Rampage - Best movie based on a video game???

Rampage

(Non Spoiler review)

Back in 1986, the company Bally Midway released the arcade game Rampage. This was a game that allowed the user to play as one of three giant rampaging monsters. The object was simple destroy the buildings to progress to the next level and in the process eat humans and smash the army standing in your way. It was a lot of fun back in the day, especially for those of us who loved giant monster movies such as Godzilla 1985. The game has since had numerous ports and sequels though these days its not really the most memorable game. I imagine that outside of those of us in our 30s or 40s, very few gamers would be familiar with the franchise. Fast forward to 2018 and this beloved video game series has been turned into a movie.   

Video game movies have somewhat of a poor reputation. In my opinion this is because the majority of video games have poorly written lead characters who are blank slates for the player to become. There are certainly exceptions to this but even in modern day games with rich storylines, the player will typically guide their character and choose the sorts of decisions that they will make in order to shape the plot. Arguably the strongest video game based movie series to date is Resident Evil which created a brand new lead character in order to side step this issue. Rampage follows this example by giving us the character of Davis Okoye played by Dwayne Johnson. Davis is a muscle bound animal loving, poacher fighting hero at least as far the film is concerned, in reality its just the Rock doing his thing and carrying the film.

It would be easy to tear this film apart and point out the awful acting or the one dimensional characters but that would do the film a massive disservice. Rampage was never trying to get bums on seats because of its clever plot or because of its well planned out character arcs. This is a monster movie and its proud of its heritage. The pace rarely slows down, the effects work is just about as good as it needs to be to get the job done. 10 years ago it would have looked incredible now its just run of the mill. Remember how I said earlier that the characters are 1 dimensional? Well truth be told there's an odd sort of charm to the cast and how they ham it up. Especially Jeffrey Dean Morgan who is having a ball of a time. Much like Pacific Rim 2 this film is more fun then it has any right to be but if I was to judge it at a critical level it would get a 4 or a 3 out of 10 instead of a 7.5 out of 10 that it gets for entertainment value. Its hard to think of a better video game based movie The juvenile humour will be either something you roll with or it'll have you running out of the cinema faster than if a giant ape had started smashing the wall down.