Black Adam (2022)

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi, and Viola Davis with cameos from Henry Cavill, Djimon Hounsou, and Henry Winkler
Grade: C-

You could honestly argue that the best part of Black Adam was the post-credits scene, a scene that doesn’t even matter anymore because Henry Cavill was fired again, and Johnson was told to take a hike.

Damn you, James Gunn!

Summary

Before Rome, Babylon, and the Pyramids, there was Kahndaq. In 2600 BC, there lived this ancient civilization that were the first self-governing group of people on Earth. They were doing great until the tyrannical reign of King Ahk-Ton. The man was obsessed with dark magic (never a good sign) and wanted to forge the mythical Crown of Sabbac. If it’s infused with the powers of the six demons of the ancient world, it would make Ahk-Ton invincible. To make it, he needed Eternium, a rare mineral of magic properties found only in Kahndaq. To find it, he enslaved his own people and had them work tirelessly to retrieve it. One day, an old man finds a small rock of Eternium and is almost attacked by the other slaves. Thankfully, a young boy slave convinces them to stop by reminding them of the real enemy. He helps the old man to one of the guards, and they give the guard the Eternium, so the old man can claim his promised reward. Instead, the guard thanks the old man, stabs him, and tosses him off a cliff. He threatens the young boy, but the boy’s father calms the situation down. The young boy yearns for freedom though and instead of letting someone else be the hero like his father says, he runs over, steals the Eternium from the guard and goes to the top of the mountain to show the people. Then, he does this diamond hand signal, uniting the people.

Fearing a revolution, the boy is captured by King Ahk-Ton, and he moves to execute the boy. Right before he was to be killed in front of everyone, he vanished into thin air and appeared before the Council of Wizards, the magical guardians of Earth. They gave the boy the superpowers of the ancient gods, and he became the champion of Kahndaq, who we later find out to be Teth-Adam (Johnson). On the same day the Crown of Sabbac was completed, Teth-Adam came to challenge King Ahk-Ton for the throne. Even though King Ahk-Ton summoned the demonic power of the crown to combat him, he still lost. The crown was then hidden, so it would never fall again into the wrong hands. Additionally, Teth-Adam was never heard from again.

It is said that when Kahndaq needs him most however, the champion would return.

In the present day, they may need him again because Kahndaq is currently being occupied by the Intergang, an international mercenary group.

At an Intergang checkpoint, Karim (Mohammed Amer), Samir (James Cusati-Moyer), and Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari) are stopped in their vehicle by a mercenary who questions and searches them. A skateboarding young boy named Amon Tomaz (Bodhi Sabongui) tries to skate by the checkpoint, but he’s stopped by the same mercenary. After the boy argues with the man, Karim distracts him with a question, and the boy escapes. With all this frustration, the mercenary let’s Karim’s car go. On the mercenary’s phone, we see he’s looking for Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi), a resistance fighter and former professor. As the group drives away, it turns out Adrianna was hiding in the back of the car. She talks about how they have to find and move the Crown of Sabbac because according to her, the mercenaries are very close to finding it which could spell doom for the people of Kahndaq. Just then, Amon skates by and wishes to join his mother Adrianna on their mission, but she insists it’s too dangerous. During the drive that night, Samir suspiciously questions where Adrianna got her unrefined Eternium necklace, and she tells him she got it from her grandmother, as it’s been passed down for generations. He still tells her she could get a lot of money on the black market for it.

The next day, they find the mountain that possesses the crown. Karim, who is also Adrianna’s brother, stays with the car. Adrianna goes inside of the mountain to find the crown, along with Samir and Ishmael. Shortly after getting inside, they lose Ishmael, so Samir goes after him. Next, we see Samir being shot out of the mountain, landing on the ground outside next to Karim and his car. Karim goes to check on him, but mercenaries show up and shoot and kill Samir. Back inside, Ishmael rejoins Adrianna as she reads ancient inscriptions confirming the existence of Teth-Adam and how he was buried here. Next, they see the Crown of Sabbac floating in the middle of the room. Adrianna retrieves it, but the mercenaries show up with Karim as a hostage, and they start shooting at her. They threaten to kill Karim, so she gives up. When they ask her to say any last words though, she uses this opportunity to summon Teth-Adam. He destroys every bad guy there and amidst his destruction, the mountain starts to fall apart. Some of the rocks crash down onto Ishmael, as Adrianna and Karim barely escape to the car with the crown. As more mercenaries come, Teth-Adam continues his destruction outside, and he wipes the floor with them (in the cool “Paint it Black” sequence). Eventually, he catches up to the car driven by Karim and Adrianna, and they stop in their tracks. Karim notes some mercenary behind Teth-Adam about to fire his rocket launcher, but Teth-Adam catches the rocket mid-air. As he examines it, we see the word “Eternium” emblazoned on it, and it explodes. Finally, we some damage done to the seemingly invincible Teth-Adam. He incinerates the guy that shot it at him, but we see the damage done to his ribs. He tries to fly away, but he crashes soon after. Seeing this, Adrianna and Karim take him in.

