Irrelevant But Awesome

It really can’t be avoided anymore. We have to talk about the unbelievable box office story that is Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. This past weekend, Jumanji was once again the highest grossing movie at the box office. Seven weeks after its debut, Jumanji is still able to top the weekend at the box office. Yes there have been a few of those weeks where Jumanji came in at number two in the weekly rundown (it did open the weekend after Star Wars after all) but all in all, Jumanji’s box office dominance is something that nobody was expecting. The movie has grossed over $350 million domestically making it The Rock’s highest domestic grossing movie of his career (yes, even more than any of his movies in the Fast and the Furious franchise) and has brought in over $850 million worldwide making it Sony’s fifth highest grossing movie ever with no end in sight (Only Spider-Man and James Bond movies have grossed more worldwide and Jumanji’s number continues to climb). To continue to put in pe...

Joel:  This WrestleMania was not good and it’s The Rock’s fault. I don’t know if there’s another time where the failure of an entire WrestleMania can so clearly be attributed to a single wrestler. But there’s no way around it, having The Rock on this show made the whole thing worse. The problem came with the fact that we were never really clear what the “host” of WrestleMania was supposed to do. He came out to hype up the crowd, but we all knew at that point that he was going to confront Cena at some point here, that’s what we were all waiting for. And so, Rock hangs like a shadow over the whole show as we wait for the final match of the night. Even watching it again, knowing how everything is going to end The Rock hosting never works quite right on this show, and makes everything that isn’t a match feel a little bit more awkward. Not that the matches on this card are anything impressive. I only ended up liking one match and that was the Orton vs. CM Punk match, which is...

Joel:  This WrestleMania had several firsts for the show. This was the first WrestleMania after the company switched from WWF to WWE. (If you watch the show on the WWE Network, even though the WWF scratch logos have been unblurred, there are a few cases here where they remain blurred in footage of past WrestleManias.) But it’s also the first WrestleMania after the Brand Extension, which means that the show was presented as two separate rosters coming putting on one giant show. This leads to a somewhat clunky feeling as we bounce between the two rosters, but it’s not a huge issue. I think this may have also been the first time that Undertaker’s streak was mentioned by the show. It was little more than a throwaway line by the commentary saying that Undertaker was 10-0 but still, it’s going to be shaping up to be its own thing in the next couple of years. The match quality is impressive for the show as well. Chris Jericho has is best WrestleMania appearance to date and the same...

Joel:   It’s hard to go into WrestleMania X8 right after having seen the previous one. X7 after all was the best WrestleMania to date and pretty much defines what a WrestleMania event could be. It’s going to be hard to be compared to that, no matter what kind of card you’ve put together. And if you judge it on its own merit, WrestleMania X8 is still a pretty good show. And they tried to put together a fantastic card. The title is now the undisputed title to add to the gravity of the main event match. And you have Hogan showing up for the first WrestleMania in almost ten years which genuinely felt like a big deal. It doesn’t quite live up to the feeling and the momentum of last years show, but then again, I’m not sure how it could. The biggest complaint I have (other than the number being X8 which is just as stupid as X7 was last year) was not letting Hogan and Rock go on last. That just feels like the epic showdown that’s worthy of being the main event. It’s Icon vs. Icon. A...

Joel:   Let me say up front that the title X-Seven for seventeen is dumb. It has that feel of doing it cause the kids will think it looks cool. It was strange back then, and it’s just as bad now a decade and a half later. Also, the intro video felt off. The past few video packages that started off WrestleMania have been about the history and the prestige of the event itself, and have made the show feel like a big deal. The “Celebration of Life” video package that goes with this WrestleMania feels strangely disconnected from the rest of the show. But other than those two, very small complaints, this WrestleMania is a pretty perfect example of what WrestleMania can be when it reaches its full potential.  This is a moment in wrestling history where the stars aligned just perfectly, and one of the greatest events of all time was pulled off. Rock and Stone Cold, two of the most successful men to ever wrestle were both at the top of their game. TLC had just been introduced ...

