The Rock’s Rock Bottom

Intro: Moana, But Less Good

Disney’s live-action Moana hit streaming two weeks ago, ending its theatrical run and cementing its status as a box office bomb, with an estimated $100 million loss during its theatrical engagement. To this, I say: good. These live-action remakes are artistically bankrupt, falling squarely into a category of “who asked for this?” entertainment. You can only release so many versions of Moana before you cannibalize its source material. Complicit in this lifeless adaptation is Dwayne Johnson, who is once again the face of a Hollywood flop.

Post-pandemic, The Rock has cooked up an undisputed turkey-fest of cinema, including Black Adam, Red One, Red Notice, Jungle Cruise, Moana 2, and now live-action Moana. At this point, coverage of Dwayne Johnson’s once-unimpeachable movie stardom has become less about the films themselves than the larger spectacle of his fading commercial clout. How did one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars become a punching bag for box office pundits, and is there precedent for the former wrestler’s fall from grace?

So today, we’ll trace The Rock’s rise and decline—from commercial preeminence to perceived box-office poison—and examine how his career came to embody a fading model of movie stardom.

Dwayne Johnson’s Rock Bottom

We’ll start with the metric that matters most in Hollywood: is this actor making money for the people who pay them millions? In the case of Dwayne Johnson, the answer is now “no.” The average ROI of a Rock-led production has drifted into the red, a precipitous drop from his pre-pandemic highs.

Worse still, the actor is losing his grip on popular imagination—a somewhat intangible dynamic that matters for a performer who must translate his or her celebrity into box-office dollars.

From 2016 to 2019, The Rock’s Wikipedia page drew the most sustained traffic of any Hollywood actor, ranking among the site’s Top 100 pages roughly one out of every four days. Since the pandemic, that figure has fallen to around 2%, even as he continues to release two movies a year.

I don’t want to rejoice in The Rock’s downfall, but this box office dry spell may have been long overdue. A Dwayne Johnson project has never been synonymous with the following markers of prestige cinema: the Criterion Collection, auteur filmmaking, glowing Letterboxd ratings, glowing critic reviews, a film that has no CGI, or a Metacritic score displayed in a green-shaded box.

This is all to say that The Rock typically headlines films of below-average quality, according to online ratings.

An actor can only make so many less-than-stellar films (Red One, Red Notice, Black Adam, etc.) before this perceived disregard for quality catches up to them—with the lowest of low points being an unnecessary live-action adaptation of his most critically acclaimed movie (Moana).

And while it’s tempting to cast The Rock as some sort of cinematic villain in the midst of a cosmic comeuppance, his particular brand of celebrity may have always come with an expiration date.

To quote Hamilton: “Oceans rise; empires fall.” Hollywood trends—including movie stardom—are cyclical. Consider Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, John Travolta, and the patron saint of this newsletter, Nic Cage. Each enjoyed a stretch when their commercial bankability seemed almost permanent. Then, a few lackluster movies and/or PR debacles later, their stardom was simply gone.

In their place, we get new stars like Margot Robbie and Timothée Chalamet, or proven commodities experiencing a late-career resurgence, like Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves.

In fact, Hollywood’s star system has more turnover than you might expect. In a typical year, roughly 43% of the actors leading the highest-grossing films are reaching that level of commercial success for the first time.

The Rock’s recent decline in celebrity may also reflect changing Hollywood norms and a shrinking box office. There are simply fewer movie stars in the American film industry, as measured by the number of performers who have appeared in at least three top-grossing films within a five-year span (excluding the pandemic). This decline in sustained commercial stardom predates 2020, tracing back to the early 2010s, when prestige television was ascendant, the Marvel machine was hitting full stride, and Hollywood was finding it increasingly difficult to break new talent and launch original stories.

Viewed through this lens, Dwayne Johnson’s 20-year box office run is actually quite remarkable, given that he first emerged as a leading man in the early 2000s. For twenty years, he gave us subpar cinema, and yet he endured as Hollywood’s brightest star. Perhaps he’ll stage a career revival after this latest debacle, but even if his run ends here, its longevity remains exceptional.

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Final Thoughts: A Schematic Approach to Stardom

There used to be a certain kind of movie stardom that functioned much like Mad Libs. A film pitch—or its entire marketing campaign—could often be reduced to a single sentence: take a famous actor, drop them into an absurd situation, and let their star power and charisma do the rest. It was a formulaic approach to moviemaking so pervasive that South Park once built an entire episode around satirizing the phenomenon.

In a 2004 episode, Cartman disguises himself as a robot named AWESOM-O and, through a series of misadventures, becomes a Hollywood development executive. Forced to generate movie ideas on command, he spits out hundreds of terrible pitches that feature Adam Sandler:

• Puppy Love: Adam Sandler falls in love with a girl, but she turns out to be a golden retriever.
• Punch-Drunk Billionaire: Adam Sandler inherits a billion dollars, but first he has to become a professional boxer.
• Coconut Love: Adam Sandler gets trapped on a deserted island and falls in love with a coconut.

The brilliance of the bit is that every concept is both ludicrous and plausible, harkening back to an era when movie development was schematic: What if [famous actor] had to deal with [insert hilarious hijinks or dramatic obstacle]?

That formula maps neatly onto Dwayne Johnson’s once-untouchable movie stardom:

• What if The Rock was the tooth fairy? (Tooth Fairy)
• What if The Rock had to survive a major earthquake? (San Andreas)
• What if The Rock looked enormous while standing next to Kevin Hart, who is very small? (Central Intelligence, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji: The Next Level)

Take a simple premise, attach a bankable movie star, and a blockbuster is born. Post-pandemic, however, audiences demand something more: event-ization, strong reviews, IMAX-worthy spectacle, auteur filmmaking, visceral scares, Letterboxd hype, or some other reason to leave the house. The formula has changed—if any such formula still exists.

AWESOM-O’s pitches wouldn’t work in today’s moviegoing environment, making The Rock’s particular brand of movie stardom a relic of a bygone commercial archetype.

Much like his stage name, Dwayne Johnson’s on-screen persona remains static—a rock stuck in place even as Hollywood changes around him. And while it is tempting to assign him some agency in this decline—to blame bad project choices—the reality is that it simply may have been his time to exit the limelight.

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