DC fans were in an uproar (shocker) when it was announced that Marvel alum James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) would become co-chair of DC studios with his first order of business to hit the reset button. In other words, no Man of Steel 2 (and no Henry Cavill as Superman), no Wonder Woman 3, and to no one’s surprise, no Black Adam 2. Because in the year of our lord, being an edgy anti-hero is not enough to hold a movie together anymore. Maybe at one point, it was, but when Venom, Morbius, Joker, Batman, and Deadpool all have their own projects, it is no longer the special selling point DC thinks it is.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is the titular star and producer of the film, and so if you follow him on social media, you will see numerous posts about his workouts, his tequila, and the unequivocal success of Black Adam critically and financially. “We did great,” he proudly says in a long post about how Black Adam will not be in the first chapter of storytelling in James Gunn’s vision of the DCEU’s future…but he could still be utilized in multiverse chapters. This is a nice way of saying that Black Adam stinks.
Apparently, it took 15 years of the Rock’s career to create this lifeless cartoon, which is just 2 hours of generic tough-guy dialogue in between flashbacks, horrendous exposition and fights where CGI figures fly around aimlessly, punching and throwing each other like ragdolls. It took that much time for The Rock to gain enough clout to headline his own superhero movie, but in that time, the genre has been beaten into the ground like a military soldier in this one.
If you’re not familiar with Black Adam as a character, I don’t blame you; he has about as much charisma as a Rock (pun intended). This movie will handhold you through his origin story with terrible green screen that is clearly trying to evoke Zack Snyder’s 300—there’s even a scene where a guy gets pushed off of a cliff in slow motion. 5,000 years ago, in the fictional city of Kahndaq (clearly a call to Iraq), a young boy led a revolt against an oppressive king after he gets the power of Shazam and became Teth Adam.
The king was after a crystal called—wait for it—Eternium, the laziest name for a mineral since Avatar brought us Unobtanium, to build a magic crown. Once archeologist Adrianna unearths the crown in present-day Kahndaq, occupied by Intergang troops (I promise I’m not making these names up), she also unearths Black Adam from his tomb to help liberate her and her people. Her son is also there to skateboard around and tell us how cool Teth Adam is—they never actually refer to him as Black Adam.
All of the human characters are there to spout exposition while Black Adam kills everyone in sight in bloodless PG-13 fashion. Viola Davis sleepwalks over Zoom to recruit a team of characters that is just as incompetent as the first Suicide Squad: Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) is like Doctor Strange with his magic powers; Atom Smasher is like Ant-Man with his ability to become a giant, Cyclone like Storm in her ability to manipulate wind, and Hawk Man is, well, a hawk man. I make comparisons to Marvel characters because they have no personality in the movie for me to talk about.
The first half of the movie is spent on them trying and failing to stop Black Adam from killing people, and it isn’t until an hour into the movie that we meet our villain, and any stakes are established. The villain is a horribly rendered red devil fully equipped with horns and a five-pointed star engraved in his chest. Oh, and if the video game-looking villain wasn’t ugly enough, there’s an army of undead skeletons that can be defeated with a single punch and a sky beam. The movie wants to have an anti-imperialist message, but the people that are liberated are never around until the end. of the movie because if they were, they’d be killed by all of the damage the “heroes” do to their city.
The Rock’s performance is stiff, and his character encounters the same problem that most DC characters have in that he’s a God who can never be harmed aside from a few scratches, so there is no tension or emotion that comes from any of the fight scenes. His personality consists of giving stern looks and delivering cheesy dialogue while hovering around and smashing through walls. Jaume Collet-Serra directs the movie and is known for working with Liam Neeson for the past decade before making the surprisingly fun Jungle Cruise with The Rock and Emily Blunt. With Black Adam, he directs the world’s safest movie star in the safest genre there is, and the results will put you to sleep when you aren’t laughing at how cool the movie thinks it is.
I can’t in good conscience recommend this because there are dozens of examples of better projects that Black Adam aspires to. If you want a superhuman and kid movie, watch Terminator 2; or Dwayne Johnson in Egypt, watch The Scorpion King. If you want a fun DC team-up movie, watch The Suicide Squad, or one that questions the morality of its lead character, watch The Dark Knight. As for Black Adam? Put it back in the tomb.
Final Rating:
