Using the complex system of pulleys that allows him to flex his trapezoids, sending 250-pound weights soaring skyward until they alight, like a bird on a briar, gently tapping the stylus carefully positioned above his phone, Dwayne Johnson has typed out another Instagram missive against those who have wronged him. This time, fortunately, there is no candy-ass to speak of, no chicken-shits to rebuke. There is only an as-yet-unnamed, undefined-ass producer on Johnson’s upcoming movie Rampage, who has made the damaging mistake of comparing the way Dwayne Johnson runs with Tom Cruise.
Dwayne Johnson does not run like Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson states emphatically. Dwayne Johnson runs like Dwayne Johnson, with an aggressive gait that might once have stalked the wooly mammoth. It is a run with which man may have tamed the wily stallion, Alexander might have conquered Egypt, or Charles Dickens might have written A Christmas Carol. It is a run that echoes the breadth and depth of human history within its every cavernous footfall and it looks super, super badass, and this plebeian producer dipshit must now be called out before Instagram and the world for besmirching it.
“While shooting this running scene all day, one of our producers said ‘Rock you’re running like Tom Cruise in his movies’.. I said stop the music right there,” Johnson writes in what sounds like a casual colloquialism, but actually means that the symphony hired to blast Wagnerian operas every time Dwayne Johnson starts jogging was ordered to be quiet. “Nope,” Johnson says. “Cruise runs like 6 o’clock. Straight up and down, arms tight to the body like an offensive player running for the end zone.”
Tom Cruise runs like a marionette, jerked by the strings of a trickster space-god. Tom Cruise runs like a cornstalk if a cornstalk did a bunch of blow and dared his cornstalk buddies to race him to the corner, and the other cornstalks were like, “Sure” but then held back while he ran ahead so they could make fun of him. Tom Cruise runs like a straight arrow shot from a clenched anus.
Dwayne Johnson is the opposite, Dwayne Johnson explains: “This is the run of a defensive headhunter. Forward lean, stride long, arms open and pumping. Intense eyes fixated on the target which my warrior ancestors lovingly referred to as your head.” Perhaps you might also recognize this as the kind of running those ancient greats lovingly called “not at all like Tom Cruise, who will not be born for millennia, yet The Oracles portend will run like a self-conscious flamingo.”
“This running form is also called, ‘get me the fuck outta here because there’s a genetically modified 50 TON BEAST that’s trying to eat me and all I wanted to do is just want to go home and have tequila and waffles,’” Johnson concludes, a nod to the many CGI video game monsters he will fiercely, proudly run away from in Rampage, as well as the many tequila and waffles that he will swallow upon completing production like a victorious gladiator—jaws wide, teeth gnashing, tongue wrapped like a boa constrictor around his Eggo prey. Tom Cruise probably eats his waffles minced and drinks his tequila out of a toddler’s plastic teacup, and goddamnit, we just went over the differences between these two guys in unnecessarily elaborate detail. Stop the music right there and read it again.