Rampage

That's how it starts. Hollywood really needs to shut off the fucking stereotypes and give people a heavy dose of testing with closed audiences. Seriously, just start with damn short films when someone already big wants to start acting, and have them try out a range of stuff. Then screen them all for a beta test audience to pick through.

Dave's shown enough range in GOTG that he should at least be alright long term.

Maybe this is why John Cena decided to start with R-rated comedies...and that Ninja Turtles cartoon.

To everyone's surprise, it turns out that there's actually quite a lot of overlap between professional wrestlers and action movie stars in terms of skillset and talent. It's almost like professional wrestlers acquire a lot of experience being paid to play pre-written characters in heavily scripted performances somewhere.

edited 1st Apr '18 3:35:37 PM by TobiasDrake

Any news on Uwe Boll trying to sue Warner for ripping off his "Rampage" movies?

Or is that an April's Fools joke?

No, as far I can tell it's a real thing that's happening. I don't have that much to say on it, and I think most people are inclined to side with Warner Bros. and say they were largely unaware of Boll's film. I'm not great with trademarks and copyright, but as far as wider legal action goes I think Boll will have a harder time justifying that this is going to sincerely cause confusion and negatively affect him, and it's a relatively common word. If this were earlier, maybe Warner Bros. would just sidestep the issue, but certainly they're unlikely to concede now that they've already started up the marketing.

Funny story: when I first saw a trailer for this movie, I didn't realise it was an adaptation of the Rampage games.

I do hear Rampage is one of Boll's better works, though I've never seen it.

edited 1st Apr '18 5:17:14 PM by Lavaeolus

It's basically a shooting spree movie. Pretty disturbing honestly. The two sequels otoh, just kinda suck, IMO.

Doesn’t WB outright own Rampage? This sounds like grounds for a counterclaim.

Yep. WB bought Bally Midway (who did the original game in 1986) in 2009 after they filed for bankruptcy, with BM's game properties being part of the purchase.

As long as the advertising makes it clear it's about the video game (ape, lizard, wolf all ginormous? check) Boll doesn't have a leg to stand on. The best he could hope for is that WB pays the Danegeld just to get him to go away, but given that this is a big-budget movie with an expected big box office I don't think he can get sufficiently annoying for that to be a possibility. WB probably has more lawyers standing around the water cooler at any given moment than Boll has ever had.

Just watched it.

It's flawed. Very much flawed, and I can't help but constantly thinking if I was the director I would've done things different.

But honestly? I never expected I'd enjoy the movie this much. I would say it's worth the ticket price.

Sounds like one I want to see then. I'm planning a trip to the theater on Monday or Tuesday. I'll try to catch it then.

Here's something funny/weird:

A few days back, Dwayne Johnson went on the record via Twitter saying the Doom movie he was in sucked.

And the official Doom account had this to say...

Not sure what to make of it here.

So, saw it.

This was dumb but fun. Nice monster action but not much else to say. Good way to kill a couple of hours.

So... it's good? Above average? Has the curse been broken?

Slightly above average, it's at least kinda fun to watch. Probably not gonna sit in your mind for too long but it's still worth a watch.

The movie as a whole is straight up Excuse Plot, mostly soulless despite making a vain effort to give some characterization. Johnson and Morgan are the only ones who manage to be more than their stereotype role. Though I did like the bond between Davis and George, it doesn't really amount to much but it's something.

I would probably put it on a similar level to Kong: Skull Island, it has a thin story, bad plotting and bland characters but delivers on the monster mayhem well enough.

We have mediocre to decent videogames movies before, so I think it's safe to say that the curse have not been broken.

Yeah, the curse is not broken just yet.

Well, actually it's not even fair to say it's a curse. Producers AND directors don't put the enough effort into it. For instance, in the case of the Assassin's Creed movies, neither the main actor nor the director have played the game. In fact, they haven't played any kind of game in almost two decades, according to interviews.

The Rock has a way of being extremely charismatic and fun in what would otherwise be a bland role (he's known enough for it that Jumanji even based his character around a parody of it), so him being a highpoint in the movie doesn't surprise me.

He's an awesome actor. I read his page on here. His well known wrestling persona is totally different from where he started. Only a good actor could pull off that level of change.

I watched it last Saturday. It was good fun. Sure, it's not a masterpiece of cinematography or writing, but it was enjoyable, and the giant monster fights were well-animated. I also found myself liking George immensely. I'm glad they gave him a personality, rather than making him just a gorilla that can follow orders. Dwayne Johnson was great, obviously, and I liked Morgan's character as well. Nostalgia factor from having played a lot of the first arcade game on emulator with my brother also kicked in.

edited 23rd Apr '18 12:18:54 PM by danime91

The plot was bad but I have to admit, the actors were quite good with the ham. I enjoyed almost every single person on screen.

When Claire told her brother that the pods containing the mutagen samples were designed to withstand reentry, I turned to my friend and riffed "if they survive this, they should really fire the engineers that designed those". The movie just made for good riffing material in general.

When I watched the canisters dropping, I was thinking: "You know, screw the mutagen, I wanna know more about the material of the cannister that can freaking withstand orbitan reentry and drop."

Honestly, this film is full of shit...but in an awesome way, like Sharknado. And I'm genuinely happy that this film is doing pretty darn well in box office.

It deserves to be doing well. I just saw it. Once you get past the slow, but enjoyable start it really does kick the adrenaline in. I don't even really see much room for expanding on George and Davis like someone else here who I've forgotten wanted. The only thing that bugged me was something Hollywood does sometime: introducing abilities that only get used once and then just don't show up again. Like how the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 only breathed fire once, and it wasn't in a real fight. This time it was Ralph throwing his quills. He gets one shot doing that and nails a vehicle, but when he's fighting George and Lizzie he doesn't even try it.

Ralph was taken out way too early during the monster brawl. That's one of the biggest complaints I have with the film.