I would use a cherished amount of quarters at the laundromat my mom brought me to as a kid to play Rampage while she willingly washed my dirty underwear. Arcade games and arcades in general have become a forgotten treasure in this day and age. While you have the likes of Dave and Busters and Main Event being the modern equivalent, it doesn’t beat going into a video arcade as a kid in the 90s with a fistful of quarters and rotating that joystick in all directions and punching two to four buttons in and out of sequence as your childhood literally melted away one hour at a time.
Directed by Brad Peyton (San Andreas, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and written by Ryan Engle (The Commuter), Carlton Cuse (San Andreas), Ryan J. Condal (Hercules), and Adam Sztykiel (Due Date), the reasoning behind these giant monsters wreaking havoc in Rampage the film (the other film, not the Uwe Boll one) falls onto the shoulders of a gene manipulation company known as Energyne. Energyne CEO Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman) has developed a pathogen that greatly increases the size, strength, and speed of animals that are exposed to it while also genetically altering their DNA.. Canisters containing the pathogen fall from the sky after a space station researching the canisters explodes. Debris falls across the United States including near an albino ape at the San Diego Zoo, an American crocodile in the Everglades, and a gray wolf in Wyoming. The fate of the world rests in the hands of a San Diego primatologist and former US Special Forces soldier named Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) and a genetic engineer who works for Energyne named Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris).
In the arcade game, these kaiju/giant monsters used to be human but an experimental vitamin turned George into a giant ape, a food additive altered Ralph into a monstrous werewolf, and a radioactive lake transformed Lizzie into a colossal dinosaur-like lizard. You destroyed buildings, ate people, and stomped and punched tanks and trolleys in order to get to the next level. Instead of dying, you reverted back to your naked human form and tried to cover up your most sensitive areas as you scooted off-screen. The monsters in the film are all modified versions of regular animals with Ralph having the ability to glide like a flying squirrel and throw his porcupine-like quills and Lizzie (who isn’t named in the film) who has elephant like tusks, spikes all over her body, and a bulbous tail that is especially good at bashing people and fellow monsters.
Rampage struggles from what typical modern monster movies suffer from; a heavy focus on the human characters while the monsters are left to pick up the scraps in the background. The human interactions are pretty ridiculous with most of the laughs coming from sign language conversations between Dwayne Johnson and a CGI albino ape. The screenplay seems to also be purposely outrageous with Kate telling her boss that she’s running late to work because the car ahead of her just exploded and Claire Wyden’s brother Brett (Jake Lacy) always seems to be eating and or drinking something whenever he’s on-screen. Like the recent run of films that were based on board games, movies based on video games are generally pretty awful. Luckily, Rampage is slightly better than the bar set by video game films that came before it.
The sci-fi monster film may have a juvenile screenplay, but the monster sequences feel naturally influenced by the original video game. George, Ralph, and Lizzie tear up the entirety of Chicago, eat people regularly, and the film ends with a free-for-all that is genuinely exhilarating. The helicopter without a tail being the saving grace of Davis and Kate falling to their deaths was a little much as was whatever the intentions were of the mysterious government agent Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Morgan throws around this Southern sass in Rampage that is exceptional, but his motives are so wishy-washy and it’s disappointing that they chose to make him one of the good guys when Morgan is so good at portraying the bad guy.
Rampage is worth seeing for the Ralph/Special Ops sequence, the George air transport sequence, and the final 20 minute battle royal. That is what embodies the beloved video game and delivers what you enjoy as a fan. George is basically King Kong and Lizzie is like a cross between Godzilla and Biollante, at its core Rampage is more of a corny giant monster movie than a representation of the video game it’s based on. The film is absurd from its concept from the acting to the way it’s written to the Weta Digital special effects that are usually so high in quality but slightly cheesy here thanks to so obviously being done in front of a green screen.
Rampage is pure unfiltered cheese and the type of big budget B-movie trash that would kill as a late night feature on cable television. Rampage isn’t really a work of art, but it is popcorn entertainment at its most disastrous and serves as a satisfying placeholder until the next Godzilla film arrives. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than that horrid Pacific Rim sequel even if it goes out of its way to point out that two of the main characters are bigger A-holes than these monsters are in size.