Welcome to the latest edition of the At Odds with Wrestling homework assignments. Each and every week without a major wrestling event, the hosts of the At Odds with Wrestling podcast assign each other something a little different and wrestling related to watch in all of their free time. This week the long standing gimmick known as the Wheel of Rock was spun once again and we all watched the 2018 action movie starring The Rock, Skyscraper. 

This movie is very dumb and very convoluted. But let’s do a quick run down. The Rock is former military or something. During a mission to rescue kids from a crazy dad, the crazy dad detonates a bomb. He dies, a kid dies, and the Rock is badly wounded. His face heals but he loses a leg. Fast forward and the Rock is now in Hong Kong because of his natural career path to skyscraper safety inspector. This new building is going to be taller than any other building in the world and the Rock has to make sure there are fire safety programs, and power back ups, and all that stuff. The owner of the building is nice enough to let the Rock’s family stay in the yet to be opened building as well. The owner of the building is also nice enough to borrow money from shady people. But it’s ok because the big reveal in act 3 is that he put malware in the money transfer and he has access to all of the bad people’s secrets. Well, they want that shut down of course. So there are mercenaries and all sorts of cannon fodder arrive to burn the building down. But the Rock’s family is in there! So the Rock has a series of dangerous obstacles in his way to get to his family and bring them to safety. It’s Die Hard in a … well, in a bigger building. 

This movie is an hour and forty minutes, and that includes 10 minutes of credits. This should have been a quick easy watch. But I paused multiple times because things kept happening that took me right out of the movie. I couldn’t lose myself and escape for 90 minutes. 

I will watch any story no matter how fantastic as long as it sticks to the rules they have created. Marvel movies are far from reality, but they have set down rules establishing gods and monsters alongside common men and I accept that. Skyscraper in theory takes place in current times. I can accept next generation tablets providing operating systems throughout a building. However, a man with one leg who has already been in multiple fights and chases should not be able to climb 30 stories. Or leap between buildings. Or have duct tape so strong he can stick to the side of a building over a 100 stories above the street. The duct tape under my car can’t stand up to a 30 MPH drive through town, much less wind and fire half a mile up. 

The movie is nothing more than Rock does cool stunts, figure out plot later on. The movie is damn near over and exposition decides to kick out at the 2 ⅔ count. Nice of you to finally show up to explain what’s happening and give us any reason to care, far too late. This movie had enough budget for logic or CGI, but not both at the same time or in the same shot. I am not one to comment on bad CGI for spaceships or unicorns, but buildings exist in our actual world and should look better on camera no matter what computer created it. 

Skyscraper presents itself as a real world story of a man who just wants to save his family. However, every scene defies physics in order to see normal guy Rock do super normal things. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Rock fought bad guys in the Las Vegas Sphere, but it was on top of a big building? I haven’t seen script writing like this since Axe Cop. 

Yes, sometimes any one of us watches a movie when we’re not in the mood for it and the reaction is harsher than it needs to be. Maybe this is on TV next year and I catch it while flipping channels only to have a more positive reaction upon second viewing. As it stands now though (standing on one leg) this movie is nothing more than The Rock in an obstacle course video game with an infinite lives shell trick.