The Rock's 32 greatest movie moments
Nov. 8, 2023Can you smell what one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars is cooking?
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Originating from wrestling royalty before achieving unmatched Hollywood stardom, there is no one else on Earth quite literally bigger than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
When his dreams to play in the NFL were crushed, Dwayne Johnson took up his family’s profession in the wrestling ring and made his WWE (then WWF) debut in 1996, where he slowly evolved into “The Rock.” After winning multiple world championships and battling the likes of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Triple H, and The Undertaker, Johnson got bit by the acting bug through TV guest roles in shows like Star Trek: Voyager and That ‘70s Show (where he played his own father, the late Rocky Johnson).
From the ring to the silver screen, Dwayne Johnson knows how to put on a good show. To celebrate his career, here are the 32 greatest movie moments with the man called “The Rock.”
32. Learning to Fly (The Tooth Fairy)
While Tooth Fairy is maybe no one’s favorite movie, Johnson still entertains as a minor league hockey player who is magically assigned to become an actual tooth fairy. In one early scene, Johnson shows off his knack for comedy as a tough guy caught completely off guard by the dynamics of flying. That he’s doing it with tiny fairy wings on his back just makes it even funnier.
So much of Jungle Cruise’s appeal rests on the complimentary charisma between Dwayne Johnson and co-star Emily Blunt, who are indeed fun together as an onscreen pair. But a moment early in the movie allows Johnson to shine on his own as rum-drinking riverboat tour guide Frank Wolff. In between swigs from his flask, Johnson dishes out the best – and by that we meanthe worst– wildlife puns he can muster. While Frank’s affluent customers are having none of it, everyone else watching Jungle Cruise is surely having the ride of their lives.
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Part of a long line of memorable “buddy cop” blockbusters in Hollywood, Central Intelligence shines brightest in a mid-movie set-piece when Johnson takes on an entire office full of bad guys. At its climax, Robbie – with Johnson inexplicably playing the deadpan half of this duo – tells Calvin he has a plan to get them out of trouble. “It might get us both killed,” Robbie warns, “but if it works, it’ll be a totally boss story.” Despite Calvin insisting it is “not cool,” Robbie goes along with it anyway, leading to one of the movie’s most explosive moments of awesomeness.
Johnson’s budding star power is clear as Mathayus, who in the beginning is just a tribal mercenary and among the last of his bloodline. Of all the movie’s most memorable scenes, there is Johnson’s fight against the Nubian King, Balthazar (played by Michael Clarke Duncan), which ends with Mathayus earning Balthazar’s respect. By this point, Johnson’s onscreen magnetism wins over moviegoers too, including anyone who can’t fathom that a pro wrestler could be a movie star.
In a role spiritually reminiscent of his Scorpion King, Dwayne Johnson also played the DC Universe’s resident anti-hero, Black Adam, a slave who is gifted – or perhaps, cursed – with the powers of gods. In his origin story, Black Adam spends thousands of years in slumber before reawakening in the modern day to protect his people of Kahndaq.
Before Dwayne Johnson was a film star, he was “The Rock,” one of the biggest names in pro wrestling. In 1999, the riveting documentary Beyond the Mat took its cameras deep behind the scenes of WWE (then known as WWF). Filmed circa 1998, Johnson was involved in an onscreen storyline (yes, like a soap opera) with Mankind, a masked maniac played by Mick Foley.
Hoping to calm his children from the trauma of seeing their dad get beat up, Foley reintroduces his kids to The Rock, who drops his brash in-ring persona for this real-life meeting. The Rock enthusiastically asking the Foley children about their trip to Disneyland is a beautifully sweet moment in this otherwise cartoonish masculine environment. The moment gets even better when “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (also The Rock’s most infamous in-ring rival) joins in for a friendly hello.
Still, Doom has a few things going for it. That includes a pre-Fast & Furious Dwayne Johnson unafraid to be fully evil and dangerous. In Doom, Johnson co-stars as “Sarge,” the leader of an elite squad of marines tasked with investigating a situation at a lab on Mars. Naturally, there’s a zombie outbreak (gamers werereallymad about this, actually), but Sarge’s brutal strategies make it really hard to get behind him. So when Sarge is infected and becomes a monstrous zombie, it is all too easy to cheer for Karl Urban, who faces him in a one-on-one fight.
