Audiences don’t go to see a movie like Rampage for things like “logic”. They go to see big monsters destroy things, and Rampage certainly delivers on that promise. However, speaking about logic, or lack thereof, in a movie like Rampage can often times be just as fun as the mindless spectacle. So let’s have some fun.
The alligator in Rampage apparently travels incognito. Photo: Warner Bros.
One such piece of logic has to do with the film’s giant, mutated alligator. My colleague Beth Elderkin sent me this video by her friend, Antonella Inserra, in which, while drinking much-needed wine, she tries to figure out how such a creature could have travelled from the Everglades in Florida to Chicago, Illinois, unnoticed.
That’s the keyword: “Unnoticed.” If the film had just had one line of dialogue where a character mentions some anomaly in the Mississippi River or the Atlantic coast, great. Covered. And yes, arguably most of the people who would track that kind of thing were too busy trying to blow up the giant wolf and gorilla coming to Chicago from the West Coast. But once the film gets to Chicago, the alligator arrives and no one knew it existed. This is pretty weird, considering how little water there is between Florida and Chicago and how the alligator has no problem destroying things along the way.
As pointed out in the video, the alligator could have gone into the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, which then links to Lake Michigan (the body of water that borders Chicago) via another route. There’s also the possibility it went up the Atlantic Ocean and either through New York or Canada to get there.
Not mentioned in the video, however, is that this isn’t just a giant alligator, it’s a giant mutated alligator. The thing looks less like an alligator than it does Godzilla. Maybe it just burrowed underground all the way there? It was also growing on the way to Chicago, which makes it plausible that for the first 160km or so, it was just a somewhat larger-than-normal alligator which could travel reasonably undetected. Eventually, though, it had to grow. And eat. Showing up in Chicago as a total surprise to everyone makes no sense whatsoever.
Of course, this isn’t a crucial plot point or anything; maybe the alligator was infected with some kind of animal cloaking device. It could have teleported, for all the filmmakers of Rampage care. They just need it in Chicago with the other animals to destroy crap, which it does. Besides, the rest of the movie makes it very obvious “logic” was never a word mentioned in the writing process.
Nevertheless, it’s still funny to think about, and it’s even funnier to try to solve. So, click here this Google map of North America. Think of it like a maze. Pretend you’re a Godzilla-sized mutant alligator who has to get to Chicago from the Florida Everglades without being noticed.
[H/T Antonella Inserra]