Dwayne Johnson‘s jungle movies have come to define his career, but there is one entry in this subgenre that is unfairly overlooked. Johnson rose to fame as one of the most popular professional wrestlers of all time, and he successfully translated his in-ring charisma to the movie world, becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Johnson has solidified his movie star status with big franchises like the Fast and Furious movies, as well as crowd-pleasing comedies. Fans will get a chance to see another side of him with the upcoming sports drama The Smashing Machine. However, it may be Johnson’s many jungle movies that really made his career in cinem.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Is A Surprisingly Fun Adventure Movie

Though certainly not the most popular of Dwayne Johnson’s jungle movies, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an underrated adventure that deserves a second look. The film is a sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, with both movies based on novels by the legendary sci-fi author Jules Verne.

Journey 2 finds young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) joining his stepfather, Hank (Johnson), on an adventure to an isolated island filled with strange creatures. Along with being one of Johnson’s first jungle movies, it also helped establish his trend of coming into established franchises and stealing the show, as with Fast and Furious, The Mummy, and G.I. Joe.

Johnson was still finding his place in Hollywood, but this performance helped establish it. He is likable and funny in the lead role while also making for the ideal action hero. Journey 2 helped establish a tone for the other jungle movies that Johnson would work on, offering genuine thrills as well as family-friendly humor, making it accessible.

Among Johnson’s jungle movies, Journey 2 scored the lowest critical score, with 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, and though it was a solid box office success, it seems smaller-scale compared to his later movies. However, Journey 2 deserves more credit for helping to establish a formula that Johnson returned to many times and with great success.

Dwayne Johnson Has Made A Career Of Appearing In Jungle Movies

It may seem like a rather narrow subgenre, but Dwayne Johnson has managed to appear in a surprising number of jungle movies in his career thus far. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island isn’t even his first movie of this kind, as Johnson’s breakout role in The Rundown served as more of an action introduction to this kind of film.

It was the Jumanji movies that really helped to make this a noticeable trend in Johnson’s career, with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level becoming huge hits. By the time he teamed with Emily Blunt for Disney’s Jungle Cruise, it was hard not to notice how many of these films Johnson was making.

Johnson seems to be moving more toward dramatic roles lately, with The Smashing Machine and a planned gangster movie with Martin Scorsese. However, with all the success there has been in putting Dwayne Johnson in a jungle setting, it is not hard to imagine that he could make another jungle movie before long.