TIFF Prediction: The Rock will win an Oscar
People are talking about Dwayne Johnson as the next Mickey Rourke
Fifteen-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival: check. Emotionally agonizing biopic: check. Dramatic weight loss–related transformation: check. One hundred per cent Rotten Tomatoes rating: check. Anyone with even the vaguest notion of Hollywood machinations can probably smell what the Rock is cooking: starts with O, sounds like schmoscar.
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His movie, The Smashing Machine, hasn’t even premiered at TIFF yet, and Dwayne “The Thespian” Johnson has Toronto cinephiles whispering the two words every actor playing an IRL ring king wants to hear: Mickey Rourke. Rourke’s career was in has-been mode when The Wrestler premiered at the Toronto festival in 2008, but the film turned out to be such a smash that the distribution rights were sold on the spot. Six months later, Rourke was walking the red carpet as an Oscar nominee (he lost to Sean Penn, but he managed to pick up a Golden Globe, BAFTA and an Independent Spirit Award along the way).
Johnson is in a slightly different circumstance: not a has-been so much as a celebrity best known for co-starring with cars and animated Disney princesses. And while it’s certainly no small feat to outshine Moana, Johnson’s work in The Smashing Machine—the story of late-’90s UFC fighter Mark Kerr, who battled drug addiction outside of the ring—is on an entirely new register.
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“Dwayne Johnson’s Tearful Reinvention at the Venice Film Festival,” reads a New York Times headline from earlier this week, praising our boy (he is a Canadian citizen, remember) for a performance that proves he can “do much more than simply outrace explosions and glower at Vin Diesel.”
Now, the movie is heading to TIFF for its North American premiere, Oscar talk is clinging to Johnson like a lycra T-shirt, and he’s all teed up to build his award-season narrative as one of the featured guests of this year’s In Conversation speaker series.
Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
