CLASSIC CULT VIDEO GAME 'RAMPAGE' AS A MOTION PICTURE

Kong-like Ape, Wolf & Lizzie Liz from 1986 arcade YEAR: 2018

Upright. Those were the days. When monsters, no matter what they really were... Those were the days, that's all: When huge deadly creatures stood upright, just like in one of the coolest 80's arcade games ever created  — where the player controls either a giant pissed-off Gorilla, Wolf or some kind of Lizard: All of them destroying city buildings while swatting military copters...

Since the re-imagining of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG or worse yet, Peter Jackson's multi-million dollar vanity remake of his (and history's) favorite b-movie adventure, KING KONG, these modernized titular apes were just that. Apes. Getting around with four arms and backs bent. Same with the new PLANET OF THE APES trilogy where the victimized simian wears a scowl like a teenager punished for something he didn't do...

Ralph Wolfs down A Building

Enter George, a physical clone of the others and donning the same pathetic, misunderstood expression: An albino gorilla who'd been rescued from poachers by the nicest of trainers, Dwayne Johnson as Davis, another gentle giant who can kick ass when needed role for the former wrestler formerly known as The Rock...

Grade: B—

He and a few other humans, including an embarrassingly awful Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a rough yet helpful G-Man, not even trying to shake his WALKING DEAD Negan persona — still sounding like a stoned used car salesman who was once a stoned southern preacher... Along with a meaningless villainous vixen and a pretty ingenue who'd once worked for a nefarious scientific corporation that...

Ugh, it's all so confusing... But when the movie based on the video game actually becomes like the video game, allowing the trio... Ape, Wolf and Reptile... to RAMPAGE through the city — thankfully for the audience it stays that way, and for a nice little while, too. The CGI is good, which is no surprise given how cable shows and even commercials all have equal quality special effects nowadays...

But once again, the problem is — these creatures, no matter how monstrous, just aren't monsters. Nor are they even creatures. They're simply animals. Altered and blameless, dangerously enlarged versions of what they'd been (except one sprouts wings for absolutely no reason). And because of the sappy relationship between our muscular, huggable human star and the dullest aggressor, even in the video game (the wolf was always a personal favorite), the previous cool stuff is soon enough dead and forgotten. Leading to that aforementioned one word that... while it might be a stretch for modern audiences to absorb (at first)... could bring the classic Creature Feature genre literally back on its feet again... And that's, Upright! Those were the days...