Joel:  Honestly the biggest issue that WrestleMania 2000 has is something that can’t really be helped, and the same thing can be said to some extent for WrestleMania XV. But rewatching these past two WrestleManias, the biggest reaction I had to them was “This just isn’t WrestleMania X-Seven.” That feeling hit especially hard during WrestleMania 2000 watching the “Triangle Ladder Match” knowing that we were going to get a much better version of the exact same thing in the next show. I’ve tried to keep X-Seven opinions at bay while reviewing WrestleMania 2000, as we’ll be addressing that show soon enough, but even standing on it’s own, WrestleMania 2000 is a bit of an overbooked mess. On a card with nine matches, only one of them was a singles match, and that was the Women’s Catfight match that still had a special guest referee that was a wrestler, and was still less than three minutes long. Every other match was crammed full of wrestlers. We had three different tag team mat...

Joel:  I remember Vince McMahon and The Cooperation being a big deal during this time period, but I don’t think I realized just how central The Cooperation was to pretty much every storyline that was going on in this show. Of the ten matches on this card (nine if you don’t count the brawl for all match) five of them have were centered around a feud with a member of The Cooperation or The Cooperation itself. This included the last three matches of the show which were the most high profile matches on the card. While I get that it did a lot to elevate those storylines and feuds, for the handful of matches that had nothing to do with any Cooperation storyline, it made them feel that much more irrelevant and forgettable. Because of this it really takes a while to get to the matches that feel like they matter on the card. Even though it won’t be their best WrestleMania match, and even though I already knew the outcome of the match, I couldn’t help but get excited at the beginnin...

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is a mega star, that much is undeniable. Wrestling fans love him, action movie fans are in awe of him and even kids who like Disney movies think he's the best. Seriously, this much charisma should be illegal for one human to possess. With all that said, Rock has been on a press tour for his new disaster thriller San Andreas which means Rock gets to reunited with one of his favorite interviewers, Nick Mundy, for Screen Junkies. Mundy's co-workers wanted to do something special for Nick and Rock was quickly on-board. The video below tells the story and I dare you to resist letting out genuine freshly warm-hearted laugh at some point during the video.

Joel and Chris are back this week with The Classy Ring Attire Podcast #166: "Our Way Too Early Predictions for Wrestlemania 32." Subscribe now on iTunes to have every episode delivered straight to you or head over to their site  and listen to all your favorite episodes.

Man it sure has been a big day for trailers. Not only did we have the MIB 3 trailer earlier in the day, now we've got a GI Joe trailer out as well. Check it out below. So I knew the Rock was going to be a big part of the movie, after all he's arguably the biggest name attached to the thing, but it seems that hes going to be unquestionably the main character of the thing this time around. I think saw Duke for a second in there but not near what I saw of Roadblock. Also did this plot remind anyone else of the set up for the new Mission Impossible movie. Which is really the premise for the A-Team show from way back when. But it's the same plot with Snake Eyes, so I'm more or less content with that. What I would have really liked though is some sort of indication that we might get some more of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie but I guess somebody was too busy being in the most anticipated Batman movie of all time. So there's that. Oh and for those who don't know ...

Welcome back, my sticky Ragers, to everyone's favorites somewhat weekly random thoughts of Monday Night Raw: VD edition. This edition of Raw has a major surprise, as referred to in the last Rager entry, but more on that later. Lets roll: 1. The opening shindig between John Cena and CM Punk was alright, the Nexus interference by supplying the wrench felt a little campy (ooo a mysterious arm with Nexus band extends from under the ring slowly with a wrench). I'm ready to see these two fight without outside interference, its long overdue and I'm hoping we get that soon after the feud between Punk and Orton is done (which I almost forgot completely about because Punk has been facing Cena so much). 2. They're still continuing Smackdown stories on Raw now? Really? I mean, I get that they're trying to convince people to watch a non-sci-fi show on a channel thats dedicated to the genre, especially the big 600th episode thats so big that it'll feature Raw superstars bec...