Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 1803

Medieval Musician Plays Song on Three Flutes at the Same Time

I can’t play any musical instruments. Also I’m bad at multitasking, which is why I can’t listen to a podcast and do anything else at the same time. Why do I mention either of those things? Because it’s the only way to explain why the feeling I get when I watch this Medieval enthusiast play a song on three flutes simultaneously…is basically how I would react if I watched him perform actual magic.

This Austrian musician, who goes by the name of “KawuaTV” and whom we first learned about at Laughing Squid, shares videos of himself performing as a one-man Renaissance Faire band on his Twitch account. A self-described “Middle Ages freak,” here he is seen playing a song that would precede the King’s feast on three traditional flutes, as though he’s an actual wizard.

Is it possible to hear a song like that and not get the urge to play Zelda while also eating some mutton? No, no it is not.

But he’s not just a one…err, three….trick pony, because he can also play the guitar and sing. While simultaneously playing the flute.



But it gets even better when it comes to our favorite new musician, because he says he’s available to play at your next party–so long as you’re near Vienna.

Because of the question: Yes, I do birthday parties, weddings, and even funerals, and what ever reason the people want me to play – I will play gigs all over the world, but have to start the journey to the gig from a place near Vienna, Austria.

THE LAST JEDI’s Kelly Marie Tran Reveals Porgs Used to Be Terrifying

Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be remembered for many scenes: for Luke and Kylo’s fight on Crait, what happened to Luke, Rey and Kylo Ren taking out Snoke’s Praetorian guards. But the most memorable part of the movie’s legacy might be porgs. Everyone has an opinion on the adorable puffin stand-ins we meet on Ahch-To, and Episode VIII star Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico) is a fan of the creatures. She loved them from the beginning.

She saw porgs in their early stages before they were completely feathered and precious, and she told Nerdist‘s Dan Casey they were so odd. Watch:

I refuse to picture porgs as mechanical birds because I don’t want to wreck the image in my head.

But seeing the bird-like creatures before they received all their finishing touches didn’t turn Tran off. She’s such a porg enthusiast she dressed like a porg for Halloween in a homemade costume. That’s dedication. And my favorite part is how she made the costume even though she’s not an experienced cosplayer. Being nervous about not having the right skills shouldn’t stop anyone from living out their porg dreams.

You can see more of Kelly Marie Tran on Fangirling. Watch the episode on Alpha.

Have you dressed up as a porg? How many porg toys do you own? Tell us all about your porg life in the comments.

Images: Lucasfilm

Amy Ratcliffe is an Associate Editor for Nerdist. She likes Star Wars a little. Follow her on Twitter.

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DC Comics Celebrated 80 Years of Superman at WonderCon

DC Comics is celebrating 80 years of Superman in 2018, and on Friday at WonderCon in Anaheim they assembled some of DC’s biggest names–Jim Lee, Alex Sinclair, Norm Rapmund, Dan Jurgens, Marv Wolfman, and Jason Fabok–to talk about the Man of Steel and two exciting upcoming releases to commemorate this huge milestone.

April 19th will see both Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman and Action Comics #1000 unleashed on the shelves of your local comic shop! Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman is a hardcover collection of new work, essays, and an unpublished Siegel and Shuster Superman story from comics legend Marv Wolfmans’ private collection, which he acquired in a very unusual way during a tour of the DC offices as a young boy. “Sol Harrison was wheeling a post office cart filled with never-published artwork from the 1940s, all written off. They were being wheeled to the incinerators,” Marv revealed. Harrison encouraged the kids to select pages that they wanted, and after much bargaining and trading Wolfman ended up with an unpublished 12 page Superman story which will finally see the light of day.

Action Comics #1000 will be a supersized 80 page issue including a bunch of fun stories, including Brian Michael Bendis’ first published DC Work. For Justice League artist Jason Fabok, the chance to work with Bendis on one of his favorite childhood characters was too good to miss. “Working with Brian Bendis is great, I’ve really loved his work for years,” Fabok shared. “And Superman is a great character, I’ve loved him ever since I was a little kid.”

