When Dwayne Johnson is starring in a film, you know there’s a decent chance that Johnson’s character will smash through a plate-glass window and drop three or four stories to the ground without injury. You know the film will be crude, submental, loud, never good enough. Every single film he’s starred or costarred in over the last 15 years has been the stuff that headaches are made of.
Be Cool (’05) was half decent, but Johnson’s casting in that F. Gary Gray film was a cosmic accident. Since then he’s shown an instinct for shit that few have even approached, much less rivalled.
Dwayne Johnson
Which is why I’m posting this — what other big star has a more bottom-of-the-barrel record? Whose name at the top of the poster is a more reliable assurance of a mind-numbing, kill-me-now experience? I’m asking.
None of this matters in terms of success and swagger, of course. The megaplexers seem to love the guy, and making shitty movies haven’t slowed him down yet. Johnson is worth between $125 and $160 million, and that figure will almost certainly double or triple or better before his string runs out.
Johnson is the new Schwarzenegger, but he’s totally ignored the game plan or pattern that Schwarzenegger followed by occasionally making smart, semi-entertaining, half-decent films — The Terminator (’84) Predator (’87), Total Recall (’90), Kindergarten Cop (’90), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (’91), True Lies (’94), Eraser (’96), Batman and Robin (’97), etc.
