Hollywood's biggest joke? How The Rock reinvented himself

Telegraph

05-05-2025

The thing about machines is that we expect them to keep chugging on – to never break or falter. In the late 1990s, that was true of Mark 'The Smashing Machine' Kerr, a mixed martial artist who became addicted to painkillers at the height of a career that helped put UFC on the map. And it's also true of the one-man multiplex behemoth about to play Kerr in one of 2025's most intriguing big-screen dramas.
This October will see Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson showcase his dramatic acting chops for the first time, in The Smashing Machine, the new movie from Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems). Produced by indie powerhouse A24 – makers of Everything Everywhere All At Once, Midsommar and more – it's being talked about as a reset of sorts for one of the true commercial juggernauts of our time; an action giant with over $15bn in box office receipts to his name, but whose entertainment empire has started to sputter over the last three years.
If you follow Hollywood, you'll have read the stories. How in 2022, Black Adam, Johnson's attempt at a DC superhero franchise, suffered a catastrophic failure to launch. And how, shortly after, he was accused of disrespectful behaviour during production of his next blockbuster, Red One. A report by The Wrap alleged that Johnson was frequently late to set and habitually peed in water bottles that he'd hand to his assistant to dispose of. The former wrestler admitted that, on both counts, 'Yeah, that happens.'
When Red One – in which Johnson teams up with Ryan Reynolds to rescue a kidnapped Santa Claus – eventually hit cinemas, it wasn't the deluge of career-worst reviews that made brand Rock suffer. Nor was it the movie's dismal box office performance, making back just $87m at the global box office against a $250m budget. (Amazon contested reports of its financial failure, claiming that a record-breaking 50 million worldwide viewers in its first four days on Prime Video). The Rock-led blockbusters had flopped before, critically and commercially; it probably won't surprise you, for example, to learn that 2010's Tooth Fairy wasn't exactly declared this generation's Citizen Kane.
The real damage, then, was to Johnson's reputation as one of Hollywood's rare 'nice guys' – an integral part of his appeal. The Rock's on-screen charisma alone wasn't what sent audiences rushing to cinemas for movies like Jumanji, Moana, San Andreas and the star's six Fast and Furious outings. Instead, it was his humble off-screen persona, forged in an American Dream-esque origin story, that powered his golden touch at the box office.
To millions of moviegoers (394m on Instagram, to be precise), Johnson was a mixed-heritage hero who had bench-pressed his way out of impoverished conditions, taking over wrestling and then Hollywood, with the White House potentially next. In 2021, a Piplsay poll discovered that 46 percent of Americans would support Johnson were he to run for President; 'I don't think our Founding Fathers ever envisioned a six-four, bald, tattooed, half-black, half-Samoan, tequila-drinking, pick up truck-driving, fanny pack-wearing guy joining their club,' was his response, adding that 'it'd be my honour' to follow in the footsteps of Terminator-turned- governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a similar transition into politics.
Today, a march on Washington feels fanciful. As it stands, his reputation and box office reliability both appear to be on the ropes – which is why this week's trailer for The Smashing Machine, in which the 52-year-old is seen breaking down in tears and flexing his dramatic muscles, drew plenty of attention. From the prosthetics and wig disguising his recognisable features to anguished scenes of marital strife with Emily Blunt shot without glamorous Hollywood lighting, Safdie and Johnson are clearly signposting that Fast X Part II, this is not.
Is the plan to reinvent himself as a serious dramatic force? It seems that's an avenue Johnson at least wants to forge a path towards. Yes, there are blockbusters to come from the star: a live-action Moana here, a Disney title named Monster Jam there. But there's also the curious prospect of collaboration with Martin Scorsese on the docket too, his first time partnering with an auteur since Richard Kelly's Southland Tales in 2006.
The film is a Hawaii-set crime thriller, adapted from a non-fiction book that Johnson is co-writing. Leonardo DiCaprio and The Rock's The Smashing Mouth co-star Emily Blunt will star alongside him, in a project apparently close to the former wrestler's heart – though he now lives in Virginia, Hawaiian history and folklore remains a passion of his, and he remains an advocate for Hawaiian causes; in 2023, he pledged $10 million to a People's Fund of Maui to support victims of devastating wildfires there.
Whether or not The Rock has the talent to pull off such a transformation, though, remains to be seen. Unlike most Hollywood stars, the actor has been laser-focused on four-quadrant superstardom since swapping the spandex and suplexes of WWE for the lights of Tinseltown. Peek at the filmographies of Elizabeth Olsen, Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy and other A-listers and you'll find intimate dramas shot in between their commitments to big-screen franchises. Not The Rock, who has stuck rigidly to explosive blockbusters, with only the occasional glimpse at something more grounded, such as Michael Bay's true-life crime thriller Pain & Gain (2013).
That is, till now. 'I'm at a point in my career where I want to push myself,' he told Variety last year. 'I want to make films that matter, that explore humanity and explore struggle [and] pain.' There's certainly plenty of pain to explore in The Smashing Machine. With a script based on a bruising 2002 HBO documentary, and Kerr's memoir, it has the potential to be a The Wrestler-esque portrait of the blood, sweat and muscle tears required to be a fighter – something that Johnson, whose father and grandfather were also wrestlers, can probably bring personal experience to.
On-screen and off, the sub-genre of 'fighting films' is tried-and-tested ground for redemption arcs. Long before last month's dispiriting homophobic remarks on Celebrity Big Brother, Mickey Rourke earned a late-career resurgence after decades of bad press in The Wrestler. It's also no coincidence either that a film about a fighter – 2001 Oscar-winner Ali – was Will Smith's ticket to being recognised as a serious actor, shedding his TV sitcom and Men In Black funnyman baggage.
