The scene Dwayne Johnson will always regret: “It was so shitty”
Dwayne Johnson was the first major WWE star to find a career in Hollywood and has since turned into a surprisingly bankable actor; however, within that, he has made quite a few blunderous career decisions, and a scene in one of his earliest films embarrasses him the most to this day.
It’s easy to forget how big a surprise it was to see World Wrestling Entertainment’s ‘The Rock’ leading a summer blockbuster, as the history of wrestlers-turned-actors has not exactly been a fruitful venture. Although ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper’s work in They Live and Andre the Giant’s performance in The Princess Bride were accepted as novelties, Johnson developed an action movie star persona similar to 1980s icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis with much more consistency.
Additionally, the actor has proven to be a surprisingly nuanced and one who’s been willing to take risks. Whether it be physically transforming himself to play an MMA star in The Smashing Machine, testing his singing voice for Moana, or playing a dim-witted criminal in Pain & Gain, Johnson has earned some of the best reviews of his career when acting against type and can at least be respected for the unabashed sincerity of his work, even with his imperfect track record populated by significant disappontments.
The man is passionate and can never be accused of phoning in a performance, and as scathing as the reviews have been for films like The Tooth Fairy or Skyscraper, Johnson certainly was front and centre and managed to turn in a fairly charismatic performance. This may be why he was most upset by his debut role in this one sequel that obscured his appearance with lousy computer-generated imagery.
1999’s The Mummy was a surprise blockbuster hit that filled the desert-set adventure epic void that had been left vacant by the absence of a new Indiana Jones film, which led Universal Pictures to be more than adamant about reuniting director Stephen Sommers with actors Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, but the sequel also got an added boost of star power when Johnson was announced as a member of the ensemble. Although he had previously had a few small acting roles on Star Trek: Voyager and That ‘70s Show, the notion of seeing ‘The Rock’ on the big screen was too good to pass up.
Unfortunately, his debut in The Mummy Returns is remembered for all the wrong reasons, and while Johnson’s character, an ancient warrior known as The Scorpion King, may have emerged in an exciting opening scene, he later reappeared in the film’s climax covered in special effects that the wrestler called “so shitty”.
Johnson told Hit Radio that it had been “an amazing movie” where “the end was a little wonky”, and although visual effects were certainly in a different place back when the film premiered in 2001, audiences could still point out the disparity when blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were released the same year with much better outcomes that hold up to this day.
Despite the backlash, Johnson was able to reprise his role in the prequel film The Scorpion King, which was released to mixed reviews a year later. Although it undeniably gained him exposure, he was smart to abandon the franchise as soon as he got the chance, wherein four direct-to-DVD sequels were eventually released, but they starred different actors in the titular role.
As much as The Mummy was a phenomenon, Johnson’s role in its history tends to be overlooked, and perhaps beneficial to his career that he got his worst moment out of the way so early.
