170. Jungle Cruise (Summer of Rock)

This is the end, beautiful friends. We conclude the Summer of Rock with the much-better-than-I-remembered Jungle Cruise, a movie we abruptly pivoted to covering after trying to watch Black Adam and giving up out of boredom. 

We cover the history of movies based on theme parks, the rocky production of Jungle Cruise, its unfortunate failure at the box office, and then we go through the movie itself, trying to figure out if this is one of The Rock’s better late-career performances or if he’s being carried entirely by Emily Blunt.

The Summer of Rock is our summer 2025 miniseries covering the movie career of Dwayne Johnson through nine movies, presented in chronological order. Starting with his attempt at crossing over from the world of wrestling, The Rock’s career got off to a bumpy start before finally taking off in the 2010s. But it wasn’t long before the bumps returned, and we’ll be telling the story for you all summer long!

Next week: We’ll have a shorter bonus episode to wrap up the Summer of Rock, and we’ll answer a few mailbag questions. Our next proper episode will be September 12, 2025, about FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992).

Bonus video: Matt does a deep dive into Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, the 1989 English-language anime: https://youtu.be/nkFqlLFebn8  

Subscribe to our Patreon, Load Bearing Beams: Collector's Edition for $5 a month to get two extra episodes! https://patreon.com/loadbearingbeams 

Time stamps:

• 00:02:59 — Wrapping up the Summer of Rock (sort of)
• 00:15:40 — General thoughts on Jungle Cruise
• 00:22:45 — History segment, part 1: The Jungle Cruise Disney theme park attraction and the craze of adapting theme park rides into movies
• 00:37:50 — History segment, part 2: the production and COVID-hampered release of Jungle Cruise; the production gets attention for featuring Disney’s “first” “openly gay” character
• 00:58:40 — History segment, part 3: The Rock’s movie career after Jungle Cruise: Red Notice, Black Adam, Red One, and The Smashing Machine
• 01:16:00 — In-depth movie discussion
• 02:10:50 — Final thoughts and star ratings

Sources:

• “Disney's 'Jungle Cruise' Movie Coming Out Scene with Gay Character ... But Avoids the Key Word” | TMZ (2018) - https://bit.ly/3UPda4W
• “Dwayne Johnson & Chris Evans’ $200M+ Christmas Action Movie ‘Red One’ Opens To $34M: Is It A Bomb Or A Streamer’s Rounding Error?” by Anthony D'Alessandro | Deadline (2024) - https://bit.ly/47R1iH9 

Artwork by Laci Roth.   Music by Rural Route Nine. Listen to their album The Joy of Averages on Spotify (https://bit.ly/48WBtUa), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/3Q6kOVC), or YouTube (https://bit.ly/3MbU6tC).   Songs by Rural Route Nine in this episode: “Summer of Rock” - https://youtu.be/dvRY72jNIEE  “Winston-Salem” - https://youtu.be/-acMutUf8IM “Snake Drama” - https://youtu.be/xrzz8_2Mqkg “The Bible Towers of Bluebonnet” - https://youtu.be/k7wlxTGGEIQ

"Summer of Rock" theme song credits:

• Words and music by Matt Stokes
• Engineered, mixed, and mastered by TJ Barends | Bare Sounds
• Personnel:
  • TJ Barends - backing vocals
  • Wade Hymel - drums/guitar/backing vocals
  • Laci Roth - vocals
  • Matt Stokes - vocals/guitar/bass

Follow Wade on Instagram: @wadealready Follow TJ on Instagram: @baresoundstwitaj

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