Rock'n'roles: Dwayne Johnson films – ranked!

The Guardian

01-05-2025

Dwayne Johnson is about to violently switch gears. His next films include a Benny Safdie drama about an MMA fighter battling addiction and a true-crime drama produced by Martin Scorsese. The reason for this abrupt handbrake turn towards grownup film-making seems to be Red One; a duff Christmas action film. During its production, tales of Johnson's backstage behaviour leaked out: the star was said to frequently be late, and would habitually hand his assistant bottles of urine rather than walk to the toilet. It was the biggest knock to The Rock since his career began. But onwards and upwards.
Call it bad timing or hubris, but Johnson's eventual stint as a superhero felt like too little, too late. Black Adam stood out from the crowd in that his character actually killed people, but the film itself was a mess, and audiences were groggy from too many superheroes. It did so badly that DC had to switch creative approaches entirely to move on from it.
The Rock does Hasselhoff. What could go wrong? Well, on the evidence of Baywatch, quite a lot. The film kept a lot of what made the 1990s TV show so popular – nearly everyone in it was hot and skimpily clothed – but the addition of ironic, self-aware humour made it feel a little like Johnson wanted to have his cake and eat it.
A rite of passage in any action star's career is the moment when they have to make a comedy that forces them to be soft. In other words, Tooth Fairy is The Rock's Kindergarten Cop, or his Mr Nanny, or (if we want to be cruel) his The Pacifier. He plays a mean hockey player who is forced to don wings and collect children's teeth at night. 'You might just be the worst tooth fairy ever,' says Julie Andrews, who is also in this for some reason.
I'll admit to a grudging soft spot for this one, simply for how relentlessly weird it is. It's a Jules Verne adaptation in which The Rock variously sings ukulele songs, uses 3D technology to ping berries off his pecs at the camera and chases Michael Caine around on a giant bee. Underrated.
'Slow justice is no justice' said the posters for this vaguely Point-Blank-esque revenge thriller about an ex-con working his way down a list of people he wants to kill. In truth, Faster isn't all that fast, but it is the sort of film where a character can be shot full in the head and shake it off as a flesh wound.
A big historical epic based on Steve Moore's comic book, this is another one of Johnson's films known better for the narrative around it than the film itself. Johnson transformed his body for the role, spending six months inhaling calories while living 'like a monk' in Budapest. The end result is entirely forgettable, though.
An inoffensive IP grab in which Johnson and Emily Blunt do their best to breathe life into a 70-year-old theme park boat ride. Given that Pirates of the Caribbean (similarly based on a Disney attraction) was once the biggest film around, Jungle Cruise fared more modestly – although it's entertaining enough, and Johnson has some enjoyably snappy chemistry with Blunt.
There's no way to sugar-coat this: for a while, Johnson's stock in trade was churning out a stream of identical disaster movies. This is the one that really wants to be Die Hard, the one where Neve Campbell plays his wife. It's the one where The Rock jumps off one skyscraper and then lands on another one. It's fine.
Technically, The Rock has little more than an extended cameo here, in Stephen Merchant's biopic about the rise of real-life WWE star Paige. The film helped to launch a boatload of careers, from Florence Pugh to Jack Lowden, and they're responsible for all the heavy lifting. All Johnson has to do here is coast on his charisma, something he pulls off with aplomb.
In which The Rock adapts a video game from 1986. The arcade game Rampage very much felt like an unlicensed attempt to trade on the popularity of King Kong and Godzilla, and the movie did nothing to change that. The star attraction is George, an enormous albino gorilla. But Johnson, playing his handler (who also gets to fire guns and punch a load of people), is the secret draw. It takes a lot to manufacture chemistry with a big ape that doesn't exist, but he achieves it effortlessly. Maybe the most pure fun a Dwayne Johnson film has ever been.
The Rock (and he was The Rock back then, none of this 'Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson' nonsense) made his feature debut with this sequel to The Mummy. In time his character would receive his own spin-off in the form of the Scorpion King, and from this evidence it's clear why. As the villain of the piece, Johnson oozes menace here; although the film is now notorious for its spectacularly shoddy CGI, which even at the time had to be seen to be believed, you can still see his star being born in real time.
