Dwayne Johnson’s long-awaited turn as fan-favourite Teth-Adam (AKA Black Adam), a former slave turned super-anti-hero, hits most of the right notes for a comic book origin story, a film that comes across as a familiar but comfortable melody, one that you have heard many times before – enjoyable, but not revolutionary.
Awakened by a team of archeologists looking for a magical MacGuffin known as the ‘Crown of Sabbac’, Teth-Adam finds himself in a 21st-century version of his homeland Kahndaq, a fictionalised Middle Eastern country where, 4,000 years ago, the titular character brought an end to the rule of the tyrannical king Ahk-ton, but only at a cost. Finding his home now under the oppressive rule of the criminal organisation Intergang, Teth-Adam is caught between the unfamiliar moral demands of contemporary society and his superpowered inclination toward violence as the first response to injustices perpetrated by dictators. Watching these events, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, seen previously in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker) tasks members of the Justice Society of America – Doctor Fate, Hawkman, Atom Smasher and Cyclone – to capture and contain Black Adam, fearing a repeat of the devastating power that leveled Kahndaq centuries before.
Black Adam does a lot right – its big action set-piece moments, the breakneck speed at which it gets you to connect and empathise with key characters, its interconnectedness with the larger cinematic world that DC and Warner Bros. have tried to foster. It also gets a lot wrong. Looking back through that list above, some of the CGI-driven spectacle feels (perhaps unsurprisingly) weightless, some characters work well – Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) – whilst others feel secondary and underdeveloped, and its fan-baiting cameo(s) from previous DC films risks drawing attention away from its core narrative.
Casting its shadow across proceedings too is the overall uncertainty that continues to plague the DC Extended Universe (or DCEU) as Warner Discovery desperately tries to compete with the cultural powerhouse that is Marvel. Outside of this film, such troubles are most readly seen in the various scandals surrounding stars and key crew members such as Amber Heard, Joss Whedon and Ezra Miller (how the hell are they going to release The Flash?), as well as the legacy of the ‘Snyder-cut’ campaign and the more toxic element of its fanbase. The exact details of the so-called ‘Snyderverse’ (a supposed masterplan for a DC cinematic universe c.2016) will probably never be pinned down, but, for better or worse, it’s hard not to recognise Snyder’s fingerprints all over Black Adam. From the slow-motion splash-panel moments that recall Man of Steel, Justice League or Watchmen, to its focus on DC’s supernatural characters and dimension-traversing stories (as opposed to the down-to-earth noir storytelling of The Batman – a film which appears to exist outside of the DCEU continuity, for now…), Black Adam wears its long-gestating development through the rise and fall of Snyder’s tenure on its sleeves, echoing a variety of often conflicting elements from tonally disparate DC films from the early 2000s onward. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Commuter, The Shallows, Jungle Cruise) provides a serviceable but mostly unremarkable approach to proceedings, a competent craftsman with a varied filmography behind him, but one that reveals no noticeable flair or individuality beyond handing in the cookie-cutter house style of DC, seen elsewhere in Wonder Woman 1984 or the first Suicide Squad.
Despite that – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – the casting of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as the titular character is pitch-perfect. His solemn but authoritative persona, trading measured diplomacy for brute force, makes Johnson’s Black Adam a palpable on-screen presence, one whom we don’t know whether to respect, admire or fear. The Rock’s much repeated (and now frequently meme’d) promotional claim that Black Adam would signal a change in ‘the hierarchy of power in the DC universe’ does actually feel earned here when considering the titular character himself; each punch feels earth-shattering, his speed extraordinary, and his executions of Intergang militia both ruthless and excruciatingly blunt to a degree only surpassed under the DC banner by the bloodbath that was James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
Unlike Gunn’s film, however, the core narrative trajectory and stock third-act showdown betray a certain sense of the film and its writers playing it safe, unwilling to venture beyond the expectations of your typical Superhero Movie: Origins template. At times the film does hint toward a potent geo-political commentary regarding the pillaging and oppression of middle-eastern populations and culture by Western might, with numerous characters commenting upon the JSA’s historical absence in Kahndaq despite its unlawful occupation prior to the very instant it actually threatens American resources and safety. But such strands are only ever gestured toward rather than truly explored.
If the obligatory mid-credits scene is any indication, this isn’t the last we have seen of Johnson’s Black Adam. Having established the character and set up the basic premise of a potential sequel, a follow-up, in my opinion would have to move beyond the ‘safety-first’ approach to script-writing here. It could be done, as long Black Adam’s box office allows it.
Notes from the Multiplex 