DC publisher, Image Comics founder, and superstar artist Jim Lee was on hand, making some controversial statements about the return of Superman’s infamous red trunks! “It’s just red trunks, I’m not a trunkist, there is no anti-trunk sentiment here,” Jim laughed before threatening that “the trunks will come off again!” Though the general consensus is that fans prefer the trunks, Lee revealed that some passionate readers on Twitter had some seriously strong feelings about the return of the outside underoos, contacting the artist to say the return of the pants “is awful, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me!”

Though the panel was a celebration of Superman, it was also a celebration of comics legend Marv Wolfman, who’s about to hit 50 years at DC Comics. Wolfman will have work featured in both Action Comics #1000 and 80 Years of Superman, including scripting four unpublished Curt Swan pages which Wolfman repurposed for Action Comics‘ anniversary.

The panel ended with the creators sharing their favorite era of Superman, which for Jim Lee was the work of seminal supes artist Neal Adams. “I was more of a Neal Adams fan. He took the perfection that Curt Swan had done with Superman, but if he got punched you could see the swelling on the skin, so it just felt more real and alive. He was really the guy I was most influenced by,” Lee told the crowd.

Are you excited for the double team of Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman and Action Comics #1000? Can’t wait to read that secret classic issue of Superman? Just love Jim Lee? Let us know below!

Images: DC Comics

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Was Supreme Leader Snoke More Powerful Than Emperor Palpatine?

Everybody wants to rule the world, at least according to the English pop-rock band Tears for Fears. In the galaxy far, far away, though, people want to rule a lot more than just one world. They want to rule everything and everyone with an iron fist. Many have tried to take over the galaxy, but few have succeeded to the degree that Emperor Palpatine and Supreme Leader Snoke did. Now that the dust from The Last Jedi has settled, we can look back at these two master manipulators and ask the all-important question: which one did a better job at being deeply and profoundly evil? You might naturally assume that the answer is Emperor Palpatine, but to that we ask you to remember Luke Skywalker’s immortal words:

via Tumblr

Was Supreme Leader Snoke more powerful than Emperor Palpatine? Did Snoke out-Palpatine Palpatine? We’ve run the numbers and the answer might just be yes, according to research from our senior news producer and resident Jedi Knight, Jesse B. Gill. Before you flip your desk over in a fit of prequel meme-fueled rage, though, watch our video or read on and hear why we there might just be a new contender for the Most Effective Villain in Star Wars trophy.

We may not know the precise details of how exactly Snoke became the Supreme Leader of the First Order, but there’s enough fresh information out there to suggest that he is one of the most powerful Force users in the modern Star Wars canon. Perhaps even more powerful than the man who gave himself the world’s worst nickname: “The Senate.” We’re not alone in thinking this; in an interview with People surfaced on reddit magazine that , Serkis was asked if Snoke is more powerful than Darth Vader and the Emperor. His answer? “Oh, without question. He has limitless resources, let’s put it that way.” It’s exactly the sort of arrogance you’d expect from a man who claimed that he cannot be beaten shortly before being beaten.

Both of these vile villains exhibited a vast understanding of the dark side of the Force that helped them achieve their goals, but the novelization of The Last Jedi explains that Snoke understood the truth of the Force from his time in the Unknown Regions. This could potentially explain why Snoke was able to bridge Kylo Ren and Rey’s minds across such an incredible distance. If you recall the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, “the dark side of the Force is a pathway to abilities many consider to be unnatural.”

Futhermore, we know from Timothy Zahn’s 2017 Thrawn novel that Palpatine was aware of a danger lurking in the Unknown Regions, but he didn’t know exactly what or who it was. This leads us to believe that said danger was, in fact, Snoke, who was skilled enough in the dark side of the Force to obscure his own existence from someone as powerful as we know that Emperor Palpatine was.

