Hang Tough!

Three months after saving Chicago from mutant monsters in Rampage, Dwayne Johnson is back in action with Skyscraper, this time rescuing his family trapped in a burning megastructure in Hongkong (Vancouver, actually). But this is not your typical Dwayne Johnson action flick.

- Douglas Tseng

As far back as he can remember, Rawson Marshall Thurber always wanted to make an action movie. In fact, he’s been jonesing for make-believe mayhem since he was eight. But the filmmaker, who cut his teeth with comedies such as 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and 2013’s We’re The Millers, had to wait for more than three decades before he could pay homage to the ’80s and ’90s action thrillers he was raised on. And one of those defining works from his childhood was 1988’s Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis as an off-duty cop battling terrorists in a skyscraper on Christmas Eve.

So, instead of waiting for an action movie script to land on his desk, Thurber — who was reportedly considered to direct Ant-Man after Edgar Wright bailed on the project — went off to pen one himself, his own Die Hard that’d eventually became Skyscraper. But he’ll be the first to admit that his movie isn’t as good as Die Hard. “But only because nothing ever is!” said Thurber, now 43, in a Total Film interview.