Dwayne Johnson Wants To Reinvent Himself (Again)

You can tell a lot about a film by when its review embargo is dropped. The closer the embargo is to the release then the greater the chances are that it’s not very good. Studios do this to keep a tight leash on their product and to try to conceal a lack of quality until it’s too late for audiences to ask for a refund. Everyone does it. Still, when critics noticed that the embargo for reviews of Red One, the new Christmas action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, lifted in the middle of election night, it felt like an especially bad sign.

Red One has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33% (as of the time of my writing this piece), which puts it well behind Venom: The Last Dance and even Robert Zemeckis’s Here. It’s not Johnson’s lowest score (that belongs to Baywatch) but it’s still below Black Adam. Early box office tracking suggests that the film will have a solid domestic debut of around $30 - 35 million, but this film also cost $250 million to make and was being heralded by Johnson as ‘our franchise Christmas film’ during its production. According to Puck, he also received a total salary of $50 million, which made him the highest-paid actor for a single role ever until Robert Downey Jr. rejoined the Avengers universe. So, it seems that Red One will have to do a lot of heavy lifting when it premieres on Amazon Video to make it worth that hefty investment.

This month sees Dwayne Johnson in a period of flux. Aside from Red One, he’s also promoting Moana 2, the Disney animated sequel in which he has reprised his role as Maui. That film is expected to do very well because it’s a Disney sequel and every five-year-old I know is dying to see it. Johnson will be happy with those grosses but this feels like a sort of step backward for him, right? Once upon a time, The Rock was the one who made franchises old and new a hit. Now, he has to keep himself tied to the House of Mouse to ensure a success.

It would be unfair to say that the ‘backlash’ hit Johnson over the past couple of years. Such narratives are seldom as accurate as the clickbaity headlines make them seem. Yet there’s an undeniable sense that the previously untouchable star power of Johnson has dimmed to the point where he is indeed fallible. Lockdown certainly dented the box office potential of titles like Jungle Cruise but the failure of Black Adam felt far more like Johnson misjudging his public and their desires from him. All of that hype about how he was redefining the entire DC Universe stumbled once people saw the flat, uninteresting final product that drastically changed the character to fit into the narrow mould of The Dwayne Johnson Type. All that was missing was that one khaki shirt he wears in every other movie.

The commercial underperformance of the film became a flop-sweaty mess when Johnson took to Twitter to assert that, actually, the movie had definitely made money and wasn’t leaving Warner Bros. in the red. Nobody bought it, and the finicky number crunching made Johnson look desperate, a mode he’s largely avoided through both charm and hard work. He then ran back to the Fast & Furious franchise, a safer bet than his solo projects.

All of this unfolded around the same time that the long, drawn-out, and obviously performative discourse of ‘Will The Rock run for President’ finally came to an end. It had become part of Johnson lore: the idea that he was so beloved, so universally agreed-upon as a loveable public figure, that he could totally become POTUS if he wanted to. It was never going to happen, of course, because all of the qualities that made Johnson popular with every quadrant of the political spectrum would dissipate the moment he was called upon to make a policy declaration. He didn’t seem to stand for much and eventually said he planned to keep his politics, whatever they were, out of his work. So much for Johnson 2024. It was hype, pure and simple, the equivalent of being ‘voted’ PEOPLE Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive (which he was, in 2016.)

To promote Red One, Johnson gave an interview to GQ, a safe outlet where he’d initially kicked off his ‘I could run for President’ rhetoric. The piece is titled, ‘Dwayne Johnson Became the World’s Biggest Movie Star. Now He’s Trying to Disappear.’ It’s a piece that hopes to assert him as both the biggest movie star in the world and a nice guy hoping to find some peace amid the noise of fame and Hollywood responsibilities. His famed work ethic is on display, noting his many completed and upcoming projects as well as his various business ventures, like a tequila brand and skincare line. There’s also talk of The Smashing Machine, an indie biopic he’s starring in for A24 and director Benny Safdie. This work, we’re told, ‘reminded him what it was like to be someone else—someone other than Dwayne Johnson.’ He’s an actor once more, not a brand. But he’s also still the biggest brand in the game and don’t doubt that.

And that is the next pivot for Johnson: the swing into being a serious actor on the Oscar hunt. He’s made the money, proven the doubters wrong, and has his sights set on the ultimate prize. I 100% believe that Johnson will get Oscar-nominated for The Smashing Machine. He’s entirely ready to work the greased pole of an awards campaign, and the narrative writes itself - movie-star turned serious craftsman, a biopic, prosthetics for a physical transformation, a prestigious distributor, etc. He’s laying the groundwork for it all over this GQ piece, coupling the workaholic skills that got him to the top of the A-List with a new story about evolving into a ‘different’ version of himself.

But that’s not the only reinvention he’s working with here. The GQ piece is also the first time Johnson has spoken on the record about allegations of unprofessional behaviour during the production of Red One, which included claims he was chronically late and peed in bottles that were left for beleaguered crew to clean up. While he did admit that the pee situation ‘happens’ but not to the degree that the report alleged, he stridently denied claims of being a diva. He got director Jake Kasdan and co-star Chris Evans to back him up on that front. Well, sorta. Said Kasdan, ‘He has a lot going on. He can be late sometimes, but such is Hollywood—that’s the case with everybody.’ And Evans: ‘It’s not like he’s late unexpectedly, and I wouldn’t even call it late. He comes in slightly later on certain mornings, but it’s part of the plan.’

I don’t blame Johnson for wanting to get out of the rut he created for himself. Being The Rock made him an icon, a very rich man, and a kind of powerful that very few people in Hollywood ever reach. He made his personal and public image inextricably entwined, acting as a version of himself in movies where he was the indomitable hero with a raised eyebrow and quick joke. That’s a lifestyle with an undeniably short shelf life because audiences are fickle and get bored easily. He’s keen to shake it up, to reinvent himself once more, and there’s a solid chance he’ll pull it off. Does that mean we’ll see Red One 2 in the future? Eh, probably not. But why bother with that if his Oscar plans pay off?