‘San Andreas’: The Rock Shatters His Opening Night Competition Despite So-So Reviews

There’s no faulting San Andreas. The hardcore disaster flick earned star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson his highest solo opening night career numbers ever.

According to Deadline, San Andreas pulled in a massive 46.5 million at the box office on opening night despite a smattering of mixed reviews across the internet.

“With an estimated $17.5M today, San Andreas marks the highest opening day for a Dwayne Johnson solo project on the B.O. Richter scale, and the pic is bound to quake the action star’s previous opening weekend records outside his thespian duties on the Fast & Furious franchise with an estimated $46.5M.”

Clearly, fans of The Rock and disaster films in general, shook off middling reviews for the “disaster porn” film that is San Andreas. Forbes for example, called the film a “big disaster” citing a lack of the key ingredients fans of the genre would like to see in their apocalyptic films.

“If you break enough stuff, people usually notice,” the review begins. “In cinema’s disaster flick genre, that typically means delivering effects-laden destructive spectacle packaged with stock character types and obvious button-pushing melodrama. San Andreas, the new disaster film hitting theaters this weekend, brings plenty of visual effects in hopes audiences won’t notice that pretty much everything else that would make it worth watching is missing from the recipe.”

While the Wall Street Journal simply said San Andreas was “dumb” and that the story was “strung out in a by-the-numbers script that gives special prominence to numbers on the Richter scale.”

But not every reviewer on the internet tanked Dwayne Johnson’s disaster flick. Entertainment Weekly called San Andreas “satisfying” despite the absurdity behind the premise.

“As patently preposterous, scientifically dubious, and unapologetically corny as director Brad Peyton’s orgy of CGI devastation is, its popcorn prophecy of the inevitable is a blast of giddy, disposable fun. It’s a ridiculously satisfying slice of summer disaster porn.”

While most of the credit for its impressive opening night haul falls squarely on The Rock’s shoulders (and our own penchant for this type of onscreen spectacle) some could also be given to a viral video uploaded to YouTube the same day San Andreas hit theaters. As reported by Inquistr, a viral video signaling an earthquake apocalypse found its way onto the internet. Posted by a user called Ditrianum, “a Netherlands-based non-profit organization,” according to the Washington Post, the video suggested a similar Earth shattering earthquake would befall California on May 28th – even though that obviously turned out to be false.

Many speculate that the video was indeed just a hoax posted to promote San Andreas, but no one has come forward to claim so either way.

[Image via Entertainment Weekly]