The movie that made Dwayne Johnson fall in love with acting: “I want to be that guy”
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Acting might not be the first word you associate with Dwayne Johnson, better known as ‘The Rock’.
That word might be wrestling, or muscles, or Moana. But to give the guy his due, he’s enjoyed a 20-year career in movies with a very wide range of roles, so acting is also something he knows a fair bit about.
He successfully jumped from the wrestling ring to the big screen in 2001 in The Mummy Returns and has since gone on to star in more than 60 movies, including the likes of Fast and Furious 6, Jumanji and Black Adam.
And one movie, or rather movie franchise, we have to thank for Johnson wanting to make his way from Hawaii to Hollywood is Indiana Jones, the classic, trailblazing story of the archaeology professor with a whip.
Released back in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark kicked things off in quite spectacular fashion as Harrison Ford introduced the world to ‘Indy’ and bagged himself some long-lost treasure, battering some hapless Nazis in the process. A joint venture between two giants of cinema, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Indiana Jones was designed to be a movie hero who was believable but in the vein of classic characters like James Bond or Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti westerns.
As Lucas said in a meeting with Spielberg ahead of production: “The main thing is for him to be a super hero in the best sense of the word, which is John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery tradition of a man who we can all look up to and say, ‘Now there’s somebody who really knows his job. He’s really good at what he does, and he’s a very dangerous person’.”
When Raiders came out, it proved to be a masterstroke. The film took hundreds of millions at the box office, was a hit with critics and has since gone on to be recognised as one of the finest films ever made, influencing countless action movies and turning its star into a true icon.
So successful was the film that it spawned two more instalments in the 1980s, The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, plus another (terrible) film in 2008, and a final one in 2023 with The Dial of Destiny. That’s aside from TV spin-offs, theme park rides, comics, novels and video games.
The movies certainly proved to be a big influence on Johnson when he was young, as he told Total Film, “When I was eight years old, I watched Indiana Jones for the first time. I fell in love with movies then, and I wanted to be that guy.”
Naturally, he was already enamoured with the leading face, saying, “I was a big fan of Harrison Ford when I was younger, so, even though he wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was still a guy who was able to kick ass and be charming and witty and be intelligent. So I loved that!”
Johnson, meanwhile, has plenty more onscreen action in the pipeline. He’s currently filming not just a follow-up to his 2015 disaster movie San Andreas, but also a remake of the 1986 Kung Fu classic Big Trouble In Little China. He will also be teaming up with Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis on a film that he said has been his dream project since 2001. It’s called The King, and tells the story of a ruler who united warring Hawaiian islands hundreds of years ago as they looked to fend off advancing forces from Europe.
It seems he’ll be beaten to the punch by fellow movie muscle man Jason Momoa, however, whose new Apple TV+ show Chief of War bears a striking similarity and just hit the screens.
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