YMMV / The Rock

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The age of White House Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair (33) seems to be a Contrived Coincidence, allowing Hummel (and the audience) to dismiss him as a Naïve Newcomer who was exactly 9 years old when Hummel was running black ops in Southeast Asia. However, Dick Cheney set a modern record by becoming Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff at age 34, so for a WH Chief of Staff to be in his early 30s is rare but not impossible.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • If you play the film from Hummel's perspective then it's the story of a classic Tragic Hero.
  • Did Hummel say My God, What Have I Done? because he trusted Frye and Darrow or because he broke his moral code by killing Crisp?
  • Did McCoy and Cox, the last two Marine grunts, keep fighting Mason and Stanley because they were siding with Darrow and Frye, or were they unaware of the mutiny and still loyal to Hummel and believing that they were following his agenda.
• Awesome Music: Hans Zimmer's entire soundtrack, most notably "A Grave Injustice", "Hummel Gets The Rockets", and "Shower Room Massacre".
• Catharsis Factor: Given how utterly despicable monsters Frye and Darrow were, seeing their gruesome demises at the hands of Goodspeed were tremendously satisfying to watch.
• Complete Monster: Captain Frye and Captain Darrow attempt to extort money by threatening San Francisco with VX nerve gas. While their superior, Brigadier General Francis X. "Frank" Hummel, wants to distribute the money to families of soldiers whose deaths went unrecognized and without compensation, they only want it for themselves and deliberately provoke a massacre of a Navy SEAL team just because they like killing. When it becomes apparent Hummel is bluffing, they act swiftly to remove Hummel from command and eventually kill him while proceeding with the attack. Even when it becomes apparent that they've lost, Frye and Darrow try to launch send a rocket armed with poison gas at San Francisco to kill every civilian they possibly can.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Baxter and Hendrix have their fans for being sympathetic subordinates of Hummel played by prolific actors, and having relatively decent action scenes.
  • Peterson the pentagon nerve gas expert is fairly interesting.
  • SEAL Lieutenant Shepherd makes a decent impression in his interactions with the leads.
  • Stanley’s girlfriend Carla is decently acted and manages to make a little bit more out of the role than some action film protagonists girlfriends of the period.
• Fanon Welding:
  • There's a fairly popular theory that "John Mason" is simply the latest codename of a British agent whose real name is... Bond. James Bond.
    • Alternately, "James Bond" is a codename, and Mason was just one of the more notable people to adopt the mantle.
  • There's another theory which posits that this movie takes place within the same universe as Michael Bay's Armageddon (1998). In addition to Bay directing both, Stanley Anderson plays the U.S. President in both movies; yet his president is never named in either. The movies were released (and presumably set in) 1996 and 1998, respectively. The theory stipulates that Anderson is playing the same president in both films and therefore the films are set in the same universe.
• Harsher in Hindsight: As per the entry on the trivia page, someone who saw this film mistook fiction for reality, assumed that chemical weapons were accurately portrayed therein, and on that basis credited what turned out to be a fabricated report that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction, which prompted Great Britain's decision to enter the Iraq War on the side of the United States.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Early in the film, Todd Louiso's character mocks Goodspeed for spending an exorbitant sum of money on an LP when he could've bought the same album on CD for a fraction of the cost. Louiso later played Dick in High Fidelity, a vinyl purist who spends almost all of his spare time (and disposable income) collecting and listening to obscure records, and views CDs as a marketing scam.
  • In addition, Goodspeed is played by an actor with quite the reputation for lavish spending on special items.
  • In one scene, Womack argues with the President of the United States's Chief of Staff. John Spencer, who plays Womack, would later star on The West Wing as Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff of President Bartlet.
