"The Rock" Rocks!
The 30th Anniversary tribute to my favorite movie of all time
Everyone has a favorite movie. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Rocky, The Godfather and many other well known titles.
However, my favorite movie of all time is The Rock, directed by Michael Bay and starring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. The movie’s about a group of renegade Marines who take over Alcatraz Island and a special Navy Seal task force trying to stop them.
“Welcome to The Rock!”
In 1996, I was ending my freshman year of high school and my dad took me and the family out to see The Rock on opening night, Friday June 7.
I was expecting another summer blockbuster action movie that I was sure I was going to enjoy and forget later, but I wasn’t prepared for the absolute spectacle I was about to witness. I not only enjoyed The Rock, but I became utterly obsessed with it, dying to see it again.
Aside from the amazing chemistry between Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris playing a sympathetic villain, the thing that stuck out to me while watching The Rock was the music.
“Rock House Jail” by Hans Zimmer, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Harry Gregson-Williams.
The Rock score by Hans Zimmer, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Harry Gregson-Williams deserves to be put up there with anything composed by John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, etc. From the opening of the movie when the Marines break into the Weapons Depot, I wanted to hear that tune over and over and loved hearing it every time it came on the movie, playing at all the right parts.
My real obsession began in the summer of 1996 when I went to visit my aunt and uncle in the Philippines and The Rock premiered there around July, so I went to watch it again. It was censored, but mostly intact. The part when Nicolas Cage (Stanley Goodspeed) launches Tony Todd’s character (Captain Darrow) with a rocket and Tony Todd gets impaled was completely cut out of the Filipino theatrical showing.
I went to watch it another 2 times since movie tickets in the Philippines were incredibly cheap. I remember the day before I left the Philippines, I went to watch it again, but came in 1/3 through the movie and I didn’t mind since I had seen the movie 3 times before. I saw The Rock a total of 4 times in the theater.
When I got back to the United States in September 1996 and started my sophomore year of high school, my dad bought me the CD soundtrack which I listened to obsessively on my portable CD player. However, I didn’t realize so much of the music was cut out, probably because the soundtrack was based on an earlier cut of the movie different than what we got in the theater.
It was going to be a grueling wait since The Rock was slated to come out on VHS on December 1996. I literally had to survive 3 months of school and one report card before I could watch my favorite movie again on VHS. Unfortunately, my sophomore year of high school was every bit as and probably even worse than my freshman year of high school for a variety of reasons. I swear the clock in my biology class never moved. I was lucky to survive both physically and mentally through it since all I wanted to do was watch The Rock again.
December 1996 finally arrived and I was excited to go with my dad to finally purchase my copy of The Rock on VHS. Sadly, it wasn’t available to buy in stores and was rental only for the first few months.
Back in the day before DVDs came out, certain movies were held back for a home release by the studios so rental stores could make more money. Only certain family movies from Disney and others would actually come out on day 1. The summer action blockbusters, no matter how well they did in the box office would be rentals for the first few months before going on general sale. I did see a catalog for rental shops to purchase certain VHS movies and they would be in the high $80-$200+ range.
After my dad and I drove to several stores, we bit the bucket and just rented the movie from our local video rental. I hooked up my 2nd VHS so I could copy the tape as I finally watched my favorite movie again for the first time since September. However, the anti piracy measures on The Rock VHS would make my bootleg copy change the lighting from dark to light over and over, but I didn’t care. It was still fully watchable although the lighting would go from dark to light every 5 minutes or so.
Watching the movie on VHS re-ignited my obsession and I was surprised there was so much missing music from the soundtrack. I watched it over and over and over again until I eventually wore the VHS out. I also listened to the soundtrack and re-enacted my favorite scenes as I had the entire script memorized. Luckily in the spring of 1997, my dad was able to buy the legitimate VHS of The Rock from Price Club (Costco) for about $9.99 with the real cover and the movie didn’t change it’s brightness over and over again.
In 1997, I added Con-Air and Face/Off to The Rock as my “Nicolas Cage Trilogy”. I also developed obsessions with those movies too and saw Con-Air 3 times in theaters and Face/Off twice. These movies also had the same VHS issue where they were rental only and luckily my dad and I were able to rent them from our newly opened Hollywood Video on day one before they were easily snatched up.
The infamous “Shower Room” scene.
If I had to choose my absolute favorite scene from the movie, it would have to be the shower room scene where Michael Biehn (Commander Anderson) tries to reason with Ed Harris (General Hummel) which results in the entire Navy Seal team getting wiped out. Michael Biehn and Ed Harris basically reverse their roles from The Abyss and play this scene masterfully as you can even see the conflict in Ed Harris’ eyes.