Flying through the sky are more members of the Intergang, and they ask the bad guys the status of the crown. A pissed off and still alive Ishmael, who was actually with the bad guy mercenary team, shoots and kills one of his own guys and tells the team calling in he knows who has the crown. Elsewhere, Hawkman (Hodge) talks with Amanda Waller (Davis) about the recent events regarding the dangerous Teth-Adam and how they need to stop him as soon as possible. Hawkman brings together the Justice Society to take him out. It consists of Doctor Fate (Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell). Cyclone is a genius with wind manipulation powers, Atom Smasher is the nephew to the original hero (Winkler) and can grow to a ridiculous height, and Fate has mastered powers of sorcery obtained from his sentient golden helmet known as the “Helmet of Fate”. Upon getting to Hawkman’s Estate in St. Roch, Louisiana, Fate touches his mask and gets visions of this mission being an absolute disaster. Even so, he joins the rest of the team, and they all fly off to Kahndaq.

At Adrianna’s apartment in Kahndaq, Teth-Adam awakens from a bad dream and shoots lighting from his hands, destroying a Superman poster in Amon’s room. The excited Amon, who’s already in the room, hurls a million questions at him, though he’s not in the mood. Plus, he’s just coming to terms with the fact he’s back after 5,000 years of being away. Adrianna gets home, and she tries to convince Teth-Adam to stay and help Kahndaq. Sadly, he’s not interested and leaves, with Amon going right after him to tell him about the potential for celebrity status if he rebrands a bit, changes his name, and gets a catchphrase and all that. Teth-Adam is still uninterested and flies away. The whole city watches. On Hawkman’s ship, the Justice Society discusses a plan. They realize he’s too powerful to fight, so they’re hoping they can “peacefully negotiate the terms of his existence”. All they need is for him to utter the words “Shazam”, and he’ll lose his powers. As Teth-Adam stares at his statue and gets flashbacks to his past, Amon tries to force Teth-Adam to be Kahndaq’s superhero by getting into trouble. He steals a walkie-talkie from one of the mercenaries and calls attention to a new superhero for Kahndaq. When he’s eventually caught, he holds up the diamond hand signal. Adrianna tries to stop the bad guys from attacking her son, but they recognize her as the woman who has the crown. Just moments before disaster, Teth-Adam shows up and destroys the bad guys. He even tries a catchphrase on for size, with Amon telling him when a better time to say it would be. Next, Teth-Adam carries two bad guys in the air and drops them as the Justice Society fly over in Hawkman’s plane.

Hawkman and Dr. Fate go together to approach Teth-Adam first, with Cyclone and Atom Smasher waiting for their signal to join. After Hawkman saves the two guys who were free falling, the citizens of Kahndaq “boo” him. Teth-Adam kills them immediately after, and the crowd cheers. Then, he gets into a massive fight with Hawkman and Fate after refusing to go quietly, and Cyclone and Atom Smasher join the fight once Fate calls for their help. It looks like they win for a moment but ultimately, Teth-Adam lays out Atom Smasher with a haymaker and escapes. Once they regroup, Dr. Fate approaches Adrianna for the crown, but she doesn’t have it. Hawkman talks about how imperative it is that they stop Teth-Adam over the crown anyway, but she berates them for doing nothing to help Kahndaq beforehand and have only showed up now that they have a hero to call their own. However, Hawkman explains that Teth-Adam is not the hero they think he is. In fact, his rage is the reason for Kahndaq almost falling apart many years ago. Years ago, he wanted vengeance, and he destroyed the kingdom. At the same time, his powers grew and became uncontrollable. This resulted in the Council of Wizards deeming him unworthy and locking him in a stone prison, not a tomb like Adrianna initially thought.

After telling Teth-Adam how she knows the truth, she still gives him a chance. She says he can redeem himself by being a hero now, so Teth-Adam decides to hear out the Justice Society and their plea. At the same time, the villain in Ishmael emerges.

My Thoughts:

It was only a matter of time before The Rock played a superhero.

Look, I get that Black Adam is a powerful being, and I get that Dwayne Johnson is a great choice to take the role and the character’s importance within the DC Universe to the stratosphere. With this being said, I can’t help but think that his characterization would be completely different if someone else had been cast. Yes, Johnson may have “fought” for years to get Black Adam made, but I have a feeling that what helped stall things was Johnson’s insistence on making his character not only look unbeatable but show ZERO weaknesses whatsoever. Because of how much pull Johnson currently has, it has become very clear he’s been pushing for Black Adam to be one of the main characters of the new rebrand of the DCEU when in reality, he’s not even a “Top 10” most important character.

