Godzilla Meets Planet Of The Apes In HBO Max's 90-Minute Movie Based On A Video Game

HBO Max has a 90-minute action movie based on a famous video game franchise that fans of Godzilla and the Planet of the Apes movies are going to love. Thanks to the partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO Max has the entire Monsterverse movie series available in its library, as well as many of the original Toho Godzilla films.

It’s the place to go for kaiju movies, though the Monsterverse shows are only available on Netflix or Apple TV, for now. As for the Planet of the Apes movies, there’s no one repository for the many movies in that franchise. If you’re looking for a combination of the two, a kaiju-sized movie with smart animals that get to know humans for better or for worse, HBO Max again has you covered.

Rampage is a 2018 action blockbuster based on the video game franchise of the same name, where you play as mutated animals that grow into giant creatures whose only goal is to level entire city blocks and eat all the inhabitants. Dwayne Johnson stars as Davis Okoye, a former special forces operator turned primatologist and anti-poaching advocate. You can see where this is going.

The film is a brisk 90 minutes, not accounting for the end credits, and it’s a delightful 90 minutes at that. These big monster movies can be hit or miss, even within the same franchise, but Rampage brings everything fans of monster disaster movies could hope for and adds in plenty of unique flourishes to create something new and exciting.

While Rampage only has a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, it earned $428 million at the box office (via BoxOfficeMojo). The Rock was still riding high at the time, and we were only two films into the Monsterverse, so things were in place for Rampage to succeed with viewers, but 8 years later, it feels even better than it was originally given credit for.

How Rampage Stands Out Among Other Action Disaster Movies

Rampage is a fairly standard action, science fiction, monster movie. A corporation develops a pathogen that transforms ordinary animals into monstrous creatures and also enrages them to the point that they attack anything and anyone they encounter. It’s up to David to stop the rampaging animals and save his albino gorilla friend, George, who has been exposed to the pathogen.

What Rampage does that a lot of monster movies forget is that it makes the creatures at the center of the film true monsters. Lizzie the crocodile and Ralph the wolf are particularly gross characters, with teeth poking at weird angles and bloodshot eyes that make for legitimately scary antagonists.

Rampage Cast
Actor	Character
Dwayne Johnson	Davis Okoye
Naomie Harris	Kate Caldwell
Malin Akerman	Claire Wyden
Jeffrey Dean Morgan	Harvey Russell
Jake Lacy	Brett Wyden
Joe Manganiello	Burke
Marty Shelton	Kerry Atkins
P.J. Byrne	Nelson
Jack Quaid	Connor
Demetrius Grosse	Colonel Blake

Weta Digital did most of the visual effects on the film, and their skill is obvious. Every frame of the film looks great. Rampage is as violent as its 8-bit inspiration implied. People get decapitated, limbs are severed, and ferries full of innocent tourists get flipped onto the back of a crocodile. It’s a throwback to the action and monster films of the ’90s, where movies toed the line between PG-13 and R.

Rampage does what a lot of video game adaptations fail to do, and that is make references to the video game without hitting the audience over the head with those same references. There are subtle, and some not-so-subtle, nods to the video games, but they never feel out of place.

A woman in a red dress gets eaten, the creator of the games makes several cameos, and people who played the game will recognize the skyscraper-pounding techniques of the monsters. Rampage is a wonderfully contained monster movie that doesn’t waste time hinting at sequels or winking at the audience. It gets in, gets out in 90ish minutes, and entertains you all along the way.