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163. The Rundown (Summer of Rock)

Release Date: 06/20/2025

Jurassic Park Franchise Rankings + Godzilla (2014)

Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast

Hey folks, we're off this week, but we'll be back next week with our Fast Five episode, as the Summer of Rock rolls on! In the meantime, enjoy some samplings from the additional bonus material available on our YouTube channel (). Time stamps: 1:30 — Top-Five Jurassic Park Movies (excluding Jurassic Park) 9:06 — Revisiting Gareth Edwards's Godzilla (2014)

164. Tooth Fairy (Summer of Rock)

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Well, a movie finally broke us. Horror and mortal terror have a face. In the absolutely dreadful “family film” Tooth Fairy (2010)—quite possibly the worst movie our podcast has ever covered—Dwayne Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a hockey player who specializes in knocking out opponents’ teeth. He has a lot on his plate: He’s dating Ashley Judd, who has two kids: An adorable little girl who loves him and a punk teenage boy who thinks he’s full of crap (Because he is.). At the same time, Derek has some hotshot new competition in the form of Mick “The Stick”...

163. The Rundown (Summer of Rock)

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Dwayne Johnson followed up his debut lead performance in The Scorpion King with The Rundown. Released as Welcome to the Jungle outside America, The Rundown might be his very best movie. Along with Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, and a deliciously hammy Christopher Walken, The Rock is firing on all cylinders as both a physical and emotional actor. He can be funny when called to be, but leaves most of the humor to Scott and Walken, and he really shines as a stoic badass. It's no mistake that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a cameo at the beginning of this movie, passing by...

162. The Scorpion King (Summer of Rock)

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The Summer of Rock begins as Laci and Matt dive into the movie career of Dwayne Johnson with his first leading role in The Scorpion King (2002). The Rock first graced the big screen a year earlier in The Mummy Returns, in a brief prologue in which he plays a character who seemingly has nothing to do with the sturdy nice fellow he plays in Scorpion King. And now he gets to lead a picture. And what a picture. An old-fashioned picture, you might say. One refreshingly free of irony, self-awareness, or any of the oppressive trappings of modernity. This movie’s kinda great, actually. And...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

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We're off this week, preparing for the Summer of Rock, which starts next week with an episode about The Scorpion King (2002). In fact, here is our schedule for the rest of the month: June 13 - The Scorpion King (2002) June 20 - The Rundown (2003) June 27 - Tooth Fairy (2010) In the meantime, please enjoy Matt's semi-spoiler-y review of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. And please follow us on YouTube to get all kinds of bonus content:

161. I Love You, Man (with Wade Hymel)

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Friend of the Show Wade Hymel makes his triumphant return to the podcast, and he’s brought with him I Love You, Man (2009). So what’s up with men, huh? With their man caves, and their jam seshes, and their pizza pies. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t help but love ‘em, am I right? And how do adults make friends anyway? It’s pretty weird. Somebody should make a movie about it. Oh, that’s what this movie is. Hear Wade's amazing album WHO SAID THAT? on Apple Music (), Spotify (), or wherever else music is streamed. Or you can purchase the...

160. Wayne’s World

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Join us at Stan Mikita’s for crullers, dear listener, as we go through one of the very best comedies of the 1990s: It’s Wayne’s World. Excellent. But is it truly Wayne’s world? How much control does Wayne really have? What does he want? What does he stand for? And will he ever transcend the limitations of his corporeal space? We definitively answer these and so much more, as we cover both the making of the movie (including what sounds like a very difficult experience for director Penelope Spheeris in having to work with Mike Myers) and the movie itself, reading very...

159. Final Destination

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Laci and Matt are broadcasting to you from a cabin in the woods, where they're eating canned cat food with oven mitts, trying to dodge that pesky Grim Reaper. But the rats need their cheese, so here’s a new episode about Final Destination (2000). (You’re the rat, I guess.) It’s the movie that launched one of the great horror franchises. A franchise that Matt posits is Friday the 13th for the decade of the 2000s. This series has it all: Primitive cell phones! Internet research on big ole computers! And nu-metal, nu-metal, nu-metal. And it all started here, with...

