The Rock on Rampage
PLOT: BATTLE AGAINST THREE MUTATING CREATURES
Johnson and director Peyton team up for another big-screen adventure.
Like movie fans around the world, Rampage director and producer Brad Peyton loves to see Dwayne Johnson in terrifying, largerthan-life scenarios that require all his skill and strength, humour and charm, to overcome.
Peyton has already placed his intrepid star under a volcano on a sinking island, and dropped him into the epicentre of a magnitude-9 earthquake.
Now, in their third big-screen adventure – a movie that’s massive on every level – scale, scope, action and visual impact – Peyton ups the ante again by pitting Johnson against something he has never faced before: an antagonist even bigger than he is.
And not just one, but three – gargantuan, genetically mutating creatures, completely out of control, on a collision course with civilisation. Johnson is up for the challenge.
“Brad and I are like a couple of kids when we get together on a project like this,” says Johnson.
“Art always reflects the artist, so I think fans can count on great action and great fun, and a fair amount of destruction. We always want to push things further than we did before and to constantly raise that bar. Or possibly go over it. “For me,” he adds, “just stepping on the set every day was like, okay, it’s 7am and my intensity level goes up to 15 on a scale of one-to-10, and it stays that way until the end of the day.”
Among the interests Peyton and Johnson share that factored into Rampage are an affinity for movies about ferocious giant creatures and an affection for the classic video arcade game Rampage, featuring a trio of supersized creatures knocking down cities and running wild over the landscape.
Also, the commitment to anchor this kind of outsized cinematic spectacle with a genuine story and characters.
Though the arcade game was the original spark of inspiration, it didn’t provide a lot beyond its pure and simple premise, which suited Peyton perfectly.
“I was interested in the challenges and opportunities that came from the game,” he says, “but the fact that it had so little narrative allowed us to make our own movie, create our own monsters and explore our own themes. “We paid homage to it in a fun and respectful way by utilising its creatures and planting some Easter eggs for fans.”
In the film, what triggers the rampage is a secret bio-genetic experiment that goes off the rails, unleashing a gene-altering substance that causes animals to grow not only in strength and aggression, but in more frightening and unpredictable ways as they absorb volatile DNA from other species.
The first casualty of this substance is George, an albino silverback gorilla housed at a California wildlife sanctuary. George is very special to Johnson’s character, Davis, a primatologist who rescued him from poachers, raised him, taught him to sign, and shares with him an unbreakable bond of friendship.
So, when George turns overnight from a normal-sized, peaceful ape to a roaring, destructive colossus, Davis is determined to do whatever he has to do to keep George safe.