Renthel R.

Cueto
BSABE – 1A

REACTION PAPER ON ‘RAMPAGE’

Mam. Josefa Laudencia

Biology Teacher
 “Rampage” opens by establishing its ridiculous tone early. A scientist on a
space station is struggling to save some genetically engineered samples from,
well, a mutated super-rat. The station is on fire, and everyone else appears dead,
but she’s ordered to save the science. Yes, “Rampage” opens with a super space
rat aboard an on-fire spaceship hurtling to Earth. It’s certainly a tone setter.
The samples plummet to Earth, and land in three locations. One happens to
hit ground in a San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary managed by Davis Okoye (Johnson).
Davis’ favorite beast is a giant albino gorilla named George, and the clever animal
happens upon one of the genetic samples. Before you know it, George is growing
at a never-before-seen rate, accompanied by increased aggression and insatiable
hunger. He kills a bear, escapes, and, well, lots of things go boom. That’s why you
come to a movie like “Rampage”—to see and hear things go boom.
A critical caveat seems appropriate here: I dig giant monster movies. I still awe at
the 1933 “King Kong,” a movie that I consider among the most important ever
made. I even dug Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, as well as recent iterations of the
King of the Monsters both in Gareth Edwards’ 2014 American version (“Godzilla”)
and Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi’s 2016 Japanese version (“Shin Godzilla”).
There’s something about the spectacle of movies like “King Kong” and “Godzilla”
that’s singularly cinematic—it’s not something that other forms like theatre, TV,
or fiction can do in quite the same way. Add this appreciation for big creatures
slamming into buildings with my belief that Dwayne Johnson is one of the few
current working actors we can legitimately call a ‘movie star’ and “Rampage”
should be a slam dunk. I even played the arcade game!
So, why isn’t it a slam dunk? Sure, there are times when “Rampage” gives
viewers exactly what they were hoping for when they opened their wallets or
whipped out their MoviePass. No one can really accuse this movie of not
delivering on what was in the trailers (although one could argue the whole movie
is in those trailers). So why isn't it the "King Kong Meets the Rock" it could have
been? First, the film seriously muddles its vague attempts at emotional
undercurrents. Davis mentions early on that he likes the company of animals
more than people, but to say he has no actual character would be an
understatement (George is actually more developed). And Naomie Harris’
eventual sidekick Kate has an emotional back story that’s designed to make her
more accessible but really just falls flat—a scene between the two when they
share their pasts, including when Davis found George and saved him from
poachers, is embarrassingly mishandled.
 But nothing sinks the film more than Jake Lacy and Malin Akerman’s
villains, the nefarious siblings who run the evil company doing evil science things
and making evil big animals and more evil stuff. They sometimes sound like they
were written as over-the-top caricatures—Lacy’s Brett actually says, “There’s a
reason we were doing these experiments in space!”—but the
characters/performances are so bland that the movie sags every time they show
up. More fun are Joe Manganiello’s soldier of fortune and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s
‘OGA’ (Other Government Agency) Officer. Morgan delivers every line with a
cocked neck and Southern side-eye that hints he knows how goofy this whole
thing truly is, or at least should be.
Morgan’s having fun, for sure, and Johnson is charismatic, but Peyton too
often struggles to convey that "big monster movie" sense of excitement
cinematically. Even when “Rampage” gets to the fireworks, it feels like it’s too
often going through the motions. There are just enough “big” beats—a giant wolf
leaping at a mid-air helicopter, George using tanks like toys on Michigan Avenue,
all the animals climbing the will-always-be-known-as-to-me Sears Tower—to keep
fans engaged, but monster movies should do more than just keep you engaged.
They should wow. They should fascinate. They should strike the imagination in
such a way that they allow things like cheesy dialogue and thin characters to not
only be critically dismissible but downright preferable. “Rampage” never quite
gets to that point where you can consistently ignore the things it does wrong, and
that can be deadly for a movie about animals the size of apartment buildings. It’s
a tonal balance that “Rampage” only sometimes hits. Maybe they’ll perfect it in
time for “Dig Dug.”