The Problem With Dwayne Johnson's "Skyscraper"

So about a week ago I went to the new Dwayne Johnson movie, Skyscraper. What can I say? It was a decent flick. There’s a couple of wrinkles here and there that mix up the plot, but basically this movie is Die Hard with more special effects and a giant fire. This brings us to the point of this particular blog. With no intended spoilers, the bad guys in Skyscraper raise the stakes for our dear hero by kidnapping his family and holding them hostage, a move we all saw coming but also cannot understand. It’s a classic bad guy move. You’re facing some poor schmuck who has one leg and doesn’t stand a chance against your superior force, and you decide to kidnap his family to gain some sort of leverage. Idiots! I posit that the kidnapping of Dwayne Johnson's family is not only the fundamental flaw in Skyscraper, but also demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the philosophy of filmmaking.

This never fucking works. What is supposed to be leverage just turns into the poor schmuck going berserk to protect his family, and tearing the bad guys to shreds. Again, this never fucking works. With that in mind, I’m done being impressed with movies where motivated dudes have to save their families. It’s boring. It’s predictable. It’s vanilla. Nobody’s surprised when Dwayne Johnson fights through three broken femurs and a shattered ribcage to lift a car off of his wife and three kids because that’s just what motivated dudes do.

Instead, I’d much rather watch an unmotivated guy with nothing on the line try to get his way out of a situation like this. Have this dude try to stop a bank robbery. Have him stop the hijacking. That’s way more impressive! I don’t care about the hero who’s trying to save his kids, I want the guy who could be on the couch eating chips off of his chest. Instead of Dwayne Johnson and his asthmatic kids, I want the janitor: Norm, just a dude who’s putting the money together to go to night school. A guy who eats the same burrito bowl every night in between cleaning the 38th and 39th floors, that’s the hero I want. Now if that guy can stop a complex heist, I’ll be more impressed. This guy’s the underdog of the century! Dwayne Johnson and his adrenaline fueled rescue can enjoy their gold star participation, Norm will bask in the light of his accomplishments.