Movies
The ‘Rampage’ Adaptation Is In Serious Trouble
While I was beyond disappointed with Godzilla, I had high hopes for New Line Cinema’s Rampage, which would pit mankind against a giant gorilla, wolf and lizard.
Rampage is an adaptation of the classic video game in which the players controls the aforementioned monsters in an attempt to destroy cities across the country.
Now, New Line is looking at another disaster film for inspiration. And it’s a bad one.
Deadline is reporting that Brad Peyton is in talks with the studio to direct Rampage, reteaming him with the key players from the summer hit San Andreas, star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and producer Beau Flynn.
This is terrible news as, while Johnson is always a scene-stealer who can carry a movie on his massive shoulders, San Andreas was awful. And it’s awful because of both the screenplay and overabundance of CGI. You see, San Andreas looked like a lame cartoon, with giant tidal waves and buildings crashing down. It was poorly done, as the execution left little to the imagination. It’s so unrealistic that I found myself mentally checking out at multiple times during the movie.
Do we really want to see San Andreas with three giant monsters digitally inserted into it? Because that’s exactly what we’re going to get, unless of course the filmmakers learned from their mistakes. Odds are they didn’t as San Andreas‘ gross has shaken past the $460 million global gross mark worldwide to become most certainly the most successful original live action tent pole launch this summer, and also the highest grossing film Warner Bros has released this year (Deadline).
Oh, did I mention that Brad Peyton also directed both Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore? Yeah, that’s who I want directing an adaptation of the beloved videogame. Consider me nervous, even though there have been some truly great surprises in Hollywood (like Bryan Singer’s X-Men film).
The live action adaptation of the 80s Midway Arcade game Rampage has a script by Ryan Engle, who scripted the Liam Neeson-starrer Non-Stop. In the script, three giant monsters–a gorilla, a lizard and a wolf–wreaking havoc on major cities and landmarks across North America, with Johnson standing in their path.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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