Rampage (2018)

April 23, 2018 1:19 PM

Primatologist Davis Okoye shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry ...
posted by phunniemee (17 comments total)

This was exactly the movie I hoped and expected it to be.
posted by phunniemee at 1:20 PM on April 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

"Of course the giant wolf flies"

That's why we went to see it. We got exactly what we expected; it never attempted to be anything more.
Not sure why the Imax Theater we saw it in (which was mostly empty) was attended mostly by couples with children under the apparent age of 6 though....
posted by mce at 2:30 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Furious George?
posted by ian1977 at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

When I saw a poster for this, I really wanted it to be a film where Dwayne Johnson goes on an unstoppable rampage and a team of quirky but lovable giant monsters assembles to take him down.
posted by kyrademon at 2:47 PM on April 23, 2018 [16 favorites]

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited about this movie.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:29 PM on April 23, 2018

I would like to personally extend Dwayne The Rock Johnson an invitation to the International Primatological Society meetings this summer as our most famous representative, after Jane Goodall.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:33 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

My suspension of disbelief was demolished.

...just like the Dave and Busters
posted by phunniemee at 10:24 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I actually scaled a railing in a theater packed for Black Panther to get away from the trailer of this one, because, even though I knew it was just a stupid ridiculous action movie that might otherwise be fun, I couldn't bear to see poor sick George hiding away, betrayed by his human friends. Yes, CGI, and I'm sure that was just the tiniest bit of "emotional appeal" in a shoot-em-up, but it was horrible. I'm glad this movie has finally come out so I can stop seeing the ads!
posted by praemunire at 11:19 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

George was never betrayed by his human friends. The DNA fuckery literally fell from space and it was a freak accident that George got into it at all. The Rock spends the entire movie trying to talk him down from the edge and help him.
posted by phunniemee at 11:36 AM on April 24, 2018

I got up and peed during their bff origin story scene but I'm sure it delivered hard on the pathos.
posted by phunniemee at 12:52 PM on April 24, 2018

I thought we didn't do spoiler alerts in Fanfare outside of "show only" threads for adaptations.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:37 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

The trailer implied that George and all the other animals had been subjected to some kind of experiment without the Rock's knowledge.

I, too, thought spoiler alerts were not generally used in Fanfare? Sorry if I'm wrong about that. But I didn't see the movie, so I'm literally talking only about what I gleaned from the trailers, thus I'm not sure what could be a spoiler.
posted by praemunire at 2:00 PM on April 24, 2018

The spoiler is that The Rock doesn't flex out of his cast. It spoiled the whole movie.
posted by phunniemee at 5:31 PM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

This was virtually perfect. It could have stood about 30 seconds of editing out The Rock diving away from the croc at the end, but otherwise, I was kept enthralled (or at least never allowed to think “Geez, what act are we in?”) like no other recent action movie has done.

Also, having the actual literal Rampage video game in the bad guys’ office? No. Too far.

But otherwise, what a delightful, fun, stupid actioner to spend a couple of hours gawping at. And I don’t remember the last time I laughed as sharply as I did at the male bad guy’s end.

Thing I realized at the end: of the four “villains” (two humans, croc, wolf), The Rock kills zero. I was kinda rolling my eyes when it looked like he got the croc (either time), but the writers wisely chose to lie to us that The Rock could not simply punch a giant mutant reptile to death.
posted by Etrigan at 9:36 AM on April 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't sit through movies much anymore, and if anything, this might be a "turn on halfway through when it's on cable", but in the 90's, a good friend and I played Rampage SO MUCH on her dad's apple something or other. So. Much. Now I want to see the inevitable "Joust" and "Gauntlet" movie spinoffs as a trilogy. Though maybe I should just suck up and watch "Ready Player One" on mute.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 10:10 AM on April 25, 2018

What was the other arcade cabinet in the CEO's office? They showed us both of them again and again and AGAIN but I couldn't make out the non-Rampage game. Maybe Rampage World Tour?

This movie spent too much time developing a scientific explanation for the video game Rampage. I really don't need you to spend 5-10 minutes in space giving me a backstory for the genetic contagion you develop. It was still pretty fun and dumb. I think you could kill yourself if you drink every time there's still people in Chicago and someone says they've evacuated Chicago.
posted by graventy at 11:28 AM on April 25, 2018

This was better stupid fun than I was expecting, except that if Peoria was destroyed first, I missed it.

A+ would recommend when wanting to watch a city be destroyed by a giant lizard, wolf, and gorilla.
posted by asperity at 9:39 PM on December 30, 2018