As someone that has covered Ronda Rousey’s ascent in the sport of mixed martial arts from Jump Street, I can confirm that she’s every bit the genuine bad ass she appears in the Octagon when she’s dumping opponents on their heads in 30-seconds or less.
As someone that has seen each of the three movies that Rousey has been in to date – The Expendables 3, Fast & Furious 7 and Entourage – I can also confirm that she’s still in the developmental stages of being an actress. Even in playing a pumped up version of herself as Turtle’s love interest, the UFC women’s bantamweight champ was kind of wooden.
Last week, it was announced that the Olympic bronze medalist who was recently voted the Best Female Athlete of All-Time by espnW voters (take that for what you will) is going to take on the Patrick Swayze role in a remake of the beloved 1989 masterpiece Road House.
C’mon Hollywood! Is nothing sacred?
Road House is one of those late ‘80s pieces of perfection that should be left alone, especially given that it’s star is gone from this Earth. That should be the rule. If the original star has died, you can’t remake the movie because they won’t be around to offer their thoughts on the flick – good, bad or otherwise.
We’ve already got a trash remake of another Swayze classic, Point Break, hitting theatres in the coming weeks and now the lazy studio execs with zero remaining imagination are going to what – have Rousey play Dalton’s daughter going back to The Double Deuce to once again clean things up again?
I’m all for watching Rousey toss people on their heads like she’s did Alexis Davis at UFC 175 or crashing home right hands that ice fools like the one that slept Bethe Correia six weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro, but is it really that hard to figure out a mediocre premise where you can make all this happen without grabbing an established film off the shelf and just shoe-horning her into the lead role?
There is just so much perfection in the original Road House that knowing someone is going to produce a new version of the film is hard to take. Are they going to give Rousey a Dalton-esque mullet? Will she work a heavy bag while rocking sweatpants? Is she going to rip someone’s throat out with her bare hands? And who’s going to play the Sam Elliott role? Sam’s still around, but if he’s going to reprise his role as Dalton’s mentor Wade Garrett, he’s going to be even stiffer and less useful than he thought he was when Dalton called him to come lend a hand a the Deuce back in the day. Will there be monster trucks? An awesome soundtrack with Rousey delivering a pair of songs like Swayze did on the original?
Those are the things that made the initial flick special – that and Swayze’s kick-ass stone-washed, tapered jeans – and an updated version just feels like it is going to sully the good name of the amazing original, even if Rousey gets to dump people their heads over and over again.