These days Dwayne Johnson is resistant to playing bad guys, but once upon a time, he did it a lot and actually did it pretty well.
Nothing about Race to Witch Mountain, an overproducedDisneysci-fi adventure movie from 2009, is all that memorable. But the movie inexplicably inspired one of the longest-running internet memes of all time. The movie stars Dwayne Johnson as a Las Vegas cab driver who helps two alien teenagers escape government agents trying to hunt for them.
In one of the movie’s earlier scenes, Johnson’s character is shocked to find the kids in the backseat of his car. The scene itself isn’t terribly funny or exciting – it’s functional, for plot reasons. But leave it to the internet to make something special out of it anyway. Just hit up your local search engine for “The Rock Driving Memes” to see how big of a mountain the internet has made from a molehill.
Halfway into the movie, in one of the most unbelievable (but purportedly true-to-life) moments, Johnson’s Paul Doyle – an amalgamation of several real-life people – cooks on a barbecue griller the severed hands of their victims to remove their fingerprints. The movie temporarily breaks the fourth wall by insisting, via on screen text, that you’re still watching a true story.
Of course, Hollywood likes to exaggerate: What was actually used wasn’t a barbecue grill, but a steel drum with an iron grate laid on top. Also they didn’t just grill the hands, but the feet and skull fragments too. Leave it to Hollywood to get it wrong.
How I Met Your Mother and Marvel fans: Spot a pre-fame Cobie Smulders, playing the role of a nameless “Exotic Beauty” (that’s how she’s actually credited) in the passenger seat next to McDonough.
Dwayne Johnson’s debut in the Fast & Furious franchise was both a turning point for the series and his own career. As antagonist Luke Hobbs, Johnson plays a broad-shouldered, highly trained hunter who mercilessly tracks down Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto in Brazil. The movie is chock full of great moments featuring Johnson, especially when he’s paired opposite Diesel (with whom he has absolutely no problems with in real life and they are the best of friends). But the very first thing Johnson says in these movies is still unforgettable. By sternly advising his men to keep Dom’s team from getting behind steering wheels, Hobbs reveals both his strategy to win and his paranoia over losing in one breath.
Even when he was an undisputed champion wrestler, Dwayne Johnson had an uncanny knack for comedy. That talent translated well into his family-friendly work, such as in the Disney comedy The Game Plan in which Johnson plays a star football player who looks after the daughter he didn’t know he had.
At one point, Johnson’s character, Joe Kingman, accidentally eats one of his daughter’s cinnamon cookies which triggers an allergy. With a swollen mouth creating a hilarious lisp, Johnson’s line delivery is as much a treat as that cookie probably was.
One of the most expensive movies Dwayne Johnson ever starred in – budgeted at a hefty $200 million, for streamer Netflix – Red Notice hardly, ahem, put the world on notice. (It is allegedly one of the most-watched films on Netflix, but streaming metrics are hard to take at face value.)
Regardless, this crime caper featuring Johnson with Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot has some merit as a mindless romp. One of its standout scenes is in the beginning, when Johnson, as an FBI investigator, chases infamous thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) through an Italian museum. Between some impressive camera work and Johnson wearing an enviable leather jacket he looks almost too good in, what you’ve got is a movie opening that’s worth watching on its own.
When your movie is about Dwayne Johnson fighting bad guys in a mile-high skyscraper, chances are, the man is gonna have to jump. And Skyscraper, directed by frequent Johnson collaborator Rawson Marshall Thurber, does just that with Johnson forced to make a leap of faith from a falling crane onto a ridiculously tall building in Hong Kong. Even if the stunt feels too inauthentic from overcooked visual effects – and certainly pales in comparison to whatever Tom Cruise is willing to do in every Mission: Impossible sequel – Johnson’s star power is still ensured, in his many performances as a man willing to do all it takes to save his family.
Ever seen a movie where a hard-edged outsider mentors a class of restless youth? It sometimes seems as if all Hollywood movie stars need to have one of these kinds of movies under their belt. In 2006, Dwayne Johnson had his own with Gridiron Gang, a fictional retelling of a 1993 documentary about an L.A. juvenile detention center that creates a football team to inspire discipline. With these kinds of movies comes inspirational speeches, and Johnson indeed delivers one to fire up his Mustangs to victory. If only we could all have “The Rock” inspiring us every day.
