What the Rock is cookin'

Why hasn't the Rock really made it big? Don't get me wrong, the dude is BIG, at least in bicep circumference, but while he's got the dubious distinction of having been in a (three) movie(s) that have been in the top 10 for the last 15 weeks, which is quite a thing, especially during the bombastic summer season, if you take a deeper dive, are any of those actually due to him? I'm going to immediately discount Snitch, even though it's his one real starring vehicle, because... well, nobody saw Snitch.

He's gotta get some credit for GI Joe Retaliation -- the first one was so bad that the sequel had a tough row to hoe from the start, and the addition of the Dwayne as Roadblock definitely piqued interest, though I think the real draw here was the "it can't be as bad as the first one, right?" and the early release of that crazy ninjas-on-the-mountain scene, which immediately eclipsed (and erased the memory of) the entirety of the first movie:

I don't think he gets much from Pain & Gain, though -- that's a Michael Bay vehicle through and through, with a little bit of the Marky Mark thrown in. I've heard he's really good in it, but I don't think many folks were all about the Dwayne in this one.

Then there's the movie of the summer (so far at least), Furious 6. While there's no doubt that his inclusion in this franchise is a damn good thing -- and that these movies didn't get good until he joined up -- he's still nowhere near the main draw. He just walks around looking Hulk-like and being gruff, but he's not involved in most of the reasons this flick is so outstanding. He doesn't even get to drive a cool car, for crap's sake!

But back to the Hulk-like:

The dude is just HUGE. When he was first making the transition from wrestling to the big screen in The Rundown, Mr. Johnson acutally got a little bit smaller than he was when he was in the ring, going for that everyman (or at least the Hollywood version of it) thing... but he quickly moved completely away from that. Which makes sense for the movies he's making now, which are big, dumb, and completely cartoonish, so making himself into a living, breathing action figure is the right way to go. But in the long run, it's probably pretty limiting. The dude's got charisma to burn and he seems damn smart onscreen, no matter how dumb the shit around him might be, but there's no way right now he could be taken seriously in any sort of dramatic role... like Snitch, maybe? In some ways, the fact that popular cinema has such a superhero fetish right now works to his advantage, but he still has yet to really capitalize on his own. There are rumors he's gunning for Power Man, which is about the only way I can see him really headlining anything major at this point. He needs something Conan- or Terminator-like to really launch him.

But no matter what, at least Michael Bay gave me this, my current favorite picture: