Dwayne Johnson says Oppenheimer inspired Red One, obviously
Johnson was so inspired by Oppenheimer's IMAX presentation that he knew his Santa Claus action movie needed it, too.
Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images
The thing about the professional wrestler-turned-actor is that they’re incredibly accomplished when it comes to pitching bullshit. Take as Exhibit A noted toilet skeptic Dwayne Johnson, who we have seen sell, with complete commitment, his personal tequila brand, his rap song, his belief that Black Adam was the future of DC Comics movies, his enthusiasm for direct-to-Netflix movies that we’re pretty sure nobody at Netflix even watched, and the fact that his comfort with pissing in water bottles is completely and totally normal. (Do you ever notice that Johnson never addresses emptying the bottles when he talks about this? We’ve been following this story for years, and he never talks about emptying the bottles. Weirds us out.)
Anyway, it is a testament to the enormous strangeness of the statement in question that Johnson has now said something that trips even our finely honed Dwayne Johnson bullshit detectors: Claiming he took even a modicum of inspiration for his “militarized Santa Claus bodyguard crew” movie Red One from Christopher Nolan’s biopic blockbuster Oppenheimer. See, while filming the movie, Johnson apparently got the opportunity to view Oppenheimer in the same facility where Nolan watches his own films on IMAX screens. (“I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits. They said, ‘Chris sits here.’” Dear Christopher Nolan: Do not drink from any water bottles you find near your regular IMAX seat.) While taking in Nolan’s film—a three-hour historical epic about guilt, obsession, and the ways legacy inevitably wriggles out of a human being’s control—the following thought then entered Dwayne Johnson’s head: “‘Holy shit. Red One on this screen and with this technology could be game over.’”
We’ll be honest: We really like trying to figure out which scene from the film (which Johnson did note was “amazing”) inspired this exact thought, which in turn led to Red One getting an IMAX release. We assume it was probably the film’s vaunted atomic bomb test, but it’s fun to imagine Johnson simply saw those black-and-white shots of Albert Einstein feeding the ducks and thought, “Damn, those ducks are bigger than me” and had an instant blind panic reaction. In any case, Johnson says “I remember texting [director Jake Kasdan] a picture of my bare chest and a picture of the screen and we realized how cool [Imax] would be.” (Kasdan has made three movies with Johnson at this point, so he’s presumably accustomed at this point to distribution plans arriving in the form of topless photos.)
Red One opens in theaters this weekend, where it is expected to make not enough money, because it’s a $200 million movie about action stars trying to save Santa Claus.