OnScreen Review: "Black Adam"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
A long-gestating property, Black Adam is a film that DC has wanted to make for at least fifteen years, if not longer. After the success of Shazam, it became only a matter of time before Black Adam found his way to the big screen. And with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson long interested in portraying the character, 2022 is the year it finally came together. Was it worth the wait? Unfortunately, no.
Every man has to have a code, apparently. Superman fights for truth, justice, and the American Way. Batman, famously, doesn’t kill. Teth-Adam (Johnson), as he is called throughout the movie, has his own brand of justice, not caring who lives or dies, just that justice is served. So Black Adam is… a superantihero?? Teth-Adam is released from captivity after nearly five thousand years by an archeologist, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) and her crew searching for the mystical Crown of Sabbac, an ancient artifact that belong to the king of Khandaq, and legend has it that Teth-Adam defeated the king and ended his tyranny. With the organized crime syndicate Intergang running modern day Khandaq, its people once again look for a hero to liberate them.
Adrianna and her son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) believe in Teth-Adam, but where they see hope, others like the Justice Society of America, consisting of Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centino), see a potentially unstoppable threat. This sets up something of a more diffuse Batman V Superman scenario, where the JSA is sent to subdue Teth-Adam by any means necessary, eventually fighting him throughout the city until they inevitably come to an uneasy alliance to battle a common foe.
There is a lot of formulaic superhero stuff going on throughout this movie; some of it works, a lot of it does not. The Rock certainly looks the part and is completely believable as someone in possession of superpowers. However, Black Adam, a name he does not adopt until the very end of the movie, sadly could use a bit more personality, which is odd because Dwayne Johnson is naturally charismatic. He does dark and brooding just fine, but the movie attempts to saddle him with a backstory and internal conflict that is just ill-fitting for him.
The movie certainly has no qualms about making Black Adam someone who kills. The film hews closer to the Suicide Squad in the DC realm of movies, but still manages to pull enough punches to capture a PG-13 rating for a wider audience appeal. The action, overall, is pretty good and it doesn’t shroud all of its action in murky nighttime rain, which is also a plus. There’s some decent banter between the JSA members and the film uses Pierce Brosnan to bring some acting gravitas and credibility to the movie.
But far too much of Black Adam is entirely predictable and far too easy to see where everything is going. There is a painfully obvious plot twist involving the flashbacks we see in Black Adam’s origin story of how he came to have his powers and be the champion of Khandaq. The inevitability of the JSA and Black Adam eventually having to put aside their differences and fight a common foe is also entirely paint by numbers. Speaking of the villain, Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari), is just as unremarkable a villain as his Jafar was in the live-action remake of Aladdin. Superhero movies need a convincingly good villain to pose opposite their protagonist, and it’s not enough to simply turn him into a CGI monster in the final act. Never skimp on your villain.
The film tries desperately to humanize Black Adam, both through his backstory in ancient Khandaq, but in his interactions in the present. This is mainly done through his relationship to Adrianna, but maybe most importantly through her son Amon. It all feels cribbed from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the relationship between Arnold’s Terminator and Edward Furlong’s teenage John Conner, right down to Amon attempting to craft a catchphrase for Black Adam. While there are fleeting glimpses of humor and levity from this dynamic, the Amon character feels forced and annoying. I’m not one to blame a child actor for a poor or unconvincing performance but putting phrases like “neo-imperialist enforcer” into the mouth of a young teen in the first scene his character is introduced is not putting him in a position to succeed.
Black Adam is a movie that has been a long time coming. Frankly, I was expecting more than the formulaic, paint by numbers production it puts forth. It has some moments that if you squint hard enough, you might be able to convince yourself that there is a future there, particularly in a larger DC story (there has to be an eventual crossover with Shazam), but this opening entry, which will most likely produce a direct sequel based on its box office performance, is not promising. Feels like a waste of Dwayne Johnson’s talent and not much substance beyond the glossy surface level features.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars