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FEBRUARY 2024 Wrestling Talk


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Unsurprisingly, after a look at his filmography I see nothing -- nothing -- remotely interesting to me. I even saw Doom at a house with some stoned weirdos I wound up at through friends one night when the DVD came out and hated it. 

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Vince Vaughn and the Rock were the greatest things about Be Cool by a wide margin.

I'm not sure how many of his movies that I "love", but The Rundown is pretty close.  I thought that was a real solid, underrated flick.

 

EDIT:  Okay, I blanked on Pain and Gain.  I love that flick.

Edited by StuntmanCrowley
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1 minute ago, For Great Justice said:

Pain and Gain is a good time, if only because Mark Wahlberg is the most underrated comedic actor of his generation. 

 

It's no Hell Comes to Frogtown, but what is?

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Southland Tales is a fascinating failure. Richard Kelly was a one-hit wonder, but ST is worth seeing at least once.

The Rundown is a fun action flick.

Moana rules.

Rocky's no Big Dave as an actor, but he's typically in solid crowd pleasers...and also Black Adam.

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48 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

Southland Tales is a fascinating failure. Richard Kelly was a one-hit wonder, but ST is worth seeing at least once.

Dude lucked into DD, in my opinion. I present as evidence the Director’s Cut, wherein Kelly removes all mystery about what’s going on by introducing the book cut-ins or whatever and boy howdy the movie suffers.

Anyway, Ken Kennedy was wrestling’s Richard Kelly. 

Came out strong. Revealed as a mirage. Hurt a lot of people’s careers.

Edited by For Great Justice
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3 hours ago, Godfrey said:

I only tweeted at a celebrity once when I was on that app and it was to tell the Rock that the movie Southland Tales was awesome. Also I love bad movies

 

3 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Southland Tales is a fascinating failure. Richard Kelly was a one-hit wonder, but ST is worth seeing at least once.

The Rundown is a fun action flick.

Moana rules.

Rocky's no Big Dave as an actor, but he's typically in solid crowd pleasers...and also Black Adam.

I fucking love Southland Tales, and, while a lot of it has to do with growing up in south LA/the South Bay/Beach Cities, it's just this weirdly strange movie with a lot of really fun characters. Love the musical number with Justin Timberlake, nearly everything Sarah Michelle Gellar says is hilarious, and it's one of the most quotable movies I've ever watched.

'Because I'm a pimp, and pimp's DON'T commit suicide'

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2 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

I don't know how long one is supposed to be in hit movies before it's a success no matter the dropoff

I can't think of anyone who has had close to the success he had for two decades even after a very slow start after some initial success. Hogan, Piper, and Ventura had that one big film each and then never followed up with anything close. It went so bad for those guys they all had to come crawling back to wrestling. Dwayne was so successful he opened the door for two guys in Cena and Batista who had zero acting experience or Hollywood connections. Anything he gets now is gravy.

And for as good as those other two guys are, for big blockbusters franchises, they still aren't bigger than the third or fourth lead in the ensemble. Dwayne is always going to be one or one-A.

Also, I don't think Dwayne ever had a film bomb as bad as Freelance. That shit was in over 2,000 theaters and didn't make 3 million its first weekend. 

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11 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

I thought the first Jumanji was good. I've only seen the second one on TV so I can't speak on it. 

The second Jumanji had Rock and Awkwafina both doing a Danny DeVito impression for most of the movie that sounded like neither of them had ever heard DeVito talk. 

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19 hours ago, Godfrey said:

Conrad Thompson has floated the theory that HHH wanted to undercut Rock’s politicking by booking Cody to win the Rumble to generate fan backlash. Big if true!

I don’t know that there’s ever been any evidence that HHH is that clever. His two most successful political gambits were “drive for the big stars” and “fuck the boss’s daughter.” Neither are terribly cerebral moves, despite the nickname. He was never playing chess.

