The 10 Best Dwayne Johnson Movies, Ranked

Even though professional wrestling involves a degree of acting, the professional wrestler-to-actor pipeline hasn't been particularly smooth for most. Hulk Hogan generally found himself unable to tone down the volume and the bluster of yelling to an entire arena, and while Roddy Piper had some success with John Carpenter's "They Live," he owes it to the director being a wrestling fan.

In the '90s, wrestling began to change into its "Attitude" era, often called the Monday Night Wars, developing more adult and reality-based themes, and depending at least as much on behind-the-scenes vignettes as in-ring action. This transition required a newer, more versatile sort of performer, and none excelled at it more than Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock. It was in The Rock's charisma as both hero and villain that promoter Vince McMahon saw the potential for the World Wrestling Entertainment to gain a foothold in Hollywood, and WWE Studios, then known as WWF films, launched with "The Scorpion King," spun off from a small role Johnson had gotten in the big-budget sequel "The Mummy Returns."

Before long, Johnson grew bigger than WWE Studios, becoming a bona fide A-lister while his former company mostly produced direct-to-video features. Unlike Hogan and Piper, he is taken seriously as a Hollywood star, paving the way for other talented WWE alumni like Dave Bautista, whose 12 best movies we ranked previously. We've ranked Dwayne Johnson's 10 best movies below but excluded several good ones that merely feature a cameo because they'd be a whole separate list. 

Johnson's much-hyped film debut as the Scorpion King in "The Mummy Returns" didn't exactly dazzle — he walks into the desert, falls down, and gets replaced with a terrible CG monster that truly misses the mark. It did, however, lead to this spinoff movie, in which he really got to showcase his on-camera charisma to movie audiences for the first time.

World Wrestling Entertainment's then-head honcho Vince McMahon still had his thumb on anything Johnson did in or out of the ring, and the result is a fantasy actioner geared to the same young male audience that bought millions — and millions! — of The Rock's T-shirts, sunglasses, and foam Brahma Bull tattoo replicas. Light on over-the-top fantasy elements but heavy on believable fight scenes, the ancient Egyptian adventure pits Johnson against a suitably huge Hollywood opponent in Michael Clarke Duncan. In time-honored comic-book and pro-wrestling storyline style, however, they wind up teaming up afterward against the real bad guy, played by Steven Brand, a Scottish character actor making his film debut.

Though he does his signature "People's Eyebrow" once as an in-joke, Johnson isn't merely playing his wrestling persona, which at the time resembled something like a sarcastic Elvis Presley. Historical accuracy may not be at a premium, but taking the story seriously was, and the jokes, such as there are, remain in character. It set the tone for the career to come, as a living action figure who can talk almost as well as he punches.

"Pain & Gain" is a borderline repellent movie — but it's meant to be. Working on a lower-than-usual budget of $26 million and without franchise demands, Michael Bay unleashed his full misanthropy on this based-on-reality narrative of a gang of bodybuilding ex-convicts on a crime spree. Both Mark Wahlberg and Johnson play meaner and dumber than ever, deliberately so, as gym manager Daniel Lugo and born-again addict Paul Doyle respectively. Yet as they repeatedly assault and try to murder people, we have to wonder — are we supposed to like them? Does Michael Bay? And if not, is there anyone positive to root for in this tale of terrible people?

One doesn't have to like the movie, per se, to appreciate that it's a good stretch for Johnson. He's always better as flawed characters — a lesson learned from his pre-Rock days as "Rocky Maivia" in the WWE ring — yet easily falls into the temptation to play perfect people. Here, in the role of a homophobic cokehead and inept conman, he breaks free from as much actor vanity as may be possible when a person looks like him. The movie wasn't hugely accurate in terms of the facts of the case that inspired it, as Bay will always choose spectacle over veracity. However, it earned Bay more critical respect than usual, with reviewers grudgingly admitting that for better or worse, this was a more personal project than any before.

Johnson hasn't really played a villain since, and his "antihero" Black Adam doesn't count.

Dwayne Johnson appeared in one of the worst video-game movies ever with "Doom," but made up for it by doing one of the best here, costarring opposite a giant CG ape, reptile, and wolf-bat. Directed by regular Johnson collaborator Brad Peyton, and scripted by at least four credited writers including Carlton Cuse, the movie largely ignores what little lore the 1986 arcade game actually had. In the original, mutated humans become giant kaiju that might as well be called not-Kong, not-Godzilla, and huge Wolfman — the joy of the concept was to play as the monsters and smash buildings. George the ape in the movie is more like Mighty Joe Young, essentially a good ape temporarily turned threatening by circumstances, while Lizzie the lizard and Ralph the wolf are flat-out villains.