This film represented a deliberate step back towards reality for both its star (who had just made a GI Joe movie) and its director, Michael Bay (who had been focusing on Transformers films). Pain & Gain is a true-crime thriller based on the story of some Miami bodybuilders who cluelessly embarked on a series of kidnappings and murders. Johnson is paired with Mark Wahlberg, and they both get a lot of mileage from playing vain dimwits. Some might say it's a little distasteful to turn an actual murder into a comedy; if you can park that, though, the film is a wonderful reminder of Johnson's strengths.
Make no mistake, Be Cool is a mess. A shapeless, formless, cameo-filled attempt to meld a sequel to Get Shorty out of thin air, the film has very little to offer. Johnson plays Elliot, a gay bodyguard with dreams of becoming an actor, and, in a puddle of sludge, he outshines everyone with his wit, timing and sheer physicality. You shouldn't go and seek out Be Cool, because it will be the most miserable couple of hours of your life, but I'm sure Elliot has some compilation clips on YouTube.
On social media, The Rock makes much of his infinite determination. If he sets his mind on something, there's nothing he can't achieve. The Jumanji films are probably the greatest evidence of that. On paper, only a madman would attempt to remake a classic like Jumanji, especially following in the footsteps of a once-in-a-generation talent like Robin Williams. And yet The Rock did it. In truth, this isn't so much a remake as a reimagining; the original saw Williams escape the game into real life, whereas here The Rock dives straight in. But he's backed by a lot of talent in Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan. The fact that Johnson is playing a shy teenager injected into the body of an action hero is also a very sweet touch.
Johnson's presence in Adam McKay's comedy is something of a red herring. This is really a film about Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, two incompetent New York cops who are forced to step up when the city's two best policemen are killed. Johnson plays one of the latter, which means his screen time is mainly confined to the first scene. However, that scene manages to offer a pitch-perfect distillation of The Rock's career until then. It's a high-stakes, gormless action sequence that, like almost all of his films, pays absolutely no mind to collateral damage. Johnson destroys everything (ultimately including himself) in pursuit of a villain, and, despite wrecking half a city in the process, is still considered a hero.
If it wouldn't be so repetitive, these films could have made up half this list. The Fast & Furious series is the reason why The Rock came to be known as a franchise saver. Before he arrived, these were boring, slightly po-faced films about street racers. Then he came along and transformed the entire franchise into a head-smashing parade of ever sillier stunts. Starting with 2011's Fast Five, Johnson punched and shot his way through countless baddies – and navigated what might be the world's most unintentionally hilarious real-life feud with co-star Vin Diesel – until the universe simply couldn't contain his might and he ducked out. A cameo at the end of Fast X (a film so aggressively OTT that it feels like a peyote trip) hinted at a return in the series finale. Here's hoping.
A clear winner from Johnson's disaster movie days, San Andreas is a loving homage to the work of Roland Emmerich, centring on what might happen should the San Andreas fault devastate the west coast of America. This essentially involves The Rock trading up through more and more ostentatious modes of transport as he attempts to outrun an earthquake. It's all profoundly silly, from the American flag that unfurls at the end to the nagging suspicion that Johnson is never sure how attracted he is supposed to be to Alexandra Daddario, who plays his daughter.But goodness, it's entertaining.
A buddy movie starring two half-formed offshoots from the Fast & Furious movies, Hobbs and Shaw felt like the most unnecessary film going when it was released. And yet you'll never find a film with such a confident grasp of exactly how silly it is. Two lunkheads (Johnson and Jason Statham) squabble as they attempt to defeat Idris Elba's genetically enhanced super-soldier. Every set piece here is stupider than the last – They fly fighter jets! They fight baddies with clubs! They drive cars through the top of skyscrapers! – and it's baffling to think that this is a spin-off of a film where some people have a car race. But it's so giddy (thanks mainly to co-star Vanessa Kirby, who palpably cannot believe she gets to do this) that the whole thing feels irresistible.
Ultimately, no film project of Dwayne Johnson's has ever used his actorly skill set quite as effectively as Moana. Yes, it's an animation, but The Rock gets to sing and goof about while simultaneously being tough and heroic. It feels as though his character, Maui, was written especially for him, with his oafish charm – and there's a lightness of touch here that gets lost in all the head-smashing of the rest of his career. He is so good as Maui that the thought of a live-action Moana remake starring Johnson (which is happening, and happening soon) may not immediately fill you with dread. That's as high as praise gets.