When it comes to combat skills, there’s no question that Palpatine was far more capable with a lightsaber in his hands than Snoke. Not many people can launch into a 920 corkscrew spin from a prone position and that includes the Supreme Leader. Just ask Yoda, one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of the Jedi Order, who had to fight the Senate in the Senate while the Senate threw the Senate at him. Palpatine’s effortless defeat of Darth Maul and his brother Savage Opress in The Clone Wars animated series makes it clear that ol’ Sheev may well be the deadliest lightsaber swordsman in the entire Star Wars canon. Obviously, we don’t know if Snoke has ever wielded a lightsaber before he had one inside of him, but he has clearly seen a few battles in his day judging by his complexion. Snoke isn’t completely useless in combat; rather, this mastery of the dark side of the Force is so complete that he doesn’t even need to cross blades with his opponents as he demonstrated with Rey.

via Giphy

Both baddies took impressionable young apprentices–Darth Vader and Kylo Ren–under their wing and turned them into deadly killing machines who serve the dark side. Palpatine transformed Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader through years of face-to-face interactions and strategic manipulation, which is well-documented. Snoke, on the other hand, did the same thing, but as far as we know he may never have even met young Ben Swolo before the troubled youth quit Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Temple in the most spectacular way possible. Snoke’s demonstrated ability to manipulate Force sensitive people and connections over vast distances is something that we saw firsthand in The Last Jedi, but in the novelization it is suggested that Snoke may have even used that power to influence Luke to take on Ben as his Padawan in the first place. Perhaps Snoke knew full well that Skywalkers have a tendency to try and slaughter their Padawans.

Kylo Ren wound up fulfilling the destiny that Darth Vader could not: proving himself to be the superior killing machine and replacing his master as Supreme Leader. If nothing else, it’s a testament to the quality of his training under Snoke. Speaking of killing machines, one must admit that as far as doomsday weapons go, Snoke’s Starkiller Base was more efficient than either of Palpatine’s Death Stars. While all three suffered from pretty much the same fatal design flaw, the numbers don’t lie: Snoke’s system-killer was more effective superweapon.

The question of which dark lord was more powerful demands that we look at the ultimate accomplishments that each can claim, which is why we think that Snoke has the edge. Palpatine manipulated two opposing sides into a galactic war and used the ensuing chaos as a means to create an indomitable military and install himself at the head of a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship. Snoke basically did all of that, too, but without those pesky Clone Wars or the politics. He seized the remains of the military apparatus that Palpatine built and made it stronger. And he did so in secret before using it to wipe out the entire New Republic government. He may not have been the most original thinker in the galaxy, but he was definitely effective in his villainous output. When Palpatine perished, his Empire failed, plunging headlong into chaos and ruin as Imperial survivors scrambled to grab whatever power and military assets they could. When Snoke died, his Empire kept chugging along, now under the control of his former apprentice. Their legacies are undeniably intertwined, but Snoke’s Galactic Empire 2.0 seems to have more inherent stability when it loses a head of state.

But what do you think? Who was the more powerful villain, Snoke or Emperor Palpatine? Will the galaxy be better or worse off now that Kylo Ren is in charge? Let us know in the comments below.

Images: Lucasfilm/Disney

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@DanCasey).

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Thrawn and Darth Vader Team Up in Next Timothy Zahn Novel

There was an audible gasp and commotion in the convention hall of Star Wars Celebration in London in July of 2016 when it was announced that author Timothy Zahn‘s most beloved creation, the evil and ruthless Chiss military strategist, Grand Admiral Thrawn, would be returned to canon as a villain in season three of Star Wars Rebels, and indeed that Zahn himself would return to write a new in-canon novel, Thrawn, which was released about a year ago. Since then, Thrawn became the main villain of the rest of Rebels and Zahn has a sequel book slated for July 2018. Entitled Thrawn: Alliances, the book will follow a team-up between Thrawn and none other than Darth Vader himself.

StarWars.com has shared an excerpt from the novel which details the pair’s meeting with Emperor Palpatine in which he assigns them to work together on a particular mission to investigate a disturbance, one near Thrawn’s planet in the Unknown Regions. As you might guess, Vader and Thrawn don’t like each other much; their dynamic appears very much like that of Kylo Ren and General Hux in the new trilogy. Each fancies himself the right-hand of the Emperor, and each does so in a completely different manner, one through strategy and tactic and the other with fear and brute force. Putting the two together should prove very volatile indeed.