Johnson plays an anti-poaching, former Special Forces primatologist, which is exactly the kind of ridiculous hybrid over-muscled action stars should play. As George's protector, it's his job to try to save the big guy while mitigating the damage and trying to make him tame again. Let's just say he does a much better job than Jeff Bridges in the 1976 version of "King Kong," possibly because he has the assistance of Naomie Harris' glamorous geneticist, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan doing that sleazy antihero shtick he always does these days.

Malin Akerman makes for an unlikely villain, but the cast rounds out with the likes of Joe Manganiello, Jack Quaid, and Marley Shelton. It's still schlock, but elevated, great-looking schlock.

Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart have made several generic team-up comedies with each other and other partners, but "Central Intelligence" stands out from the pack by giving the wrestler-turned-actor an actual character to play. Hart is a former high-school jock named Calvin Joyner; Johnson is a formerly obese nerd named Robbie Weirdicht. When they reunite decades later, Robbie is now a CIA agent who needs his old friend's help ... or, possibly, has gone rogue and is playing Calvin for a fool.

What elevates this high-concept comedy is the way that Johnson, despite never once having been "the fat kid" in his life, plays that repressed insecurity. He may have grown up to look like the coolest, most dangerous guy in the world, but he's still, on some level, insecure, secretly scared of rejection, and trying to hide it. This allows for more give and take between the two stars than just a standard big guy-little guy dynamic; we believe that Calvin could actually make Robbie feel metaphorically small, even if only briefly, and that the charismatic Robbie could also be super-needy. 

In classical Greek theater terms, comedy is about the foibles that make the gods more relatably human, so when a Herculean figure like Johnson displays them, the payoff is worth it.

"Fast Five," the movie that brought Dwayne Johnson's Luke Hobbs into the "Fast & Furious" franchise, is often cited as a favorite by fans, but let's be honest: the much-hyped, long-awaited first onscreen fight between Johnson and Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto is a brief, over-edited affair, and the major heist plot less interesting than the usual races. "Furious 7," which brought in Jason Statham, Djimon Housou, and Ronda Rousey as villains, was the one where Johnson really found his "Fast" feet. 

In his best scene in the entire series, Hobbs prepares to leave his hospital room and get back in the action by flexing his bicep so hard it breaks the plaster off. Then he blows up a helicopter by shooting a bag of grenades. That's exactly the kind of too-exaggerated-to-take-seriously machismo that allows these movies to appeal to more than just the testosterone-soaked set.

In addition, this is the one where the cars stunt-jump from one of Abu Dhabi's Etihad Towers to the other, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) gets her memory back, Hobbs fights Statham's Deckard Shaw, and, more tragically, Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner says goodbye. The actor died in a terrible, unrelated car accident, but his character was allowed to live on and go his own way, thanks to digital trickery and body doubling.

It's unfortunate the "Hobbs and Shaw" spin-off didn't work as well, but on the plus side, its disappointment brought both actors back to the main storyline.

"Red One" isn't the sort of movie that should work as well as it does. It's an overpriced, corporate CG-fest about Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), coming to theaters following stories of Johnson being habitually late and handing urine bottles to assistants to discard. It's certainly a wild fantasy, creating its own new, sprawling holiday mythology that includes cult favorite folklore characters like Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and largely unknown ones like Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). Johnson plays Santa's head of security who may or may not be an Elf, but is definitely and hilariously named Callum Drift — he mentions only that he isn't human, and frequently shrinks to half-size to display Ant-Man-like powers. Cast against type, Chris Evans is the real star here, as a criminal hacker and expert pickpocket who unwittingly helps the supernatural villains before being apprehended by Callum and forced to help find a kidnapped Saint Nick.

The story, conceived by Johnson's business partner and ex-brother-in-law Hiram Garcia, takes a lot of big swings and trusts the audience to follow along rather than pausing to explain every wild choice. The obligatory Christmas sentiment — yes, Evans' Jack is a negligent dad — stays to a minimum. The central conflict, between a witch who wants to punish everyone on the "Naughty" list and a Santa who forgives, plays like a metaphor for fundamentalism versus liberal religion. Johnson, meanwhile, mostly stands back and yes, he knows his role ... to support the craziness rather than center it on himself.

Of the three live-action G.I. Joe movies, only this one really captures the spirit of the classic "Real American Hero" toys and cartoons. Mirror-masked Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey and Robert Baker) and shape-shifting Zartan (Arnold Vosloo and Jonathan Pryce) are here with their H.I.S.S. tanks, taking on juiced up military specialists with names like Roadblock (Johnson) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park). Naturally, both sides in the conflict have ninjas, as Hollywood and the toy companies just assumed everyone did in the '80s heyday of Joe. As for the central plot — in which the president of the United States appears to be working for world peace, while actually being a sleeper agent working for a dictator and pretending to be a patriotic politician — it feels more timely every year.

