San Andreas (2015) vs. Skyscraper (2018)

Hollywood has a problem. No, it's not that Donald Trump is president. No, this is not the industry full of cowardly morals that has allowed Harvey Weinstein for decades. It's not even metastatic cancer that are super hero movies. I mean, as I write this, they plan to make two different Joker movies with two different actors playing the character. Does anyone think it will work?

No, the Hollywood problem is well illustrated by this issue of KIMT's Weekend Throwdown that looks at two movies with one of the closest things to a new movie star that's the only one in the world. business has seen for a long time. long time. This is "San Andreas" (2015) against "Skyscraper" (2018) to try to understand what the inevitable fall of Dwayne Johnson tells us about the future of cinema.

"San Andreas" is just another disaster movie that tried to be more than just another disaster movie and ended up failing both. Raymond Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) is a helicopter rescue pilot who has just been distracted and has just received divorce papers from his wife (Carla Gugino). And in "distracting distraction," I mean that there are several points in the movie where you wonder how the shortage of steroids should be in California because Johnson has apparently taken everything. His wife is almost ready to move in with her architect friend (Ioan Gruffud) and Ray's daughter (Alexandra Daddario). Then a huge earthquake hits the San Andreas Fault and Ray must first save his wife to Los Angeles, and then both must travel to San Francisco to save the girl and her awesome PG-13 cleavage.

The first time Carla Gugino had a co-star with breasts bigger than hers.

Like many modern blockbusters, "San Andreas" starts pretty loud. There is a reasonably exciting scene introducing Ray where she saves a girl who is chased off a cliff. We have a good overview of disaster action since the Hoover Dam is destroyed while two scientists are trying to prove that they can predict the earthquakes. And the scene where Ray has to zoom in and out of Los Angeles with his wife while the city is shaking around them is pretty intense. And it's fair to say that this movie is not stuffed with disastrous movie clichés, but that's because this movie is not full of anything. It is a strangely sterile and disjointed production where it seems that filmmakers wanted to do something interesting before being finally consumed by their own budget of special effects.

For example, when we are introduced to Ray, we are also introduced to his helicopter rescue team. It is established that they all served in the army together and I bet the money that every person who looks "San Andreas" leaves the rescue of the cliff opening hoping that Ray's team will be the main characters supporting the rest of the film, with At least one of them has been killed helping Ray save his family. But then the rescue team disappears from the movie and with the exception of a guy who hangs out for a few lines of exposure, they are never even referenced again. It's so strange and because nothing you see in a movie is accidental, you have to believe that the rescue team has been a deliberate effort to play with the public's expectations. .. except that there is no real interest.

Somewhere, Michael Dukakis is slamming his fist on a table and shouting "It's the look I was looking for!"

It's not like the scene of the rescue team establishes something about Ray or sets up a conspiracy or a dramatic element that is paid more late in the movie. It's like there was a first draft of the script where the rescue team was a big part of the rest of the movie but when they gave up that angle, they could not find anything better to open the movie and have it left in the scenario. It's like the infamous Biggs Darklighter sub-game of Star Wars, where he was somebody Luke knew about Tatooine and who was then reunited at the rebel base on Yavin's moon, except that " San Andreas "staged with Tatooine and then never seeing him for the rest of the film.

Or, there is everything about Ray's broken family. We get an early scene where Ray is legitimately annoyed by his ex-wife for not telling him that she's moving in with her new boyfriend and then a big emotional scene (which Johnson does very well) where we find out Ray and his wife broke up because he could not bear the death of their other daughter during a rafting trip. But we never see any real animosity between Ray and his wife, nor any emotional separation between Ray and her surviving daughter. There is no blame or recriminations and no evidence that guilt has changed Ray or made him do things that he would not have done otherwise. At the end of the film, when Ray has to rescue his daughter from a flooded building, it is obvious that the scene is supposed to be some sort of culmination of Ray's emotional recovery from losing his other daughter. The problem is that we never get any of the dramatic steps of this trip. Again, it's as if an earlier version of the script had these steps (or at least some of them) but they were cut off because it needed more time for things to happen. shake and break.

I know that President Trump talked about America's dilapidated infrastructure, but that's ridiculous.

Or take the new boyfriend of the woman who is clearly established early in the viewer 's mind as not being a dick. There is nothing vaguely shady or cowardly or repulsive about it. He is presented as a perfectly decent guy, but he abandons Ray's daughter in the midst of the disaster and it seems that the film uses it to emphasize that even fundamentally good people can be caught in the panic and terror of A disaster and do bad things. But the next two times we see the boyfriend, he has become nothing but a nasty caricature where the audience is supposed to laugh when he is finally killed.

And then there are scientists from the Hoover Dam earthquake that literally do not serve any legitimate function at all. We do not need them to explain anything. Their earthquake prediction method is useless since it warns you in advance of about 30 seconds. Scientists do not do anything that helps Ray and his family. The two groups never meet each other. There is a disposable line of dialogue about how the audience should start listening to scientists, except that there is no previous scene where they were ignored. Again, it is like they were the rest of an earlier and very different version of the scenario.

"All I wanted was a bottle of Merlot, is that too much to ask?"