• Jerkass Woobie: General Hummel. His backstory wasn't particularly happy. One can even argue he's not even that big of a jerkass.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Captain John Patrick Mason is a former British special operative jailed for stealing and hiding an American microfilm. The only man to escape from Alcatraz, Mason is summoned when the rogue General Francis X. Hummel loads his VX gas missiles on the prison island. Easily outwitting the smug FBI Director offering a fake pardon, Mason nearly abandons San Francisco to Hummel's forces, only relenting when hero Stanley Goodspeed appeals to Mason's love for his own estranged daughter. Bonding with Goodspeed as they defeat the marines, their newfound friendship leads Goodspeed to lie about Mason's death to the FBI, allowing him to escape after telling Goodspeed the microfilm's location.
  • Brigadier General Francis X. "Frank" Hummel vows to force the American government to pay the uncompensated families of his fallen men, who died on covert missions. Stealing canisters of VX gas and threatening to fire upon San Francisco lest his demands be met, Hummel takes up his base of operations in Alcatraz prison. Strategically plotting against the minds of the Pentagon, Hummel utterly outplays but laments at seeing most of the invading Navy SEAL team massacred. Matching wits with heroes Mason and Goodspeed, Hummel only relents when he finds himself unable to murder innocent civilians and gracefully calls off his plan, trying to promise his men their safety as they withdraw and only getting killed due to two rogue, careless henchmen, giving the heroes the location of the final missile as he dies.
• Moral Event Horizon: When Frye and Darrow provoke a gunfight with the Navy SEALs in the shower room and wipe them all out in the process. And in case you thought they did it by accident (although they enjoyed it), there is the scene later on when they decide to carry on with the missile attack after Hummel decides to call it off (revealing that he was bluffing all along). As put by Darrow, they are mercenaries now, so if they want to get paid, they need to make sure the government sees that they weren't weak.
• Narm:
  • Darrow: "I WANT! MY FUCKING! MONEY!"
  • Goodspeed: "IT! WAS! CLASSIFIED!" As well as "What do you say we cut the chit-chat, A-HOLE?!"
  • The deadly poison is bright green and kept in glass balls the size of ping-pong balls. There's a reason for that related to their dispersal, but it's hard to take something so goddamn pretty that seriously.
  • In the Latin American translation of the film, when Hummel's war achievements are read by an aide, the "Congressional Medal of - Jesus!" part of the line is read by the voice actor without adding any pauses and in the exact same tone of voice throughout.
• Nightmare Fuel: One of Hummel's men falling victim to the VX gas during the raid. Seeing his genuine panic as his body begins to boil is pretty unnerving, as is the fact that his fellow Marines can do nothing for him, not even give him the mercy of a quick death. Later Goodspeed describes exactly what happened to the Marine (and what will happen to thousands of people if even one of the rockets is launched) in gruesome detail:
  Goodspeed: [holding a gas canister] Mason, the second you don't respect this, it kills you...
  Mason: How?
  Goodspeed: ...Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within thirty seconds. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation, you'll know, a twinge at the small of your back, as the poison seizes your nervous system... your muscles freeze, you can't breathe, you spasm so hard you break your own back and spit your guts out... but that's after your skin melts off.
  • Armed with this description, the audience can appreciate exactly what is happening at the climax when Capt. Frye is force-fed a gas pellet and his body instantly absorbs a dose of the chemical powerful enough to kill over a thousand people. Not that the bastard didn't deserve it though.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Gen. Pederson:
    General Kramer: What is the potential casualty rate of a single rocket armed with VX poison gas, General Pederson?
    Pederson: Sixty or seventy...
    Sinclair: Well, that-that's not so bad.
    Pederson: ...thousand. Seventy thousand dead.
    Sinclair: ...Oh.
    Pederson: One teaspoon of this hits the floor, it's lethal up to... a hundred feet. One teaspoon of this shit detonated in an atmosphere... will kill every living organism within an 8-block radius. Get the point?
  • The President, who gives one of the most sympathetic, yet commanding speeches of any movie president.
    "How does one weigh human life?"
  • The sassy hotel barber, when he runs into the fleeing Mason in the elevator.