Edited by EVA
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I'm a big fan of "bad but fun" movies, so I'm probably not the best judge, but I've liked Rock's whole career pretty much, Doom & Southland Tales both mentioned above are standouts for being something different from what he normally does. Shit, I'd even rewatch Scorpion King as a guilty pleasure. 

Having said that, when he was getting started and Schwarzenegger had that passing of the torch cameo moment in The Rundown, there was this expectation that he would be the next Arnie. But really he's never once matched the peaks of Arnie's career. There's no Terminator, no Predator, hell there's not even an equivalent to Twins, Junior or Jingle All The Way. 

Maybe this heel turn in wrestling may also work as a creative spark in his film endeavours. I'd love to see him as a bad guy on the big screen as we know he can do it so well in wrestling. 

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The secret to Rock’s Hollywood success over the past decade was using his pro wrestling powers of self-promotion to somehow convince people that the only good Fast & Furious movie was good because of him. The “franchise viagra” gimmick was cringe but absolutely worked. Convinced a lot of studios to throw money behind him, to varying degrees of success.

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The arc of Rock’s Hollywood career is so interesting. You can see that initial rush to make him the next big action star, which mostly flops because the low-to-mid-budget action movie was already kinda dead by the early 2000’s. But then he has a surprise hit with THE GAME PLAN, and he immediately pivots to mostly making family films, with just a couple of not-exactly-straight-to-video action movies sprinkled in to keep his tough guy credentials active. Then FAST FIVE hits, and within a couple years, he’s parlayed it into starring in every other effects-heavy tent pole in theaters, amassing astronomical wealth while simultaneously losing everything that made him interesting as an actor.

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42 minutes ago, Leonidas said:

I'm a big fan of "bad but fun" movies, so I'm probably not the best judge, but I've liked Rock's whole career pretty much, Doom & Southland Tales both mentioned above are standouts for being something different from what he normally does. Shit, I'd even rewatch Scorpion King as a guilty pleasure. 

Having said that, when he was getting started and Schwarzenegger had that passing of the torch cameo moment in The Rundown, there was this expectation that he would be the next Arnie. But really he's never once matched the peaks of Arnie's career. There's no Terminator, no Predator, hell there's not even an equivalent to Twins, Junior or Jingle All The Way. 

Maybe this heel turn in wrestling may also work as a creative spark in his film endeavours. I'd love to see him as a bad guy on the big screen as we know he can do it so well in wrestling. 

 

14 minutes ago, EVA said:

The arc of Rock’s Hollywood career is so interesting. You can see that initial rush to make him the next big action star, which mostly flops because the low-to-mid-budget action movie was already kinda dead by the early 2000’s. But then he has a surprise hit with THE GAME PLAN, and he immediately pivots to mostly making family films, with just a couple of not-exactly-straight-to-video action movies sprinkled in to keep his tough guy credentials active. Then FAST FIVE hits, and within a couple years, he’s parlayed it into starring in every other effects-heavy tent pole in theaters, amassing astronomical wealth while simultaneously losing everything that made him interesting as an actor.

I think out of the new crop of guys within the last 20-25 years, he's been the closest to Arnold. There isn't really pure action stars anyway. Tom Cruise is but he was a big star well before that and is a real actor. So was Denzel, Liam Neeson, etc.. Dwayne is the only one where he came from an entirely different world like Arnold and manage to be extremely successful for a lengthy period of time. Moreover, in this era of films, you're never going to be able to make cheesy films that a lot of guys made in the 80s and 90s and it not be a career ender. If Dwayne did some of the crap that got released back then, he would be doing Sharknado Part 63 right now with Tara Reid and Lou Diamond Phillips.

You cannot make fun, bad movies anymore. The closest we've come is the F&F franchise, but those have lost the plot and become derivative. 

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1 hour ago, Leonidas said:

 I'd love to see him as a bad guy on the big screen as we know he can do it so well in wrestling. 

He'd need to remove the "my character can't lose or get punched more than he punches the other guy" clause from his contract for that. 

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