More so than in an earlier close-quarters knife-fight or in the movie's hall of mirrors finale, the crane-jump scene fully grasps and understands the appeal of Dwayne Johnson as a movie star in ways that previous vehicles have not. You never really find out why all these people are gathered in the streets to watch this disaster soap opera, but you don't question it. They're a perfect audience surrogate: the gasp, cry, and scream for our hero. As a helicopter films him, the citizens of the city look on at the spectacle. In what feels like a meta-wink to Johnson's WWE days, when legions of fans would roar along to his every raised eyebrow and dropped elbow, the moment where Will make his fateful jump plays out on a giant screen in the streets of Hong Kong, where spectators watch and cheer him on. The effectiveness of the leap is all in the Jumbotron. But in the actual film, it's a crowd-pleasing moment of pure action movie hokum. In trailers, the jump looks preposterous. The most important part of the jump is the way the director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who worked with Johnson on the comedy Central Intelligence, and the movie's vastly overqualified cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has shot multiple Paul Thomas Anderson movies, stage the action to wring every bit of goofy, nail-biting suspense from every flame-kissed frame. Maybe Efthimiou is correct? But the scene, which occurs about a third into the story, simply works from a moviegoing perspective. For most of its runtime, Skyscraper is modestly entertaining but frustratingly indistinct, but it really gains a sense of purpose in it's best, silliest scene. There's a haphazard, anodyne quality to most of Johnson's recent action epics, like they've been rearranged from the leftover parts of more original films. After his previous action extravaganza Rampage underperformed at the box office, Skyscraper also appears to be on pace to underwhelm, delivering a partly $25 million opening weekend. At the present moment, Johnson is one of remaining box office draws still trying to make big, dopey, meat-and-potatoes action movies.Įven for him, it's not entirely clear if the approach is working. In the '90s, you could have plugged Steven Seagal, Wesley Snipes, Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or any number of stars into this movie. From a plot perspective, Skyscraper sounds like it could have been produced in the '90s: There's an ex-FBI agent (Johnson) who must save his wife (Neve Campbell) and two adorable children (McKenna Roberts and Noah Cottrell) from a gun-toting, sneer-having European terrorist (Roland Møller) attempting to take over The Pearl, a hi-tech super-tower in downtown Hong Kong. Skyscraper, his recent workmanlike riff on the Die Hard formula, is further proof that he's the action hero most likely to bend the laws of physics to his will.Īt the very least, the movie feels like it arrived via time travel. As a pro wrestler in the WWE, the muscle-bound actor used to fling himself around the ring and contort his body in pretzel-like shapes to sell the moves of his foes, and now he's transferred those skills to the big screen, where he makes otherwise sleepy thrillers, comedies, and disaster movies come alive with acts of patently ridiculous heroism. I didn't necessarily feel that it would be the kind of music I'd doing for the rest of my career, because if you listen to Passion and Warfare it's obvious there's something else going on in that guy's head.His latest blockbuster might be sinking like a stone at the box office, but, in movie world, gravity is still no match for Dwayne Johnson. "I opted to do the Whitesnake gig, because I'm very comfortable with a lead singer, especially someone like David Coverdale, who's just always outstanding," he noted. Vai also explained his decision to join Whitesnake instead of immediately pursuing a full-time solo career following his departure from Roth's band. I really like it, but it sat on the shelf for over 30 years. "It’s the record I think a lot of people were expecting I would make - and were hoping I might make - because it's even more straight ahead than Whitesnake or David Lee Roth," Vai added. He said his forthcoming vault release is "really for the fans that are interested in seeing an alternative life for me back in '91." Vai said the album will feature vocals from his friend John "Gash" Sombrotto, who "had never sung, but I heard something in his voice, and I put in the studio and you're just not gonna believe the way he sings." The album, which Vai has tentatively titled Vai/Gash, is "probably going to come out early next year."īefore he made a name for himself as a solo artist with his masterful 1990 sophomore album Passion & Warfare, Vai served in David Lee Roth's solo band, playing on 1986's Eat 'Em and Smile and 1988's Skyscraper, and then joined Whitesnake for 1989's Slip of the Tongue and its accompanying world tour.
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