has some unique coloring.
- Ralph is a giant wolf. He also sprouts bat wings sometimes!
- Lizzie is a giant crocodile who also looks like a dinosaur sometimes.
- It's all pretty easy to understand. Giant animals.
Rampage is an audacious film with very little on its mind besides the spectacle of giant animals fighting each other, sometimes with the help of Dwayne. It's extremely hard to think of anything to really focus on with this one. It's fun and I enjoyed it. Bioweapons are bad! That's... about the extent of it. The movie doesn't seem to have a message or a point besides being an entertaining adaptation of a series of video games that began in the 80's, and it succeeded at that. Dwayne Johnson remains charismatic (if not a bit one note because he plays the same character in almost every movie). George is cute and fun. Ralph and Lizzie have no personalities besides being rage monsters. The movie is popcorn entertainment, but succeeds on that front. Let's not belabor the point. Not all video game adaptations have to be terrible, as it turns out.
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