Thunderbolts* Review + MCU Roundtable

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Matt's declaration that he was forever finished with the Marvel Cinematic Universe lasted all of one movie, once Thunderbolts* started getting good reviews. So he went out and saw it, and thought it was..... okay. But to go through it, he needed to bring on two big-time fans of the movie, so Neophyte Reviews and Screen Time Kota join the show for a discussion of Thunderbolts* and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. This CLIP features the first 35 minutes of the discussion. You can get the rest of the discussion by subscribing to LOAD BEARING BEAMS: COLLECTOR'S EDITION on Patreon:...

158. Death Proof (with Cinema Chris)

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Please note: Like how Death Proof uses fake film grain to make it seem like it’s an older movie, only to stop doing it halfway through, Laci and Matt’s audio improves halfway through this episode. You might not even notice the audio isn't great in the first half... but if you do, just know it gets better eventually. Friend of the Show Cinema Chris joins Laci and Matt to talk about Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007). Originally a 90-minute movie presented as part of a double feature alongside Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof now stands on its own (in...

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It's no mistake that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a cameo at the beginning of this movie, passing by The Rock and telling him to "have fun." It was his world now. As The Scorpion King was The Rock's version of Conan the Barbarian, The Rundown was his version of Commando. Unfortunately, the world had changed since the 1980s, and the public appetite for throwback action-adventure movies was waning.

We were robbed of a world where he made a movie of this quality every year. But we’re also robbed of a world where dozens of movies like this get made every year. We had it all, we just didn’t know it.

The Summer of Rock is our summer 2025 miniseries covering the movie career of Dwayne Johnson through nine movies, presented in chronological order. Starting with his attempt at crossing over from the world of wrestling, The Rock’s career got off to a bumpy start before finally taking off in the 2010s. But it wasn’t long before the bumps returned, and we’ll be telling the story for you all summer long!

Bonus video: The Rundown should’ve had a sequel! The Rock and Seann William Scott have excellent chemistry, and their partnership could easily have fit into all kinds of different sequel scenarios. Really, there should have been 10 Rundowns. We name a few other movies we think should’ve gotten sequels as well: https://youtu.be/PlL4FK8U8J4

Subscribe to our Patreon, Load Bearing Beams: Collector's Edition for $5 a month to get two extra episodes! patreon.com/loadbearingbeams

Time stamps:

00:04:40 — Our personal histories with The Rundown

00:14:00 — History segment: The Rock’s wrestling career in 2002 and 2003, including his feud with Hulk Hogan and the fans turning against him; brief history of the production of The Rundown under director Peter Berg

00:32:20 — In-depth movie discussion

01:20:30 — Final thoughts and star ratings

Source:

“Man of Action! ** Former Bethlehem resident The Rock is on a roll with ‘The Rundown’” by Amy Longsdorf | The Morning Call (2003) - https://bit.ly/4kNkxoz

Artwork by Laci Roth.

Music by Rural Route Nine. Listen to their album The Joy of Averages on Spotify (https://bit.ly/48WBtUa), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/3Q6kOVC), or YouTube (https://bit.ly/3MbU6tC).

Songs by Rural Route Nine in this episode:

“Summer of Rock” - https://youtu.be/dvRY72jNIEE

“Winston-Salem” - https://youtu.be/-acMutUf8IM

“Snake Drama” - https://youtu.be/xrzz8_2Mqkg

“The Bible Towers of Bluebonnet” - https://youtu.be/k7wlxTGGEIQ

"Summer of Rock" theme song credits:

Words and music by Matt Stokes

Engineered, mixed, and mastered by TJ Barends | Bare Sounds

Personnel:

TJ Barends - backing vocals

Wade Hymel - drums/guitar/backing vocals

Laci Roth - vocals