The other bit of information we can glean from the excerpt is the time frame; this adventure takes place squarely in between Rebels seasons three and four, since there are references to Thrawn’s recent defeat on Atollon, when Phoenix Squadron and the Ghost crew got away, and Thrawn had his run-in with the giant Force creature known as Bendu.

Another point of note: the disturbance Palpatine mentions is on Batuu. This is the name of the planet that will be featured in Disney Parks’ Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge areas. It’s a place both Thrawn and Vader remember, which lends an interesting history to the planet.

Thrawn and Vader never got to meet in the original continuity since the Thrawn Trilogy of novels took place after the original trilogy, meaning after Anakin Skywalker had been redeemed and gone to hang out with other ghosts, but now we’re hopefully going to get to learn what happened when the two met in Clone Wars era. Giving them a whole novel to spark off each other on a secret mission is fascinating, especially if it gives us insight to perhaps what happened to him following the finale of Rebels (getting lost in the Unknown Regions and what not). We shall see!

Thrawn: Alliances hits shelves in July.

Images: Penguin Random House

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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Will Captain Marvel Be the New Captain America?

Warning: There are potential spoilers ahead for the Marvel Cinematic Universe .

Ever since Marvel revealed everything was leading to Avengers: Infinity War and its still untitled sequel, everyone has put forth their own theories about which characters will make it out alive. But win, lose, or Thanos, we know at least one MCU mainstay is heading out the door. Chris Evans said he is done with the Marvel movies after Avengers 4, which will leave a pretty big void to fill. On today’s Nerdist News, we’re making the case for Captain Marvel to step up as the new Captain America in phase four and beyond.

Join host and suspected Kree infiltrator, Jessica Chobot, as she runs down the potential replacement Caps. It seems pretty likely that Bucky Barnes a.k.a. the White Wolf is being positioned to take up the Captain America mantle if Steve Rogers relinquishes the role or perishes in battle. However, Bucky’s past as the Winter Soldier means he can’t be the moral center of the MCU in the same way Steve was. Tony Stark is also disqualified for similar reasons. But Carol Danvers is not only an ideal candidate, it seems as if the creators are already lining her up to take center stage.

In a recent interview with Coming Soon, the screenwriters of Infinity War touted Captain Marvel’s incredible powers and her moral clarity. They even said she is “the closest to Captain America.” Carol and Steve may even share the whole person out of time origin if she skips two decades or she is stuck out in space until she returns to the present day Earth. With Brie Larson presumably under a multi-film contract, there should also be ample opportunity to expand and develop her character just as the Captain America sequels did for Steve.

What do you think about Captain Marvel potentially filling the void left by Captain America? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Images: Marvel

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Mark Hamill Wants a Scary Force Ghost Movie

With the home release this month of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, lots of fans have been taking another dip into the most controversial (though we still think super awesome) outing in the franchise’s 41 year history. One of the biggest sticking points for many old school fans was the depiction of Luke Skywalker, as played brilliantly by Mark Hamill. But in the press for the home release, Hamill himself has made some comments that would truly cause a stir in a galaxy far, far away…namely how he’d love for Lucasfilm to make a Star Wars horror movie.

Speaking with IGN, Hamill said “You know what I’d love to see? A Force Ghost that’s, like, actually frightening. Not somebody that’s beatifically smiling down from the clouds or coming to give exposition – you know, a ghost is scary! But we’ll see. My work here is done.” We definitely agree with Mr. Hamill; a ghost is scary! And he knows a thing or twelve about being scary, given his feral-eyed performance during the Kylo Ren version of The Last Jedi‘s flashbacks.

Hamill also mentioned how he’d like the Star Wars franchise to change things up with broad comedy or English Patient-style drama, but he seems fairly dead set (pardon the pun) on something with ghosts, adding “What about a Gothic Romance, or something with supernatural elements?” Maybe he’s just angling for a reason for his character to return, which we’re definitely hoping will happen in J.J. Abrams’ Episode IX.

