On Wednesday, Universal Pictures released the second trailer for Dwayne Johnson’s upcoming action flick, Skyscraper. The second trailer for this adrenaline-fueled tower movie tosses in an unexpected twist on an age-old formula in the form of a prosthetic leg.
If you’ve largely dismissed Skyscraper until now as a run-of-the-mill action movie (that you’ll definitely catch on DVD), you’d be forgiven. The story is fairly standard: Johnson plays a world-renowned safety expert who is called in to sign off on the Pearl, the “most advanced supertall structure in the world.” Obviously, like four minutes after he says those words, some dill holes break in to rob the joint Nakatomi-style, leaving Johnson’s family inside the tower with a whole bunch of gun-toting a-holes. Oh, and the entire place is on fire.
That premise paired with Johnson’s innate charisma would elevate Skyscraper to a guilty pleasure all on its own, but the second trailer for Skyscraper reveals a narrative gimmick that could make or break the entire film: Johnson’s ex-military character has a prosthetic leg.
Usually, a twist like that would put the action flick firmly in the land of low-impact thriller — at least if the movie was going for even a hint of realism — but Skyscraper isn’t backing down from the stunts and fight scenes we’d expect from a film starring the Rock. In fact, in the film’s opening moments, Johnson’s character leaps from a crane across a fifteen-foot gap into a burning building. As the trailer progresses, there are hints that Johnson will be using his prosthesis as a veritable Swiss Army knife throughout the movie.
Provided audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief (which shouldn’t be a huge leap considering the Rock’s filmography to date), Skyscraper may have a few neat twists on a typical burning building flick when it comes to theaters on July 13.