It's like there were several good ideas at the same time "San Andreas" more than just another disaster movie. All seem to have been sacrificed on the altar of the show and if "San Andreas" was released in 2005 with this level of special effects, it might have been worth it but in 2015 we have already seen cities , entire cities, continents and planets devastated again and again and again. If it was not for the good work of the cast, highlighted by Johnson, Daddario, and Art Parkinson as a Brit kid who gets caught up with Ray's daughter during the agitation, I do not even know not if this film would even qualify as watchable.

Then there is "Skyscraper", which is just another disaster movie that never seeks to be or do not even think about being more than another disaster movie and wins a much bigger hit for its lack. Narrative ambition. Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) was the leader of an FBI hostage rescue team who lost his leg in an explosion when a rescue went awry. 10 years later, married to the surgeon (Neve Campbell) who saved his life and the father to two legitimately cute children (McKenna Roberts and Henry Cottrell), Will is an entrepreneurial security expert hired to give the final to "The Pearl" a great height of more than 200 floors in Hong Kong. When evil villains set fire to the building with Will's family inside, he must save them in as ridiculously difficult a way as possible.

"Skyscraper" has no intelligent twists. There is no emotional sub-plot where our hero must overcome a defect or resolve an internal conflict. Will Sawyer is simply a bad monopod ass who loves his family and is willing to risk his life to keep them safe. The bad guys are just bad guys. Will's wife is just a pretty little ass about half the size of her husband. "The Pearl" is just there to burn and collapse in an interesting way. No one here tries to do anything other than to make a solid entertainment to occupy your attention for a few hours and they do it by shovel. Unlike "San Andreas", who had nowhere to go after the first earthquake, "Skyscraper" manages to raise the bar in a way that is vaguely credible with more and more obstacles to overcome for Will. There is no free end. No character or scene that ends up going anywhere. He may miss the scope of "The Towering Inferno" (1974) and his villain can not hold a candle to Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" (1988) but writer / director Rawson Marshall Thurber made a film about Action honestly here.

Is she part of a Matrix sequel or something of the sort?

The only problem with "Skyscraper" is this: it would cost $ 125 million. Add in the price of marketing and promotion around the world and that means it's probably about $ 250 million just to break even. Know how many times Dwayne Johnson has been the undisputed star of a movie that has made over $ 200 million? Zero. "San Andreas" has made about $ 155 million and Johnson's film from early 2018, "Rampage," has hit a record high of over $ 99 million. The only time Johnson has seen more than $ 200 million at the box office, he joined the cast of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, part of "The Mummy Returns" (2001), in collaboration with Kevin Hart on a restarting "Jumanji", or doing a cartoon voiceover at Moana (2018).

During a 17-year career in Hollywood, Johnson directed 29 films that grossed an average of $ 114 million at the box office. It would be a very good number if they spent an average of $ 60 million to make those films, which was the "Die Hard" budget of 1988. But Johnson's last five films cost $ 125, $ 120, and $ 90. . million, $ 69 million and $ 250 million. Johnson is a star because 90 million dollars were for the restart of "Jumanji" which made 400 million dollars in America and 250 million dollars for the last film "Fast and Furious" which made more than 1 billion dollars in the world. But the other three totals are for "Skyscraper", "Rampage" and "Baywatch" (2017) and all are likely to lose money. Yes, they spent $ 69 million for the movie "Baywatch".

You know that he must be looking for a beard coloring endorsement "Just for men".

Regarding this Throwdown, "Skyscraper" wins the victory. It aims lower but hits a glance while "San Andreas" is hesitant about his lack of follow up and today 's excessively high expectations for movie magic. How do these films show the real problem Hollywood faces? Let's take a look at another issue. Arnold Schwarzenegger was catapulted into the movie stardom largely on the strength of "The Terminator" (1984). It only made $ 38 million at the US box office but cost only $ 6.4 million. And if you look at the other 80s and early 90s movies that made Arnold's career, their box office returns are not necessarily impressive even after adjusting for inflation. But their production costs are so much lower.

Dwayne Johnson is a better actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a better comedian. With the help of 30 years of progress in nutrition and training, he is taller and no doubt more physically impressive. And while few people in film history can match the "It Factor" that Allen owned, Johnson is no exception in this department. But to generate the same type of profit, the same return on investment as Arnold, Johnson must have two, three, or even four times more success. It's a business model that is not viable and when it crushes, what it does in Hollywood could make that "San Andreas" and "Skyscraper" look like at a spring picnic in the park.

San Andreas (2015)
Written by Carlton Cuse.
Directed by Brad Peyton.
With Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffud, Archie Panjabi, Paul Giamatti, Hugo Johnston-Burt, Art Parkinson, Will Yun Lee, Kylie Minogue, Colton Haynes, Todd Williams, Matt Gerald, Alec Utgoff and Marissa Neitling.

Neither Campbell is much larger than I think, or she stands on a box.

Skyscraper (2018)
Written and Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber.
With Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Paublo Schreiber, Noah Taylor, McKenna Roberts, Kevin Rankin, Roland Moller, Matt O'Leary, Hanna Quinlivan, Chin Han, and Noah Cottrell.