    "Okay, I don't want to know nothing. I never saw you throw that gentleman off the balcony. All I care about is: are you happy with your haircut?"
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Jim Caviezel as "Rear F-18 Pilot".
  • John C. McGinley as Captain Hendrix.
  • Raymond Cruz was once a Marine sergeant who was skilled with motion sensors. He still knows when something isn't right.
  • The barber who cuts Mason's hair is played by Anthony Clark, who later headlined Yes, Dear.
• Rooting for the Empire: Hummel is very easy to root for. He only uses violent force when he absolutely has to, takes no joy in the methods he's been forced to use, is fighting for an unequivocally righteous cause (getting financial aid for the surviving families of subordinates who died under his command while on black ops missions the government has disavowed) and ultimately reveals he was never planning to launch the rockets anyway and even aids the heroes in disabling them in his dying moments. As a bonus, he's also played by the naturally commanding and charismatic Ed Harris. It really says something that the film resorts to his henchmen betraying and killing him to make sure you're rooting for the right side in the climax.
  • To put it even simpler: The US government was willing to kill innocent people in order to achieve their goals. Hummel was not. It make one wonder which one was really the bad guy after all.
• Signature Scene: The shootout at the shower room, as well as when Goodspeed uses green flares to cancel the bombing.
• Rule of Sean Connery: It's widely considered Bay's best movie, and his only "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes. Considering it stars the guy who names the trope...
• Spiritual Licensee:
  • Play Call of Duty: Black Ops and substitute "Hummel" every time someone talks to "Hudson." The character (voiced by Ed Harris), is so close to Vietnam-era Hummel that it might as well be a prequel. It even includes a plot to attack the United States with horrible, face-melting green gas and a character named Mason learning the truth about the JFK Assassination. It's worth noting that Black Ops was released right after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which included several blatant homages to this movie. ^note  The first part of the Gulag level, where Task Force 141 storms the Gulag by blowing open a wall in the shower room, is an almost exact recreation of the shower room shootout in Alcatraz, to break out a beanie-wearing crusty old SAS captain in Price who looks and acts much like Mason would; likewise, the climax of the Washington D.C. level, where Ramirez has to rush to the roof of the White House with flares to stop a squadron of fighter planes from bombing it, is a recreation of the climax of The Rock where Goodspeed does the same thing on the roof of Alcatraz.
  • And of course, it can also be seen as an unofficial James Bond installment, since (as mentioned on the main page) Mason is pretty consciously written as an Expy of Bond, right down to his actor. If you believe the popular theory that "James Bond" is a codename passed down by MI6 agents, it's easy to believe that Mason actually is Bond.
  • It's about disgruntled soldiers led by a Fallen Hero who hijack weapons of mass destruction to blackmail the US Government in the name of justice, and the rookie and the untrustworthy veteran who have to stop them after the SEAL team sent in to secure the facility is massacred ... with music by Harry Gregson Williams.
• Squick:
  • After Mason drops an entire AC unit on his head, one of the soldier's feet is still twitching as they disarm the first rocket. Lampshaded when Goodspeed is greatly unnerved by this.
  • Then there's Darrow getting impaled on a rusty fence pole after Goodspeed launches him with the last rocket; it's sure to catch some in the audience off guard.
  • One of Hummel's men and later, Captain Frye, succumbing to the effects of the VX gas when exposed to it. It's every bit as stomach-churning as it is horrific to watch.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: By not having Baxter, Crisp and McCoy join Goodspeed and Mason in an Enemy Mine against Darrow and Frye, or having a Mêlée à Trois.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The president and his advisors for never even considering giving into Hummel’s incredibly reasonable demands to simply do what they should have done in the first place. Though in total fairness, taking an island full of hostages and threatening to shoot nerve gas into San Francisco does naturally harden an audience against you.
• Woolseyism: The Spanish dub changed Goodspeed's famous line from "Zeus's butthole" to "the Minotaur's testicles", which became as memorable in Spain as the original did in United States.

---