Why Hulk Hogan’s movie career failed

With WrestleMania 39 set to kick off on April 1, and Polygon contributor Abraham Josephine Riesman’s new book Vince McMahon is the Ringmaster of America and Unmaking of America set to enter the ring on March 28, we’re spending the week grappling with pro wrestling — and everything it’s shaped.

Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea is one of the most recognizable cultural figures of all time, and not just due to fame accrued as the figurehead of the World Wrestling Federation in the second half of the 1980s. His iconic physical features during that heyday — the golden blond hair and mustache, the hot dog tan, the ketchup-and-mustard color scheme on his easily-tearable shirts, the biceps and chest that made him a hazard to doorways across America — established his place in history as more mascot than man.

It was time for Hogan’s fame to be monetized in movies that would bring him outside the box and place him before Hollywood cameras. Could Hogan, the pro wrestling star known for riling up the crowd and then dropping a meaty thigh on a downed opponent’s throat, translate his popularity to film? Soon, the answer was a clear no. Hogan was not meant to walk on the red-carpet, and his attempts at being there have shown the limitations of transcribing a certain character into another medium.

In a way, it was his first shot in the movies that proved to be the best exercise of his potential, one that took place a few years prior to him becoming professional wrestling’s most recognizable figurehead. In 1982, Hogan was working for the American Wrestling Association, first as a heel and then as a beloved face, a representative of pro wrestling’s evolution as grand spectacles of heroes and villains usurped any claims of the medium being a true athletic competition. Hogan made his first appearance in the American Wrestling Association. Rocky III, itself a movie about glorious pageantry replacing formerly hard-fought drama, as “Thunderlips,” a pro wrestler that faces the titular boxer in an exhibition match. It would be the biggest film that Hogan would ever star in, and perhaps it helped that it could cash in on some of Hogan’s best traits while not being forced to contend with him as a superstar.

In the film, Hogan is an obvious outlier to the regular human form — he dwarfs a positively ripped Sylvester Stallone and chucks him around the ring with aplomb. For the most part, Hogan’s given standard pro wrestling dialogue and insults, grunting with bared teeth and eventually getting tossed out of the ring himself by Stallone. But he’s never lacking in presence, a kind of charisma that means you’re flexing for the back row, even on a movie screen. Hogan can be made to laugh if you’re able get over his stilted delivery.

Pro wrestling and Hollywood aren’t exactly strangers. Mr. T plays Stallone’s archrival. Rocky IIIHe then teamed up with Hogan for the main event at Wrestlemania 1. And cinemas aren’t bereft of “sports entertainers” nowadays either — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena, and Dave Bautista, just to name a few, have all made successful leaps to movie careers. But they’ve all required a bit of finessing, a balancing act that means capitalizing on the inherent physicality and visceral appeal that a wrestler provides with the finer points of narrative and character work. Johnson’s best is what you can get. Fast FiveOr Cena in Peacemaker or Bautista’s understated performance in Get in touch with the Cabin.

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At their worst, you get someone like Hogan, who wasn’t able to convert his specific brand of charisma from a ring to the screen. Hogan displayed mastery in the ring. He was a big and powerful action star in real-life because of his broad movements. And though history would reveal his set of moves to be fairly limited, his expressions — all huge gestures of happiness, betrayal, and (usually) triumph — made him a pleasure to watch, even when it played like camp. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole and making it a movie character. Filmmakers would do this over and over.

His first leading role was in 1989’s There are no holds barred, a movie produced by the WWF that starred Hogan as a pro wrestler named Rip Thomas, with every facet of his persona based on Hulk’s. Even though it seems like it would play to Hogan’s strengths in the most obvious fashion, the film struggles in every direction. Hogan doesn’t feel any emotions that test him and it is difficult for him to convey anything but brutishness. Similar disorientation can be seen in the jokes. They are usually juvenile gags meant to delight children on the front row.

It doesn’t help that the plot plays out like a couple of wrestling scenarios strung together: A mean guy named Zeus wants to violently fight Hogan, a man who is dedicated to being a good example to children. Zeus beats up Hogan’s little brother and now Hogan wants revenge. Hogan wins the revenge at an important event. It’s all simple stuff that would satisfyingly culminate in a pay-per-view match at Madison Square Garden, but in a movie just stretches an audience’s patience thin.

Zeus (played by actor “Tiny” Lister) would go on to wrestle in a few WWF matches, with the film’s promotion evolving into a kind of side career for the big man. Hogan, on the other hand, would see Hollywood work throughout the early ’90s, starring in films and TV series like Suburban Commando, Nanny, Thunder in Paradise, Secret Agent ClubAnd Santa Claus with Muscles. Half of them are built around a single joke — Hulk Hogan is huge, so what if he did (insert gentle domestic activity here)? Hulk Hogan plays the stock role of an adventurer, while Hogan fulfills any brawny stereotypes required by the film. They all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger cars (Suburban CommandoActually, it was), and Schwarzenegger possessed an aspirational charm Hogan didn’t have.

With Hogan’s only standout performance being when he played himself in a brief, loud cameo in Gremlins 2 – The New BatchHis push for a Hollywood star was doomed. It was a fall that coincided with Hogan’s own in the pro wrestling world, as WWF event numbers that had seen blazing heat in the late ’80s had cooled down by the mid-’90s. It wouldn’t be until Hogan reinvented himself as the villainous “Hollywood” Hogan in 1996 in World Championship Wrestling that he’d return to the spotlight and a similar level of cultural renown.

Hogan wasn’t a bad actor the way we usually define it. Poor acting is often a loss of potential, one that takes away any role’s potential and then tears it apart before our eyes. It’s stilted and bland and monotone. Hogan’s ability to interpret the plot of a WWF promo, or even a large match, was, however, completely ruined in this 90-minute film. In a match, the pained expression of being on the receiving end of a body slam, or the climactic wave of the finger in an opponent’s face to let them know that Hogan and the 20,000 screaming Hulkamaniacs in the stadium won’t put up with the heel’s bullshit anymore, make sense. It’s Hogan in his purest form.

But Hogan doesn’t work if Hulk Hogan isn’t Hulk Hogan, even if, as we saw in There are no holds barred, he’s meant to pretty much be Hulk Hogan. It’s more than a fish out of water — it’s speaking different languages of performance. It is In Suburban Commando, there’s a scene where Hulk’s character (an intergalactic warrior that crash-lands on Earth and befriends a family) becomes confused by the actions of a mime. Hogan becomes worried as the mime pretends to have been locked in an invisible box and punches him to the ground to try to free him.

It’s a pretty succinct metaphor for Hogan’s entire acting career. Far away from his home in the middle of a ring, he tried to grapple with a kind of performance that’s totally alien to him. There, he applied his talents in the only way he really knew how — in outsized, ill-fitting physicality and mannerisms. For better or for worse, Hulk Hogan is best when he’s being Hulk Hogan.