Star Wars has gone down the realm of horror in other media, of course, with books like the Galaxy of Fear YA novels, comic books like Red Harvest and even a few episodes of The Clone Wars and Rebels, but we’d be surprised if the main series ever went for pure scares, especially in the Disney regime. Maybe a TV spinoff.

Would you watch a movie full of scary Force Ghosts? Or is that a galaxy too far? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: Lucasfilm/Disney

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist and the host of the horror documentary series One Good Scare. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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How SIREN’s Killer Mermaids Expose Environmental Issues (Really)

The killer mermaids of Freeform’s new series Siren are surfacing in the small coastal town of Bristol Cove for a very simple reason: they’re hungry.

The series takes place in the small coastal town of Bristol Cove, a city with a strong history of mermaid lore. Legend has it that the half-woman, half-fish creatures once roamed the town — and with the appearance of the mysterious new girl in town, Ryn (Eline Powell), it appears they might be back. But why?

Because this mermaid story has more in common with Jaws than The Little Mermaid, the mermaids are attacking people. But unlike in Jaws, there’s a clear reason why they’re doing so: their natural food source has been completely depleted by overfishing.

“What drives the whole story, the bigger story, is a very real and relevant environmental issue: The seabeds are being stripped,” says star Rena Owen, who plays Bristol Cove’s resident eccentric, Helen, who tries to warn her fellow residents of the dangers of the mermaids in town. “They have no food. And that’s what made Ryn come to the surface is to look for food.”

According to the World Wildlife Federation, not only does overfishing affect the populations of fish that are unable to reproduce at the rates at which they’re being removed from the oceans (or lakes or rivers or other bodies of waters), it also affects “the balance of life in the oceans … [and] the economic and social well-being of the coastal communities who depend on fish for their way of life.”

Unsustainable fishing practices and increased fishing in the past few decades have seriously depleted fish stocks all over the world, and the fishing of top predators has increased the population of smaller fish such as sardines and anchovies, per the WWF.

For Owen, who comes from a small coastal town in New Zealand, the issue hits particularly close to home as fishermen from her hometown are out of work.

“Even in New Zealand where I come from, the sea beds have been stripped. The kids I grew up with don’t have jobs anymore because there’s nothing to fish anymore.”

Deep sea fisherman Xander (Ian Verdun), marine biologists Ben (Alex Roe) and Maddie (Fola Evans-Akingbola) are not only trying to solve Bristol Cove’s overfishing issue, they’re also trying to figure out what creature is attacking people and why they’ve come to town at all.

Sibongile Mlambo, who plays the mysterious Donna, tells Nerdist on a visit to the series’ Vancouver set that working on the series has awakened a newfound environmental awareness in her.

“It’s opened me up to a lot of environmental issues, stuff that we don’t really think about. If you’re ignorant about it then you’re not going to worry about it but we just have to be really careful what we do to the planet as humans.”

Siren premieres Thursday, March 29 at 8 p.m. on Freeform.

Images: Freeform

UNSANE is Steven Soderbergh’s Return to the Tacky Pulp He Lives for (Review)

Formally flawless and bursting at the seams with shaggy charisma, last year’s Logan Lucky perfectly articulated why the big screen missed Steven Soderbergh so much after only five years estranged therefrom. But as much fun as the filmmaker seems to have had strapping together the Channing Tatum-led heist comedy, it’s his next venture that really reeks of what Soderbergh seems to love about working in pictures. In fact, Unsane doesn’t simply mark Soderbergh’s return to a career we feared he may have left behind, but to the precise territory on which he founded his grandeur in the first place.

Few working directors are quite as versatile as Soderbergh, a fact that is paradoxically explained and made all the more astonishing by how prolific he is. But if you’re going to pinpoint any trademarks of Soderbergh authorship, you may default to grime and existential unrest—the sort plotted about his filmography from his debut picture Sex, Lies, and Videotape to his pre-hiatus send-off Side Effects, not to mention his short-lived small screen jaunt The Knick. This tradition rears itself again in Unsane, evoked from the very first shot of a washed-out, dog-tired Claire Foy.