The scene is epic and tragic, but it completely sets up the next half of the movie to give Sean Connery (John Mason) and Nicolas Cage (Stanley Goodspeed) their time to shine.
Back then, my biggest gripe of the movie was after the action packed beginning, the entire first half of the movie is mostly exposition to get various points of the plot explained. I actually feel that the San Francisco chase scene was mostly unnecessary for the plot to move along, but it does show how cunning Sean Connery (John Mason)’s character is.
Nowadays, I appreciate it more as it does fit into the Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer plot exposition trope from their past movies like Top Gun and Crimson Tide. The exposition filled first half helps set up the roller coaster action part of the 2nd half when the Navy Seals battle it out with the Marines on Alcatraz itself. Luckily there are moments in the 2nd half where the movie gives the audience time to breathe and balances the action.
Over time, I bought The Rock on DVD, Blu-Ray, and even the Criterion Collection DVD. Sadly, I had to sell them in my various moves over the years, but was able to purchase them all again just recently this year in 2026.
For the 30th anniversary of the movie, I’m watching the Blufans Blu-Ray on my PS5 Pro. However, I really wish Disney would put out a 4k Blu-Ray version that we truly deserve after 30 years and I will definitely get it day one. Face/Off got a 4k release and I hope Con-Air gets one too.
The Rock also solidified Nicolas Cage as my favorite actor with his crazy performances where he swings for the fences. While his character in Face/Off, Castor Troy (which was my old online screenname) is my favorite performance, his Stanley Goodspeed is also one of my favorites.
Nowadays, the entire complete score has been released through Intrada which I play often in my car and I still have the majority of the movie script memorized in my head. I even read a few drafts of the original script and saw how different it was from the final product. I didn’t realize that the script wasn’t even finished even on the first day of principal photography and most of the dialogue was improvised. I jokingly thought of re-enacting the entire movie with a green screen and silly costumes by myself where I play every character for my own entertainment. However, it would be a massive colossal effort and some scenes which I won’t mention would be incredibly awkward to do.
If I was a movie reviewer on YouTube, I would have loved to re-enact the shower room scene with some movie reviewer friends of mine. Sadly, I got rid of my green screen, so that will never come to pass.
I just repurchased a sealed VHS tape, the original 1997 DVD, the Criterion Collection DVD, the Intrada Complete Score, the original and Criterion Collection Laserdiscs (despite not having a laserdisc player) , and the original soundtrack to add to my 2 Blu-Rays for the 30th anniversary to have more physical media of my favorite movie again.
The movie’s incredibly cheap to rent or buy on Amazon Prime and I was lucky to get it for $4.99 which it drops down to often. The physical media is also very cheap if you want a copy to show on your shelf.
The Rock represents a time when the infamous Michael Bay was kept on a leash by film executives before he was given free reign to put explosions everywhere. I’m neutral towards Michael Bay, but I still have to give him credit for directing my favorite movie of all time.
Sadly, after The Rock, Con-Air, and Face/Off, I never got obsessed with any other films the way I was with my “Nicolas Cage Trilogy”. Those 3 movies from 1996-1997 were my trilogy. I’ve seen many great films since then starring all of the actors from The Rock, but nothing has ever come close to obsession for me since then.
Why do I like The Rock? There are way too many reasons to list aside from the excellent main cast, the different and original plot and villains, the action, the one liners and performances, and especially the music. All of these factors combined made it into an unforgettable experience for me that’s quite hard to explain and even matches or surpasses the feelings I had when I saw Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Rocky, etc.
The only time I went to Alcatraz Island was in 1991 in the 4th grade on a school field trip, so I did recognize alot of the locations in the movie. I’ve been meaning to go back since the movie came out and I even heard the movie plays over and over in the souvenir shop. I went to San Francisco with my family in college back in 2005 and I even put the entire soundtrack on my PSP to listen to. Sadly, Alcatraz tickets were all sold out for the entire duration me and my family were there. However, we did take a boat tour around the island and I listened to the soundtrack on my PSP while looking at the island. I was contemplating on taking a vacation to San Francisco this year to go on the movie’s 30th anniversary, but the cost would be too high.
I was really hoping theaters would do a 30th anniversary showing so I can watch the movie a 5th time in the theaters. There was a theatrical 30th anniversary showing in Santa Barbara, CA in January 2026 that I missed and would have driven the 2 and a half hours to attend. Sadly, I don’t think The Rock is up there in people’s minds the way Star Wars and other popular franchises are, but that’s ok. It’s always going to be #1 for me.
With that said, go watch The Rock because it simply…. rocks.
”Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and **** the prom queen.”