Advanced CGI Effects and the Rampage Movie: Was This Really Necessary?




Last weekend saw the debut of Rampage, a film headlining Dwayne Johnson and is based on the '80s coin-op video game of the same name. According to box office stats, Rampage claimed the top spot during its opening weekend, clearly demonstrating that the combination of Johnson's star power and top-notch special effects is worth plenty of money in today's cinema. While I'm sure that Rampage is an enjoyable enough creature feature in its own right, I can't help but to be disappointed at the lost opportunity that this film represents.

Even though the press has been covering this film as a "video game adaptation" (which it is ... sort of), I think that the more accurate description of Rampage is Warner Brothers' attempt to cash in on the latest giant monster movie trend that's been seen in films such as Pacific Rim, Jurassic World and Kong: Skull Island. WB owns Midway Games, the company that created the Rampage video game series; thus, all WB had to do to have its own giant monster blockbuster was to attach a star like Johnson to a special effects-driven movie project that's based on a creative property that WB already owns.


A screen from Rampage World Tour.


To be sure, the original Rampage video game and its sequels are very simple games in terms of premise and execution. They put their chaotic, destructive game play in the context of a goofy parody of Atomic Age giant monster movies. As such, each game has players taking control of a monster to topple rows of buildings, crush cars and tanks, swat down helicopters, and eat people--lots and lots of people. None of the games take themselves seriously: The plots are cartoony, the graphics are cartoony, and the violence is cartoony. Imagine what a kaiju film would be like if it was produced by the same people who produced the classic Looney Tunes animated shorts--that's the entire Rampage video game series in a nutshell. So, here we are decades after the first Rampage game appeared on the pop culture landscape, and we finally get ... a live action adventure vehicle for a popular movie star that features motion capture performances and elaborate CGI effects? Really?


The complete monster roster from Rampage: Total Destruction.


I honestly expected a movie version of Rampage to be in the same spirit of oddball animated comedies such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Monsters vs. Aliens. The games' character designs lend themselves well to animation--especially Rampage: Total Destruction, which had a sizable selection of goofy monsters. Then again, this wouldn't be the first time that Hollywood has preferred live action over animation. Even though animation would be much closer to the visual style of comic books, Hollywood usually prefers their superhero movies to be live action, presumably because live action adventure films earn more money in the U.S. than animated ones. Nevertheless, I never thought I'd see this preference applied to something as overtly farcical as Rampage.




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