With Channing Tatum wanting out of the series, his prior movie hero Duke gets killed off early. Dwayne Johnson steps in as Roadblock, and Bruce Willis adds action legacy cred as the original G.I. Joe Colton. Unlike in the cartoon, they use real guns rather than stun lasers, and characters do die. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick would go on to do the first two "Deadpool" films, while director Jon M. Chu later brought us "Wicked." Before Elphaba defied gravity onscreen, Chu had the ninjas of team Joe and Cobra doing it in an epic cliff battle that, at its best, feels like an epic and deadly ballet. 

The first "Jumanji" sequel in the franchise, "Welcome to the Jungle," reimagined the dimension-spanning board game as a video game instead, with Johnson cast as a heroic avatar for whoever selected his playable character, Dr. Smolder Bravestone. In that installment, he was controlled by young, unconfident Spencer (Alex Wolff). In "The Next Level," though, it's Spencer's grandfather, Eddie (Danny DeVito), who gets sucked into the Bravestone role, which means Johnson spends most of the movie impersonating DeVito. Kevin Hart's Mouse Finbar, meanwhile, becomes the avatar for Eddie's friend Milo (Danny Glover), which leads to Hart adopting a Glover voice. Done badly, this could all play like an overlong "Saturday Night Live" sketch, but Johnson and Hart commit to embodying DeVito and Glover, and it's some of their best work. They are the sorts of actors who often get accused of "playing themselves"; that is definitely not true here.

Indeed, this is more like the good "SNL" episodes hosted by Johnson, who comes off therein as a good sport up for anything. He's been much more controlling of his image in recent years, and even his "Jumanji" scenes often get memed as two films among several in which he wears essentially the same beige outfit. In this case, a picture doesn't say a thousand words — one needs only hear him utter a few in the trailer for "The Next Level" to appreciate how different this is. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up early in "The Rundown" — which was almost called "Welcome to the Jungle" before the "Jumanji" sequel — to tell Dwayne Johnson, "Have fun." It came across as a passing of the torch moment, but it may have, in hindsight, created some false expectations. While Schwarzenegger spent much of his career seeking out acclaimed directors to make particularly artful R-rated actioners, Johnson gravitated toward family fare much sooner, and tends to collaborate with workmanlike directors who don't have strong trademark styles.

"The Rundown" came before he figured that out, giving him an Arnold-style, gritty guns-and-wisecracks adventure from action auteur Peter Berg, who teamed him with Seann William Scott as the wisecracking frenemy, and Christopher Walken as the villain. If the goal was to legitimize Johnson as a contemporary action star rather than just a bare-chested Conan-type, it succeeded, casting him as a bounty hunter/aspiring chef. Yet it's less dark than "Very Bad Things" director Berg often is, as he utilized more of Johnson's natural humor and physical comedy than in "The Scorpion King," particularly in a scene where the star has to escape from a dangerous monkey while partly paralyzed. 

The film impressed critics who were unused to seeing wrestlers-turned-actors stretch that much, but sadly, "The Rundown" failed to make its budget back domestically, which may be why Johnson leaned further into the humor thereafter. Its esteem has slowly grown, though, and as recently as 2020, Berg was still talking about a possible sequel.

While some of the movies on this list qualify as action greats, "Moana" is a beloved all-time classic, period. The Disney princess movie set among the Pacific islands, pairing a strong young woman with a blustery, overcompensating male demigod on a quest to right the latter's wrongs, features astounding 3-D animated ocean visuals and the catchiest songs since "Frozen," by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i, and Mark Mancina. 

As Maui, the Polynesian trickster deity, Dwayne Johnson conveys the extra-wide shape-shifter's pomposity with vocals that sound like they're puffing up his already ample chest. It takes a deft tongue to maneuver around the rap section of Miranda's "You're Welcome," but Johnson makes the song his own, spitting rhymes in full character with more confidence than the character deserves...though the actor deserves all he gets.

It's not even Maui's movie, though in the end, he's the most visible supporting character. As scene-stealing as Dwayne Johnson can be, even in voice-over only, this is Auli'i Cravalho's coming out party, and her co-star can't and won't take the spotlight away. Her show-stopper, "How Far I'll Go," was the Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning tune. 

In pro wrestling, a performer's match can only be as good as their partner, so it's no surprise that most of Johnson's best movies have him in duos or ensembles. As a lead, he sometimes feels wooden. As Moana's barely reliable ally, and in a portrayal he loosely based on his grandfather, wrestling legend Peter Maivia, he's a fully realized character and a Disney icon.