Dwayne Johnson’s First Lead Movie Hits Netflix, But Does It Hold Up?

While Dwayne Johnson made his big screen premiere in Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy Returns, he had a surprisingly limited amount of screentime considering he was the villain, and he was The Rock. As Mathayus of Akkad, he was also subjected to one of the most awkward bits of early CGI in film history. Nonetheless, audiences smelled what he was cooking and took to the actor’s cinematic charisma, developed after years of wrestling, and he was very quickly thrust into leading man status the next year.

The Scorpion King top-billed a 30-year-old Dwayne Johnson as the titular character, whose story was explored in The Mummy Returns but is widely expanded upon in this prequel. This was long before Johnson’s Hollywood status as the highest-paid actor from 2019 to 2021, and before other wrestlers and fighters turned Hollywood behemoths, like John Cena and Dave Bautista, further normalized the heavily muscled trend. Made in 2002, the film is significant for arguably kicking off and setting the template for Johnson’s Hollywood career. It’s now streaming on Netflix, just days ahead of Johnson’s gigantic action-comedy Red One hits theaters, showcasing where the actor is today. It’s a good opportunity to look back and see how he started out, and if it was any good.

Dwayne Johnson Becomes the King

The Scorpion King follow Mathayus, an Akkadian assassin tasked to kill the tyrannical King Memnon (played by Steven Brand in his feature debut as well, and modeled after the possibly mythical king of Ancient Aethiopia) and the sorceress Cassandra (played by Kelly hu and modeled after the prophetess of mythology who could foresee events). However, he is betrayed and his brothers killed. Mathayaus vows to kill Memnon, eventually kidnapping Cassandra when his plans fail and high-tailing it out of Gomorrah. Memnon sends a gang after him, and while they are defeated, they succeed in poisoning Mathayus.

Cassandra, however, heals Mathayus. Turns out she has been held captive by Memnon, who used her powers of foresight to strengthen his violent plans. Mathayus and Cassandra then work to unite the free tribes and attack Memnon, ultimately defeating him and replacing him as Scorpion King. It’s all designed to make Johnson look like a badass, envied by men and lusted after by women, the same way that projects have been fashioned for earlier action stars, from Schwarzenegger and Stallone to Seagal and Van Damme.

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The film was co-produced by the WWF, and they knew how to turn their wrestling icon into a movie star; as such, The Scorpion King falls in line with similar transitional films for muscle-men moving into Hollywood. Similar to how Conan the Barbarian was used as a way to show Arnold Schwarzenegger and his potential as a leading man (and how Terminator 2 was reformatted to make Schwarzenegger a good guy), The Scorpion King is designed with the intention of highlighting Johnson’s muscles, eyebrows, and fight skills.

Does The Scorpion King Hold Up?

The Scorpion King is an obviously dated film that smacks of early 2000s CGI, sexism, and cheesy dialogue. The action is good, and some of the grand set pieces and explosive moments are well-done, but the effects are certainly visibly archaic. The film, despite its often surprising PG-13 rating, hyper-sexualizes Cassandra and other women (all of whom are either prostitutes or generally sex objects for the male gaze), and treats her, frankly, like crap. She’s passed around like meat and treated that way by Memnon and Mathayus alike.

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Dwayne Johnson certainly does make an impression, though, injecting the film with some self-aware humor and a weirdly relatable (albeit beefy) everyman quality. Roger Ebert, in his typically prescient fashion, wrote in his surprisingly positive review of the time:

“For its target audience, looking for a few laughs, martial arts and stuff that blows up real good, it will be exactly what they expected. It has high energy, the action never stops, the dialogue knows it’s funny, and
The Rock has the authority to play the role and the fortitude to keep a straight face. I expect him to become a durable action star.
“

And it’s true, you can see the beginnings of Johnson’s increasingly skyrocketing career in The Scorpion King, and why he became such a bankable star. It’s worth a watch for that historical context alone, if you’re into these kinds of things. You can watch it on Netflix through the link below:

Watch The Scorpion King