This one hasgotto hurt. In this hilarious 2008 comedy based on the classic Mel Brooks television series, Dwayne Johnson stars as Agent 23, a star agent with mysterious allegiances. In one early moment foreshadowing his darker side, Agent 23 puts up with an unruly coworker (played by famed character actor Larry Miller) who left the printer totally jammed. Paying it backward, Johnson abruptly staples a document to his forehead, in a moment that inspires both laughter and shock in equal measure.
Black Adam did no favors for the flailing DC Universe, but its post-credits scene showed what Dwayne Johnson was angling for the whole time: A showdown with Superman. Featuring Henry Cavill in a surprise, albeit very brief return to the franchise, the post-credits scene of Black Adam is simply superb in its promise of the Man in Black taking on the Man of Steel one-on-one. Unfortunately, the scene is now a case study innothedging bets too early, innotpursuing franchise plans so narrowly, and in putting too much faith in fans to show up. But it’s still fun to imagine, even if the closest anyone can see it happen now is bashing action figures together.
Johnson produced the film, inspired by a real-life meeting with Paige at a WWE show. In the film, Johnson recreates a moment between himself, Saraya, and Saraya’s brother Zak (played by Jack Lowden), when the siblings bug Johnson into giving them advice. Johnson briefly turns on his old “Rock” persona and cuts a “promo” (in wrestling terms, a moment on the microphone to clown your opponent). The siblings are just thankful that The Rock gave them the time of day, but for moviegoers, it was a rare moment where Dwayne Johnson wasn’t his movie star self, but hisoldself, the one who used to lay the smackdown on a weekly basis.
If we had to narrow things down to a single moment, The Rundown’s final three minutes where Johnson’s character, a bounty hunter named Beck, enters a zen-like state and clears an entire city block of bad guys takes the cake. Scored to a rollicking soundtrack and directed with John Woo-esque flair – culminating in an exploding bus that just feels too good – The Rundown shows The Scorpion King was no fluke. Johnson really was born for the movies.
While parents might still be haunted by this infectious earworm, it should surprise no one that Dwayne Johnson can actually sing. In his WWE days, The Rock sometimes came out with a guitar, where he improvised songs that typically made fun of his opponents.
Now as a bonafide A-lister, it was actually overdue for Johnson to show off his pipes in a Disney movie. As the demigod Maui, Johnson co-stars as the mentor/guardian to Moana, though Maui is just a bit full of himself. He says as much in his signature song, “You’re Welcome,” where he takes credit for everything beautiful in the world.
Fun fact: The design of Maui was heavily inspired by Johnson’s actual grandfather, the legendary wrestler Peter Maivia.
It’s a rare moment where Dwayne Johnson is left retreating with his tail between his legs, but as the rest of the Fast & Furious saga proves, Luke is no pushover. He just knows when the time is right to make his moves.
Even as a Hollywood mega-star, Dwayne Johnson hasn’t shied away from his roots. Not only is he a producer of his own biographical sitcom that goes deep into his wrestling background, he’s also brought a few iconic moves to the big screen.
In the Fast & Furious series, Johnson has done everything from a Kimura Lock submission hold (in Fast Five) to the Road Warriors’ Doomsday Device (in Fast & Furious 6) to even a German suplex (in Hobbs & Shaw). Dwayne Johnson has also performed his own finishing maneuver, called the “Rock Bottom” (basically a downward body slam) in movies like The Rundown, Walking Tall, and Furious 7. Dwayne Johnson shouldn’t reference his wrestling past all the time, but when he does, it’s really special.
The whole point of The Other Guys, a buddy comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, is that they are, well, theotherguys. If the movie was just “The Guys,” it would star Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, who cameo as two superstar NYPD officers. The movie’s killer opening – memorably set to Foo Fighters’ “Hero” – intentionally makes the case that theyarein their own movie, before pulling the rug underneath everyone. (Johnson and Jackson included.)
If you’ve never seen this before, we won’t spoil the punchline. But here’s some advice: Watch this with a group of people. The collective howl of laughter you’ll share is powerful enough to be a core memory.
Is this when the series jumped the shark? Or was this the last time the movies were incredible? Either way, Dwayne Johnson does something only he, and no one else in Hollywood, can get away with. And that’s why there’s still no one as big as The Rock.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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