Showcased as prominently as Foy’s disaffected mug is the lens through which she’s viewed: the unfiltered, unkempt, frankly disconcerting aesthetic of the iPhone 7 on which the film was shot. As present a character as any of the corporeal shapes that cross its eye-line, Soderbergh’s deliberately schlocky-looking camerawork transforms what might otherwise read as self-serious melodrama to the form it warrants and craves: delightfully askew, winningly tacky pulp.

After all, there’s no shortage of blemishes spotting the premise: that which finds Foy’s dread-riddled Sawyer Valentini (even her name feels indebted to Raymond Chandler!) unwittingly confined to observation at a psychiatric hospital, only to discover—or at least suspect—that the stalker (Joshua Leonard) she left behind in her hometown has taken a job on campus. Contrivances and quandaries fly across the screen in every direction as we grapple with Sawyer’s evermore vexing descent, both toward psychological implosion and physical doom, but are all caught swiftly and safely nestled by Unsane’s self-aware netting.

As commanding as Foy is throughout, it’s the cavalcade of character actors garnishing every dimly lit scene that elevate Unsane to heights of wicked fun: Jay Pharoah as a sympathetic fellow inmate; Juno Temple as a patient who has it out for Sawyer; hospital staff members played by Polly McKie and Zach Cherry, who, even with minimalistic roles, provide such color to every scene they occupy; a pair of irreverent cops (Michael Mihm and Robert Kelly) who come to inspect the ward and the receptionist (Lynda Mauze) they flirt and bicker with. And of course, the great Amy Irving as Sawyer’s concerned mom.

Even when Unsane goes too far—which it does, eventually abandoning any semblance of cantankerous glee in the name of all-out morbidity—its commitment to the muck leaves you in admiration, or at the very least understanding, of its every pulsating twitch. And in the lot, we see Soderbergh come to life; Unsane may not be as vibrant or formally impressive as Logan Lucky, but it’s all the more invigorated by the passions that put this filmmaker on our radar in the first place.

3.5 out of 5 burritos

Images: Bleecker Street/Fingerprint Releasing

M. Arbeiter is the East Coast Editor of Nerdist. Find them on Twitter @micarbeiter.

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The Rock Explains the Differences Between Monster and Disaster Movies

From classics like Jaws, Godzilla and Creature From the Black Lagoon to modern hits like Pacific Rim, Colossal and The Cabin in the Woods, there is no limit to the what the monster movie genre can create. Moviegoers will never tire of seeing a giant creature wreak havoc on human civilization. But when a monster lays waste to entire cities in a single film, does that mean that flick is also a disaster movie? How deep in the sand are the lines drawn between the two popular genres?

Nerdist figured the best person to ask was someone who has essentially created his own genre of action movies: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The former wrestler-turned-movie star has been in his fair share of monster and disaster movies over the years of his storied career, and he’s about to debut another next month with Rampage. But since Rampage features not one, not two, but three giant monsters destroying a city, does that make it a monster movie or a disaster movie? We traveled all the way to the Atlanta-based set of Rampage last summer to have Johnson explain the difference.

“Well, let me take a stab at this,” Johnson says, still sporting his fake black eye and bloody knuckles from filming earlier that day. “From my experience, the difference between a disaster movie and a monster movie is [in] one you’re dealing with mother nature—very unpredictable—the other you’re dealing with mutated monsters, which are unpredictable, but at the same time, one was a best friend of mine, someone who I treated like my brother or my kid.”

Johnson is referring to his Rampage co-star George, the CGI/mo-cap intelligent silverback gorilla that accidentally gets exposed to a rogue genetic experiment gone awry, mutating the gentle ape into a raging creature of enormous size. Johnson plays primatologist Davis Okoye, who, untrusting of humans, calls George his best friend. That bond between Okoye and George is the heart and soul of the otherwise full-throttle monster movie, and that’s why Johnson signed on for Rampage in the first place.

