Movie Review: Black Adam

World class salesman Dwayne Johnson has trotted out one hell of a pitch to the world on the virtues of his long gestating superhero vehicle Black Adam. Every interview, social media post and talk show appearance has featured some variation of one or both these statements. 1: THE HIERARCHY OF THE DC UNIVERSE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE!!!! 2: THE FUTURE OF THE DC UNIVERSE IS NOW!!!! If Black Adam is really the beginning of a new era for the DCEU, then that shit will be in a heap of trouble that they haven't seen since they released Josstice League.

Another point Johnson has hammered home through his various media outreach channels is that Black Adam is a passion project that he's been developing for 15 years to make sure they got it right. At no point during Black Adam did it feel like I was consuming a carefully curated labor of love. In fact, it was the exact opposite. I don't think there has been a single superhero movie in recent memory that has felt more like the product of endless corporate boardroom meetings than this. Since they put zero time or effort to creating something with its own spirit or even just a shred of reverence for its characters, Black Adam just sprints through cliches at warp speed like it's a fucking Olympic sport to try and cover up its complete lack of personality or meaningful worldbuilding.  

Conflict that's rendered basically non-existent through a combination of an indestructible protagonist and villains that aren't really all that bad or imposing in the first place? Check. Constant, interchangeable action sequences that feature CGI creations smashing into each other in the air at high speeds? Yep. Every single bit of the minimal character development that's present here getting jammed into a few flashbacks and/or the occasional expositional monologue? You sure are changing superhero movies forever with these revolutionary ideas Dwayne!!!!

What makes the mind-numbingly monotonous execution of this film kind of comical is that the character of Black Adam is being sold as this morally ambiguous antihero that poses a significant threat to life on Earth. What passes off as the main plotline involves a superhero police force known as the Justice Society (Aldis Hodge's Hawkman, Pierce Brosnan's Doctor Fate, Noah Centineo's Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell's Cyclone-whose main purpose is to yell at and get their asses kicked by Black Adam) being tasked by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to arrest Black Adam after he's unknowingly freed from a prison by a teacher (Sarah Shahi) who is seeking an ancient artifact  

Despite being constantly billed as the most dangerous being on Earth and all of the sanctimonious speeches about peace he's given by the Justice Society head Hawkman, Black Adam never feels like even a remotely conflicted or evil character. Sure, he has no problem killing people, but everybody he kills is either trying to kill or enslave others or is on the payroll of said evil people. That's hardly the definition of an anti-hero. Nobody goes around saying that John Wick or James Bond are anti-heroes on account of their willingness to commit murder. Maybe this heroic portrayal of Black Adam is simply an example of the thinktank that Johnson hired to write this movie removing the shades of gray from the character that exist on the pages of the comic, but based on what is present in this film, painting him as this rebellious, uncontrollable force when he's essentially just a cousin of Superman who kills anybody who threatens him or the people he cares about with violent force is really silly.

As stunningly mediocre as Black Adam, there are a few things that are able to cut through its blah-inducing nature and provide a little bit of a spark to an otherwise middling affair. Most of the VFX and sound design are quite good, cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Joker, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) lenses/lights the film in a darkly striking fashion that is reminiscent of 300 and Brosnan brings a sense of wisdom and grace to the prophetic Doctor Fate that make his character significantly more compelling than the rest of the squares that occupy this world. Long after I've forgotten what has occurred in Black Adam-which won't be any later than next week, I'll remember how these brave souls dared to do their jobs pretty well in the face of overwhelming complacency.

Wherever the DCU ends up heading from here under the very questionable leadership of David Zaslav and whoever he tasks to run DC Films now that Walter Hermada has officially resigned, I'll be hoping that Black Adam isn't being used as a blueprint. This film is nothing more than a plain vanity project from a star who continues to suffocate his own abundant charisma by taking on bland roles in average movies and treating Johnson's influence in Hollywood and commitment to this character as some form of guiding light to shape the future of this massive IP supplier would be another brutal setback for the studio. DC's recent approach of just letting individuals make the superhero movie they want to make without having to worry about its place in a shared universe has yielded mostly positive results for them (particularly in the cases of The Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey and Aquaman) and tabling that approach for a string of sterile, cross-pollinated movies would be the kiss of death for a brand that has finally started to get its shit together over the past 4 years.  

Grade: C