During his wrestling career, Dwayne Johnson referred to himself as “The Most Electrifying Man In Sports and Entertainment”. Those words would prove to be prophetic: years later, he’s now one of the biggest names in Hollywood with a string of hits including Fast Five and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle and the culmination of a fifteen-year journey with the upcoming Black Adam, where he plays the titular antihero. He even has a popular TV show that chronicles his life in the form of NBC’s Young Rock. To find the path to Johnson’s massive success, one must turn to his first-ever lead role in the 2002 film The Scorpion King.
Spinning off from events in The Mummy Returns, which marked Johnson’s first on-screen role, The Scorpion King chronicles the origins of Johnson’s titular character, the supremely skilled mercenary Mathayus. Mathayus is hired to halt the reign of swordsman Memnon (Steven Brand) by slaying a sorcerer under his command, who has the ability to predict the future. Said sorcerer winds up being a woman named Cassandra (Kelly Hu), who holds no love toward Memnon and believes Mathayus is the one man who can kill him. Mathayus embarks on a journey through the desert, gathering an army of allies to end Memnon’s tyranny and growing closer to Cassandra.
Mathayus serves as the template for many characters that Johnson would later play over the years. His people, the Akkadians, are depicted as being trained in the deadly arts of assassination. By the end of the first act, Mathayus is the last Akkadian alive, making him the deadliest man alive. Yet even though he racks up an impressive body count throughout the film, he’s shown to have a soft side. When Mathayus first encounters Casssandra, he hesitates — and instead of putting an arrow through her head, takes out one of Memnon’s guards. He saves a horse thief named Arpid (Grant Heslov) who joins him on his quest. And he even has a connection with a young street thief, paying the child to sneak him into Memnon’s palace and saving him from a grisly fate when he gets caught. This mix of muscle and heart spread to Johnson’s next roles as bounty hunter Beck in The Rundown and former military man Chris Vaughn in Walking Tall, and served him well in the Disney films The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain where he shared the screen with children.
There’s also the matter of Johnson usually sharing the screen with one of two character archetypes: the snarky sidekick or the rival with enough muscle/skill to match his. The Scorpion King contains both: Arpid provides most of the humorous moments of the film, while Mathayus finds a rival in the form of the Nubian King Balthazar (Michael Clarke Duncan). Balthazar doesn’t care for Mathayus at first, calling him little more than a common assassin, and takes great umbrage to the fact that Mathayus has brought Cassandra to his people, which would incur Memnon’s wrath. However, Mathayus manages to win Balthazar’s respect after a duel and the Nubian King helps bring down Memnon’s army in the final act. Other films in Johnson’s career utilize these dynamics, including his rapport with Ryan Reynolds in Red Notice and Kevin Hart in Central Intelligence.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about The Scorpion King is how director Chuck Russell and Stephen Sommers — who co-wrote the screenplay and directed The Mummy Returns — reworked Mathayus to be more of a heroic character. In The Mummy Returns, he was depicted as a power-hungry man who didn’t think twice about selling his soul to the Egyptian god Anubis in order to gain a powerful army. Johnson has a running trend of always portraying the hero in his films, with the majority of his performances channeling his gregarious public persona. Ironically, during the height of his wrestling career, he was a “heel” and leaned into his villainous performance, and shades of that carry over into his performance as Sgt. Asher “Sarge” Mahonin in Doom. To this day, Sarge remains the one flat-out villainous role Johnson has taken on.
But The Scorpion King‘s biggest legacy is how it kicked off a trend of Johnson reinvigorating franchises across his career. The Mummy Returns ended up being a bigger box office hit than its predecessor, scoring $435 million at the global box office during its run. The Scorpion King found similar success, as it ended up collecting $180 million during its box office run — triple its production budget. Johnson would have a similar effect on the Fast and Furious franchise, as his appearance as Luke Hobbs helped the film gather critical acclaim and success at the box office. He’d go on to appear in the next three films, which also shared a similar success story. Johnson would have a similar effect on other film franchises, including G.I. Joe and Journey To The Center of The Earth. In a rather ironic twist, Johnson ended up replacing Mummy alum Brendan Fraser in the Journey sequel!
And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, Johnson repeated the trick of launching a spinoff film from a franchise with Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, which saw him joining forces with Jason Statham‘s Deckard Shaw. Much like The Scorpion King, Hobbs and Shaw was greenlit due to the biting chemistry that Johnson and Statham shared during The Fate of the Furious. That same chemistry helps drive Hobbs and Shaw, as the titular duo battle the cybernetically-enhanced super soldier Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). And surprising no one, Hobbes and Shaw was also a massive success at the box office — a sequel is even in development!
The Scorpion King wound up launching a fleet of direct-to-DVD sequels, but they were missing the one element that made the first so successful — Johnson himself. Other actors, including Victor Webster and Zack McGowan, attempted to fill Mathayus’ boots but fell short. The fact that the sequels lacked the sense of humor and action that made the first film a worthwhile watch didn’t help matters either. A reboot of the franchise is in the works, with Johnson producing; hopefully, he can add the same magic that made the first a success, as well as some of the elements that made him a superstar.
