Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson didn’t always have those massive, superhuman muscles. No, he was once one of us normal folk, with no curvaceous arms and no soccer ball-sized pecs. He was average. He was, simply, Skinny Rock.
Okay, this isn’t true. Anyone who has watched Young Rock knows the real backstory behind the bodybuilder. (The NBC series, somewhat fictionalized, follows Johnson from his childhood into 2032, when he runs for president. That’s the fake part. The rest of the series is fairly autobiographical—including his adulthood spent being absolutely ripped.)
But according to Black Adam, there was once a tinier, petite version of The Rock, before he got all massive and muscular. The new DC Comics flick features an origin story that takes a swan dive into the uncanny valley, shrinking The Rock’s muscles down to bare bones, and the result is…flooring.
We meet Skinny Rock when he was born, a few thousand years ago, in the faux Middle Eastern city of Kahndaq. He’s a young slave, and he’s ready to fight back against a king who holds him hostage. Enter: Normal-sized Rock, who achieves his buff figure thanks to a bunch of wizards and the word “shazam.” Bada bing, bada boom—The Rock is back to his usual physique, and in the film, he’s now a dark Superman variant. (Named Black Adam, duh.)
Though our moments with Skinny Rock are fleeting, they’re precious, wonderful, unforgettable minutes spent in that uncanny valley, where a human being is created or modified by a computer and ends up looking ever-so-slightly robotic. Skinny Rock is almost the exact same as The Rock himself; he just looks a little more like a twig instead of a tree. His arms have shrunk in diameter, and his pecs seem like they’ve been flattened with a hair straightener. Take a look below.
Really, if you weren’t told that this was Skinny Rock, would you be able to tell the difference from The Rock (normal sized)? You’d probably look at him and think, “Huh, The Rock looks really weird in this picture.” He’s not himself, exactly, but he’s just an inch away from being his normal self. Why did they have to take an iron over The Rock’s impressive rack of abs? This does not matter to me, someone who has spent scant time thinking about The Rock’s six-pack. But now that DC has eliminated them, I am an activist for The Rock’s abs.
Let’s not forget his new name, which has me in stitches: “Skinny Rock.” It reminds me of the phrase “Skinny Legend,” or a playlist Spotify might curate around the song “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver. “Skinny Rock” might be an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, in which Spongebob and Patrick adopt a new pet. It should not be, however, the nickname of DC’s latest superhero.
More questions, because I have plenty: Why did Black Adam need to be skinny when he was working as a slave? Couldn’t DC have simply stuck a cape on the man, made him fly, and called him superhuman at that point? Did we really need to see him become muscular, DC’s version of Violet Beauregarde?
This is not the first time a superhero movie has felt the need to shapeshift its hulking actors into “weak” normal folk. In Captain America, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers was a gangly little boy before he was thrown into some chamber of strength. I cannot stress how weird it is to see these average-looking human beings be morphed into mega-buff celebs. Cast a younger actor. Dipping into the uncanny valley to feed the underdog story fills us all with dread.
It’s an effect that folks registered with Cats, too. Seeing celebs half themselves, half CGI-ed into oblivion, audiences couldn’t help but laugh at the terrible digitized versions of their favorite actors. Dame Judi Dench with human hands and a furry feline body gave us all nightmares for weeks.
“Come on, Skinny Rock, just last the year.” - Bon Iver, 2022
Perhaps we’ve all been terrorized by this inhuman version of Dwayne Johnson, but you know what? At least we can all laugh at the movie together when this gonzo version of him appears on screen. And if that’s the best Black Adam has to offer, so be it.
