Rampage is the Highest Rated Video Game Movie on Rotten Tomatoes

Rampage is currently the highest-rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Star Dwayne Johnson is no stranger to the ever-present video game movie curse on the big screen, starring in the 2004 adaptation of seminal first-person shooter Doom. The movie completely bombed at the box office and failed to impress most critics, relying on gimmicky FPS-style set pieces to keep fans of the iconic video game franchise engaged.


Johnson took another crack at a video game adaptation with Rampage, which is only loosely based on the classic Rampage arcade game. It ditched the plot point of people transforming into monsters, instead focusing on a gorilla (among other animals) falling victim to an experiment gone wrong, and who eventually grows to a gargantuan size. Based on its Rotten Tomatoes score, the movie didn’t exactly bode well with all critics, but it still did better than any other video game adaptation before it.


A quick visit to the Rotten Tomatoes page for Rampage shows it sitting at a 50 percent score, with exactly 79 “fresh” and “rotten” reviews each as of the time of this writing. Of course, that still counts as a “rotten” score, falling well short of the 60 percent threshold. But the score barely beats out Tomb Raider‘s 49 percent to make Rampage the best-reviewed video game movie in the site’s history, which happens to be another video game movie from Warner Bros. that released last month. The consensus reads: “Rampage isn’t as fun as its source material, but the movie’s sheer button-mashing abandon might satisfy audiences in the mood for a brainless blockbuster.”


Johnson’s leading-man charms, and the mindless action he takes part in, could be enough to make Rampage a hit at the box office. It may not quite reach the heights of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but it could come close. Warner Bros. is betting big that the movie can do enough damage to make a healthy profit over its $120 million budget. It remains to be seen whether or not it can achieve that. But in critics’ circles, video game adaptations tend to hover around 20-30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. For Rampage to reach 50 percent should be considered a relative success.


Rampage is projected for a solid start commercially with $35 million domestic, but it likely only has its first two weeks to rack up notable numbers before Avengers: Infinity War takes over. Johnson’s appeal, though, should be enough to get a solid number of fans to theaters, and the not-terrible reviews could help as well, particularly for fans of the original game. It’s also possible that plenty more reviews could drop for Rampage, so we’ll see how it goes with the score. But it’s definitely on its way to being up there with the most well-received video game movies ever.