Black Adam review: Dwayne Johnson’s take on DC’s big antihero gets real crowded

One of Black Adam’s many unnecessary brawls between Dwayne Johnson’s eponymous antihero and the more conventional superheroes of the Justice Society of America takes place in the room of a superhero-obsessed kid. Jaume Colllet-Serra, director of DC Snyder’s film, is seen tearing apart posters dedicated Superman and Wonder Woman in the fight. The film doesn’t make a compelling case for why it should not be.

Black Adam This show is full of poorly-developed characters and concepts that could be better explored in other films or shows. Loosely combining plot elements from Black Adam’s arc in 52 And JSAThe film takes place mostly in Kahndaq (a generic Middle Eastern country), which is the home of the oldest human civilization. It uses the same fairy-tale framework as the intro. Black PantherA lengthy introduction at the start of the movie explains how Kahndaq was conquered almost 5,000 years ago. He had to enslave his people to make a magic crown which would grant him demonic power.

When a young champion had the courage to stand against the king, a group of wizards gifted him with mighty powers — the same abilities that would eventually be given to Billy Batson in Shazam. Teth-Adam was imbued by the power of the gods and destroyed the king’s palace. However, the crown along with him were sealed away. Since then, Kahndaq is a country that has been ruled over by Intergang.

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Intergang is a replacement for private military corporations like Blackwater and Wagner Group. Black Adam’s three-man writing team doesn’t have the courage to get political about such groups’ role in the world, even as they’re trying to write a superhero spin on the Arab Spring. Academic/tomb raider Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) leads a group with the brilliant plan of rooting the crown out of its 5,000-year hiding place in order to re-hide it elsewhere, all to keep it out of Intergang’s hands. The project proceeds as smoothly as protection efforts for McGuffins. Adrianna winds up releasing Teth-Adam, who starts off by frying Adrianna’s captors like a living Ark of the Covenant, then solemnly annihilates an entire Intergang squad to the tune of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.”

All the killing Adam does is meant to be some combination of funny, because he’s so casual about his overwhelming power, and triumphant: He’s liberating his homeland from a group of goons with bad teeth and future-tech powered by Eternium, an obscure mineral in DC lore that acts like Kryptonite for heroes who rely on magic. Here, it’s also basically the DC equivalent of Black Panther’s tech-enabling element vibranium, allowing Intergang to ride around on flying scooters that look like they were designed by the Green Goblin. For a while, the biggest problem Adam has is that he tends to kill people too quickly to properly deliver the heroic catchphrase Adrianna’s son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) insists he should have.

Task Force X Leader Amanda Waller, Viola Davis reprising her position from, said Adam is too unstable to leave alone. PeacemakerVarious Suicide Squads). To take Adam captive, she deploys the Justice Society of America. The JSA sternly insists that Adam isn’t a hero, because heroes don’t kill. However, when they do get into action they inflict collateral damage. World Police Association Team America. Refusing to negotiate with Adam or even try to understand his millennia-old perspective, they keep forcing new fights with him — until they inevitably all have to team up to fight the film’s thinly developed true villain, in a CGI-heavy sequence that shares all the problems of the conclusions of Wonder Woman, ShazamThese movies are just a few of many that have come before in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

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Watchmen And The Boys As a form of American military intervention, they provide sharper criticisms on the superheroes. It is not that difficult. Black Adam still argues that superheroes are a net good for the world, and that they deserve their power, even though it continually shows them abusing that power and ignoring the will of the people they claim they’re representing. The writers basically just land on the idea that countries’ right to self-determination means they’re each entitled to have their own representative godlike avatar. Johnson might have lost a battle occasionally, but the idea of heroes fighting oppression might have been more effective.

Black Adam never develops its JSA members enough to let audiences care about them, which is a problem, since much of the film’s emotional payoff revolves around the bond between their leader, Hawkman, aka Carter Hall (Aldis Hodge), and the powerful wizard Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan). While Brosnan brings his usual charm to the role of an aging hero looking to pass the torch to the next generation, there’s never any explanation of what his time serving in the JSA has meant to him or Carter. There’s also a big missed opportunity to create common ground between Adam and Hawkman, who is typically a reincarnating hero from ancient Egypt. The film doesn’t even mention his backstory.

We are instead treated to a lot of wasted time on the new JSA recruits Maxine Hunkel (Quintessa Swindell) and Al Rothstein (Noah Centineo). The majority of them seem to be there for youth interest and a minor romance plot. They also help to bring more color into the many battles that feel crinkled from. Civil War: Captain America. Although Cyclone’s colorful whirling is impressive, Al provides comic relief for an Ant-Man version who is only able to go large. There’s huge overlap in the power sets of characters between DC and Marvel, and the MCU has a massive edge in that it’s beaten DC to the punch in putting many of those characters on screen, which leaves DC’s versions feeling derivative. But Black Adam is also packed with slo-mo high-def sequences that feel cribbed straight from Zack Snyder’s 300, so Collet-Serra doesn’t seem overly concerned with visual originality.

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Waller’s presence and a quick cameo from her lieutenant Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) are a reminder of better, more subversive comic book stories like PeacemakerThis is the which provides a far deeper view on why heroes shouldn’t kill. The creators could have even stood to take some notes from Marvel’s irreverent and far more tightly written Venom movies. Through the film, the writers continue to add new information about Kahndaq or the evil crown. Black Adam’s third act, whereas Venom: Carnage! largely boils its exposition down to the titular alien symbiote freaking out when he first sees the villain Carnage, because he’s a Red Symbiote is all that the audience really needs.

One of the most important criticisms about Black Adam Johnson may have created the sequence after-credits. DC League of Super-Pets. As Black Adam’s canine companion Anubis, Johnson notes that being an antihero is “basically exactly like a regular hero, except way cooler. The rules you make are the ones that you will break. Also, you can ignore most moral and ethical conventions because no one can stop you.” Black Adam’s take on antiheroism never really contradicts that pointed takedown. The film is so focused on the idea of a black-clad mass murderer being cool that it doesn’t ever answer the questions it starts to raise about what code a hero should live by, or where the limits of redemption lie. This is a problem. Black Adam is just like the many other mediocre superhero movies it plays at subverting: It’s more focused on spectacle than on critiquing the genre, or developing any of the deeper themes it feints at exploring.

Black AdamThis film is currently in cinemas.