The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Tuesday, July 24

Hello, everybody!

I went to the movies and made an enemy out of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I will explain.

Ramble of the Day

I went to see Skyscraper over the weekend because I enjoy bad movies and MoviePass basically encourages me to do that. I expected something I could laugh at when I wasn’t supposed to and possibly irking my fellow audience members, but I did not get that. I am mad at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a result.

Skyscraper is a frustratingly bad movie. It takes the major elements of Die Hard and alters them slightly. Bruce Willis is replaced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has a prosthetic leg. Instead of Los Angeles, the movie takes place in Hong Kong. The terrorists’ reasons change, but their actions are all the same. Yet, Skyscraper forgets that Die Hard’s contents should amount to other than an exhibition of the protagonist’s unrealistic upper body strength.

Let’s begin with the movie’s first plot hole. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character loses half of a leg because he is darting towards a bomb, and yet he ends up with ONLY THAT INJURY (and also a wife). Maybe he had great team of plastic surgeons, but his old friend, Ben, has burn marks just on his neck. The rest of his face is perfectly fine, perhaps because his plastic surgeons gave up at that part of the neck. The movie is laden with smaller inconsistencies, and larger mysteries that are tied in at the end but have little purpose at the beginning.

The whole movie is somehow boring; the skyscraper, which ruined the Hong Kong skyline, is designed stupidly and none of those scenes are directed with suspense or intensity. Of course Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is going to jump from a crane into the window of the skyscraper next door. Of course he’s not going to fall off the side of the building when the rope he’s attached himself to starts sliding off his prosthetic leg. Of course he and his family are going to live, even if someone who was very bad at physics knows the physics are wrong.

I understand why most of the actors signed up for this movie. Make your money, people; it’s cool. I understand why the crew signed up for it for the same reasons. What I don’t understand is why the producers at Universal Pictures and why writer-director-producer Rawson Marshall Thurber thought this was a good idea. I get making a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson specific movie to make money, and while I will always wonder why they didn’t try to make money with an actually better product, perhaps that is the answer. My ultimate gripe is with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Why, why, did you make this movie?

You are not starving for cash, and hardly starving for stardom at this point. You’ve done enough stupid movies to get you to this point. Yet, I don’t think anything Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has made since achieving mega stardom has been appealing, minus Moana. (Note: I have not seen Moana, but I am aware of its appeal.)

I am desperately waiting to see what your taste in films really is, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but perhaps I already know the answer. The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway addresses it in greater detail than I will (and with important context), but it is a movie that showcases the very specific brand you are creating for yourself. You are depicting yourself as the extraordinary everyman, a living contradiction that for some reason is supposed to be adored but instead is plainly unbelievable. One human cannot possess everything, and he seems more like a figment of someone’s imagination than a real person. He seems like a brand, not an actor.

Please stop putting us through this. I cannot bear to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and those who enable him acting like making money is about acting like audiences care only for cheap thrills and not for meaningful content. I can no longer bear it.

tl;dr: I HATED Skyscraper.

Links of the Day

Parma forward Emanuele Calaiò has been suspended for two years for match fixing, while the club has been docked five points to start the Serie A season.

Former Leeds and England player Paul Madeley has died at age 73.

Transfer roundup: Porto have signed Chancel Mbemba from Newcastle; Valencia have signed Cristiano Piccini from Real Betis

Today’s longer read: Aimee Lewis on the app described as LinkedIn for youth players looking to get opportunities with bigger clubs for CNN