One of Dwayne Johnson‘s 2024 movies has been criticized for its CGI. Johnson is a major movie star who began his career as a wrestler before moving on to onscreen acting beginning with 2001’s The Mummy Returns, in which he played the villainous Scorpion King, a role that he would later reprise in the 2002 spinoff The Scorpion King. Since then, he has gone on to star in a wide variety of genres including comedy (The Tooth Fairy, Baywatch) and drama (Pain & Gain, Walking Tall).
However, the majority of Dwayne Johnson movies are part of the action and adventure genres. These genres encompᴀss some of his biggest box office hits, which include multiple installments in the Fast & Furious franchise, the standalone sequel Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and its follow-up The Next Level, the disaster movie San Andreas, and the video game adaptation Rampage. He has also scored major hits with his voice role as the demigod Maui in Disney’s Moana movies, but not every movie of his gets a solid critical and commercial reception.
Red One Has Been ᴀssessed By VFX Experts
The Movie Was A Theatrical Flop
Johnson’s 2024 flop Red One has just had its CGI picked apart. Johnson plays Callum Drift, a security official for Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons), who must reluctantly team with the naughty bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to rescue Santa after he is kidnapped. The Red One cast also includes Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, and Nick Kroll. The movie was a flop, grossing $185.7 million against its roughly $250 million budget and earning a dismal 30% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
Red One‘s fortunes turned around somewhat thanks to its 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and its streaming run on Prime Video kicking off with it becoming the most-watched movie premiere on the streaming platform.
On their official YouTube channel, Corridor Crew‘s VFX experts Sam, Niko, and Wren have evaluated the CGI used to bring Red One to life. They watched two scenes from the movie, first taking a look at an action sequence taking place in the North Pole which involves Drift outrunning an avalanche. Niko criticized how the “physical danger doesn’t really work when it’s so CGI-heavy,” while Sam joked about how many CG rocks were in the scene, including “the one on the snowmobile,” referencing Johnson’s wrestling moniker, “The Rock.” Read their conversation below:
Niko: So this is a $250 million movie, huh? This does not look like $250 million worth of CGI.
Sam: Every scene is like a CGI fest… There’s so many CG rocks in this sH๏τ… And I’m not even talking about the one on the snowmobile.
Niko: Physical danger doesn’t really work when it’s so CGI-heavy. Like… “I’m gonna get crushed by this avalanche!” It’s like, no you’re not.
Wren: When he runs across the roof, it’s… alright, it’s green screen but then there’s a takeover… There’s like a weird uncanniness to the takeover… It was probably CG the whole time.
Sam: It’s also got the weird motion blur thing going on…
They also watched a scene that takes place on a beach, which they criticized for having backgrounds that were apparently entirely replaced by the VFX team. Sam asked, “why didn’t you just film it on a cool island beach?” while Niko criticized their approach to light wrapping. Read their conversation and see the original video below:
Sam: I was watching this scene and I was just like “why didn’t you just film it on a cool island beach, guys?”… Why is everything replaced in the background?
Niko: They just got that weird light wrap, where like everything light wraps including the dark things.
What This Means For Red One
Its CGI May Have Been A Major Roadblock
The CGI effects in the Dwayne Johnson movie did not affect the movie’s reception with audiences, given the fact that its 90% audience score is Verified H๏τ on Rotten Tomatoes and consists of more than 5,000 verified ratings. However, many Red One reviews from critics, both positive and negative, point towards the visual effects as a major problem with the experience. Critics also took umbrage with many different elements of the project, with multiple reviewers saying that it has a generic storyline, lambasting its transparent attempt to kickstart a franchise, and insisting that its cast is sleepwalking through it.
A verified rating on Rotten Tomatoes means that the user giving the rating was confirmed to have purchased a ticket to see the movie in theaters via Fandango, which has been Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company since 2016.
However, while there were many flaws that critics found in Red One, if the movie’s CGI had not been so pervasive and so easily criticized, it is entirely possible that more of the reviews would have trended positive. Its average rating was 4.4 out of 10, and if more reviews had skewed just a few points higher, closer to 6.0, it may have even achieved a Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, which could have allowed it to become more of a success in theaters by encouraging more moviegoers to check it out in theaters rather than on streaming.
Our Take On Corridor Crew’s Red One Discussion
The Budget May Not Have Gone To CGI
While the amount of CGI sequences in the Dwayne Johnson movie may have spread the VFX teams thin and accounted for why the effects are not always entirely convincing, it is also probable that the Red One budget is so high because of the cast and not the visual effects. Chris Evans is a Marvel alumnus, which likely means that he comes with a large price tag, but Johnson’s recent output has been consistently hampered by huge budgets, including Black Adam (~$260 million) and Jungle Cruise ($200 million), which could be because of his fee rather than their VFX needs.
Source: Corridor Crew
