Dwayne Johnson is no stranger to controversy. And this week, on the red carpet for his new movie Moana 2, Johnson dropped his next polarizing wisdom bomb: Musical fans should feel free to sing in movie theaters.
“Sing!” he told the BBC. “You’ve paid your hard earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it.”
While Moana 2 is chock of songs, The Rock’s comments come at a particularly fiery time in movie theater-etiquette discourse thanks to the arrival of Wicked: Part One. The hit film, based on the long-running Broadway show, has become a major event for musical buffs and fans of the color green. And even on preview night, reports poured in across social media that fans of Wicked were breaking out into song along with the movie, muffling the work by stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
In the wake of the sing-a-long outbreak, theater chains issued requests to patrons for silence, while academics in the field of the Cinematic Arts slammed audiences’ karaoke instincts as “intolerable behavior.” Johnson disagrees.
“Especially if you love music,” he said, “that’s the fun part.”
While Johnson may not be “The Rock” on a red carpet, the star can’t resist going into WWE heel mode. He’s one of our greatest stars when it comes to getting out there and just saying shit. The actor made waves a few weeks ago for suggesting that Oppenheimer directly inspired his vision for this month’s poorly received action Christmas movie Red One. Over the summer, he poked the hive by declining to take a political side in the 2024 election, out of dedication to his mission to bring people together. “I’m not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people, and I trust that whoever they vote for, that’s gonna be my president, and that’s who I’m gonna support, 100 percent,” he said in an April interview on Fox News that definitely went over really well. The proclamation that 2022’s Black Adam would change the “hierarchy of power in the DC universe” might be his greatest work in this mode.
With his shot-from-the-hip thoughts on singing in movie theaters, Johnson has once again positioned himself as a guy catering to any type of audience member, even if it’s almost fundamentally anti-art. The Rock is gonna rock ya.
For all the pointed fingers and commotion, Universal Pictures is already addressing the issue: According to the studio, interactive showings of Wicked will come to nearly 1,000 North American cinemas starting on Dec. 25. If the theater kids can hold the songs in their hearts for just a month without exploding, everyone might get to be happy this holiday season.
The post The Rock to theater kids: sing at the movies, ‘you’ve paid’ appeared first on Polygon.
