Dwayne Johnson letting Moana reviews roll off gigantic back

Johnson wasn’t ignoring the bad reviews, but they did catch them off guard. He recalls reading the first two responses, which were “amazing” and made Johnson be “like, wow.” (We hope those routinely and overly enthusiastic first-reaction tweets are proud of themselves.) Then “it went the other way,” which “sometimes happens.” Johnson says that he and his wife, Lauren Hashian, “had a lot of these conversations at home, at the kitchen island late at night when the babies are asleep,” about the film’s disappointing returns. But Johnson, ever the optimist, remembers “what’s going to be beyond this opening weekend,” and, also, he’s got a new Jumanji movie, which will probably, hopefully, break the actor out of his slump. 

To his credit, Johnson really doesn’t ignore his failures. When Smashing Machine crashed out last fall, he posted about it on Instagram. “In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere. And I will always run to that opportunity.”