And it also helps Johnson's chances that, in Benny Safdie, he has a collaborator who's helped others discover their darker sides before. Safdie's 2019's Uncut Gems (co-directed with his brother, Josh) saw screwball comedy icon Adam Sander reborn as a desperate jeweller, in a cardiac arrest-causing crime thriller. His 2023 series The Curse, meanwhile, saw TV prankster Nathan Fielder play against type as an insecure husband to Emma Stone in a surreal drama about gentrification.
Johnson has had to reinvent himself before – the most obvious example being his then-unprecedented leap from the ring into major Hollywood productions in 2001's The Mummy Returns. With wrestling at a cultural peak at the turn of the millennium, the star was cast by Universal in a bid to score some of the sport's booming audience. Few people had any idea then that The Rock would prove so effective in his brief cameo that audiences would demand his character's own film, 2002's The Scorpion King, kickstarting one of the most lucrative acting careers in recent Hollywood history.
Look deeper into his history, and there are further rebirths. When he was 18, Johnson suffered a shoulder injury that meant having to rip up plans of becoming an American football star. The setback plunged him into a deep depression before he set his sights on wrestling: 'I didn't want to do anything. I had never experienced anything like that,' he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2014.
The prospect of The Rock reinventing himself once more, this time into a formidable dramatic force – one who can pull on that experience of depression and other cloudier parts of his past – is exciting. And not just because Hollywood, in a time of tanking theatrical receipts, needs stars like him to pull audiences into multiplexes.
Historically, Johnson has proved a uniquely cross-partisan presence in our pop culture. After the poll that indicated almost half of Americans were already backing a Rock Presidential run, the star had not one but two sets of visitors knocking on his door. Representatives of both the Democrats and Republicans came calling in the hopes that he'd run for their party, Johnson revealed in 2023. It's a story that speaks to how The Rock's gravitational pull once defied political tribalism; he was popular among supporters on both sides of the aisle.
In a divided time, the star has previously been one of the rare things that people appeared to agree on: a feat more impressive than any of the superheroes performed by his characters on-screen. Even Gen Z audiences who weren't born at the time when The Rock made his transition into film star seem to love him; a surprising poll from entertainment data firm National Research Group recently saw him top a list of their most-beloved actors, beating Zendeya, Tom Holland and co.
The Rock's career might have faltered lately, but The Smashing Machine might just be the oil change that gets his career purring again. Let's face it, Hollywood – and America – could probably do with it.
The Smashing Machine is released in UK cinemas on 3 October 2025
The Rock's five best performances
1. The Other Guys (2010)
Johnson's funniest supporting role. This Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg buddy comedy featured The Rock as an action hero caricature, whose super smooth crime-busting exploits – dispatching zingers as he dispatches villains – parodied his public perception.
One scene – in which Johnson and partner Samuel L Jackson leap from a building to catch their criminal prey – is up there with director McKay's best ever gags. Which is saying something: McKay is the filmmaker responsible for Anchorman and Step Brothers. The Rock's sharp timing and willingness to send himself up here proves him as effective a funnyman as any of the comics the film-maker typically pairs with.
2. San Andreas (2015)
Remember disaster movies? Johnson does, as evidenced by his mid-2010s attempt to bring Roland Emmerich-esque tales of toppling city skylines and famous landmarks on fire back into the zeitgeist. 2018's Skyscraper – about a former FBI agent who has to rescue his family from a burning building in Hong Kong – was fine, but this effort three years earlier was a premium popcorn thrillride.
Johnson plays a helicopter pilot forced to save the day when an enormous earthquake strikes LA. To make matters worse, his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) is among those caught up in the chaos. Gleeful special-effects adventure of a very tall order.
Sky Store, Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+
3. The Mummy Returns (2001)
Where it all began. This sequel to Nineties smash The Mummy was Johnson's first acting role, and feels like an Imhotep-esque ancient relic in 2025. Not because the CGI is so ropey (though it is) and not because family adventures like this have all but ceased production (though they have).
It's an unusual rewatch in 2025 because back then, The Rock still had something to prove as an actor. In his cameo as the villainous Scorpion King, Johnson works in service of the film instead of the movie being sculpted around his image. The result? A fun romp in which Johnson frights as a reborn warrior who sold his soul to Anubis.
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4. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2016)
It probably says something about the type of raucous spectacle The Rock is drawn to that he's starred in not one but two different blockbusters titled 'Welcome To The Jungle' (the other a 2003 flop about a loan shark). This film and its 2018 sequel, though, make for fun franchise fodder.
Rather than try to recapture the magic of the first Jumanji adventure starring Robin Williams, The Rock and co-stars Karen Gillian, Kevin Hart and Jack Black are allowed to bicker hilariously in a dangerous video game world, in this sequel only tenuously connected to the original.
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5. Pain & Gain (2013)
His Fast and Furious films are a better showcase of his action talents. And Moana's not without its fans, nor its importance to Johnson himself as a Hawaiian. But this last slot goes to Pain & Gain in part for its surprising sobriety. Michael Bay is an explosion in human form. 2013, meanwhile, saw The Rock and Mark Wahlberg – then both in their early forties – in prime, pumped-muscle action figure form. How is it that this collaboration ended up being one of the more thought-provoking titles on each of their resumes? Yes, it's a ludicrous tale of gangland violence. But its dramatic scenes contain glimpses of what The Rock is capable of when he comes back down to Earth.
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