“I’m an animal lover,” he says. “I have a lot of dogs and horses up in Virginia and I raise fish, so there was this great relationship with an animal in my life that I could apply to it. And I have a little Frenchie named Hobbs, named after the character from Fast and Furious. And amidst the calamity, amidst the science going wrong in the wrong hands, it still comes down to this core relationship, and that’s one of the reasons that really attracted me to begin with to the movie and to the script, because the element and the anchor of the relationship between man and his best friend, and his best friend happens to be an albino gorilla, that sealed the deal for me.”

Johnson then thinks of another difference between monster movies and disaster movies: how it forces the characters to deal with impending doom.

“What I’m finding as we move along and we’re shooting these scenes is that, unlike with San Andreas, we had time between earthquakes,” Johnson adds. “We have a sense that something was coming, that something else was coming, the big one was going to happen. We had a little bit of time. In this, with three gigantic monsters—especially at their height of the serum taking effect—there’s no time and everything happens very quickly, and everything’s happening from different angles.”

Along with George, two other animals are exposed to the gene-altering substance, making the problem a lot worse. “Not only are you dealing with the destruction and the collapsing of buildings in all of Chicago, but then you’re dealing with alpha animals who are trying to do everything they can to kill everything around them,” Johnson says. “And then the fighting for territory, and then trying to get to the beacon; there’s a whole bunch of things happening.”

No stranger to action-heavy roles, it’s downright shocking to hear Johnson call Rampage “easily the most physically demanding role” he has ever done. But he’s serious.

“I didn’t really anticipate it because I knew it was going to be physically demanding because you read the script and you know that things start to happen at a catastrophic level,” he says. “Things are going down all around you and you’re flying a helicopter, plus, I was familiar with [director] Brad [Peyton]. But it wasn’t until I got to the set that you start to realize that it is constant. Unlike San Andreas where a little tremor would happen, a little bit of rumbling, we’d have a little bit of time, this is just a constant onslaught.”

While Johnson does promise that Rampage still has that classic Rock humor peppered in throughout, the action is going to be never-ending, and he hasn’t experienced filming like that ever before.

“From a physicality standpoint, the Fast and Furious movies can be very physical because there’s always a fight,” he adds. “But in this case, there’s a lot of almost being eaten and there’s a lot of running for your life. There’s a particular scene, there’s a big C-17 and George is growing on it, he’s growing rapidly, he’s getting very angry. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is on it, and it’s a terrifying scene that just continues and continues, because the plane is nosediving, and we’re trying to get off it … This is 12 hours every day, and finally Naomie [Harris] is like, ‘F-k, man, this is tough.'”

For director Peyton, discovering new situations and experiences he can put Johnson through is thrilling. “It’s demanding stuff, it’s true,” Peyton says. “I ask him all the time, ‘Have you ever done this before?’ And he’s like, ‘No man I’ve never done this.’ I just assumed he’s done some of the stuff we’re doing, because to me Dwayne’s done everything, including become president.”

Peyton laughs before adding, “But it’s just literally the positions and predicaments his character is in in this movie are so wide ranging and there’s no way to not put him in it. There’s no way I can do the movie and not have him in harnesses and rigs and whipping around. Also he signed off on that script so … he knows what’s he getting into!”

But don’t take Johnson and Peyton’s comments as anything less than enthusiasm for Rampage. Because if Johnson has his way, he’ll be doing these kinds of monster and disaster movies for a long, long time.

“It’s awesome, man. I still feel like I’m a big kid at heart,” he says. “I certainly act like it at times, and at the end of the day, we’re on this treadmill of life and we all try to do good and do our job and hopefully put in good work and learn from our mistakes. At the end of the day, I feel like we’ve got the best job in the world: we love what we do, we’re here in Hollywood, we’re on this big soundstage, and it’s total destruction, and I’m looking up at this giant albino gorilla who’s my best friend [saying], ‘Ready to kick some ass?’ It’s the best. I never take it for granted.”

Rampage hits theaters April 13.

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Images: Warner Bros. Pictures