This would be like if Hawkeye had the audacity to say, “The hierarchy of power in the Marvel Universe is about to change”.

Comic book fans can flip out all they want but look at the facts. Black Adam may be written as an all-powerful character, but there has to be some sort of vulnerability to him to make things interesting. He has to lose or look weak at least once to tease us of the possibility that the protagonist might not be able to pull this off. If we know the character can’t lose, all the excitement from the movie gets let out the window, unless you’re a child of course. Here, the only time he “loses” or has that down moment, is when Teth-Adam WILLINGLY relinquishes his powers because he’s too dangerous and powerful.

If this doesn’t have “Dwayne Johnson” written all over it, I don’t know what does.

This “pivotal” moment holds zero weight emotionally because unless you’ve never watched a movie before, you know he’ll inevitably get his powers back for the final fight. Not only is he the star of the movie but having tertiary characters (he already beat in a fight earlier mind you) take down the main villain without the star involved has only happened once in recent memory. This was in The Marine 6: Close Quarters, which arguably doesn’t count. Whoever saw Black Adam and was remotely following the marketing campaign of it knew the intentions of this movie being the start of a long-running franchise. The biggest star in the world wouldn’t sign up for it if he loses and misses out on the big fight. It’s just logic, and moviegoers know this obvious story trope by now. This was why the big climactic fight we build the entire movie towards had no suspense to it at all! Teth-Adam basically fights Satan himself, and we don’t even bat an eye! Of course, he’s going to win! It wasn’t even a question at that point of the film. We’re not sweating and hoping for our heroes to pull this off. We know they will! Isn’t it crazy that despite all the buildup and backstory, and the fact that they’re basically fighting the devil, I still could not give less of a fuck at what was happening during the most important part of the movie?

If you didn’t know, this is also Johnson’s fault because they could’ve written a much more exciting film had they not had to deal with Johnson’s pesky contract clause saying he can’t lose a fight in a movie (still one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever heard). Basically, the writing was hindered by Johnson’s existence and because of the underperformance of the film at the box office, it didn’t even payoff! Congratulations Dwayne! This is your fault! Also, argue all you want about the Hawkeye comparison, but it’s whatever. The character isn’t as known as the other DC characters to mainstream audiences, so the movie was already fighting an uphill battle. Of course, they didn’t need to go this route until Johnson demanded a separate movie from the Shazam franchise. Well, good job Dwayne. You played yourself, and now the DCEU is being restarted again following your failure.

Enjoy your Teremana Tequila as you apply the ass cream to your wounds.

Tonally, I wasn’t sure what they were going for either. I thought the DCEU’s focus was much darker, which would fit the Black Adam character a bit more, all things considered. Unfortunately, Johnson’s family friendly image came into play, with the movie cramming in as much forced humor as possible to make it akin to an MCU film. Teth-Adam’s attempts at “sarcasm” were decent, but there’s not a single other amusing moment in the story, despite their desperate attempts to try. As a result, we get a very inconsistent final product. For instance, Karim wasn’t funny at all and his whole purpose to the narrative was to be the funny sidekick. Not a single joke or moment involving him worked. We just keep wondering how old his car is to have a working tape deck in it. I’m not saying Marvel has great joke writers, but it seems to flow much more naturally there. Here, it’s like they know what audiences tend to laugh at (“What if we made a large man sing badly to a nostalgic song! That’s funny, right?”) and made sure they put it in there without a good reason (or delivery) behind it. The intro was super generic and felt like it went on forever, the villain was ultimately boring, and the storyline with Adrianna and her son completely fell apart once Teth-Adam got involved. At first, they were teetering on the line of having a much bigger role but too many characters were included an hour in. Because of this, they fell completely on the wayside. At that point, it felt like they were only introduced for the inevitable hostage situation with the bad guy.

The look of the film even bothered me. You ever see all those memes making fun of Hollywood-produced movies set in Mexico and how they always seem to have a yellowish tint to the final product? Well, if you haven’t noticed, the same goes for almost any movie taking place in the Middle East, making the movie look a lot gloomier than the story itself. I really like Aldis Hodge as an actor, but I’m not sold on him as Hawkman either. This man had Green Lantern’s John Stewart written all over him. He was dwarfed by The Rock too, so his threats to him felt empty and wasted a lot of time. His mask was comically too big for his head too and looked as if he was hit hard enough, it would come flying off. If his costume was designed better as a whole, it may have helped me take him more seriously. Admittedly, it’s a back-and-forth argument on if films should modernize versions of classic comic book characters’ costumes. It can bother me, but sometimes, I can see why the decision was made in other situations because the character would look ridiculous in a live-action movie. The costume design for Hawkman was an example of something in need of being modernized. He looked more like a cosplayer rather than a superhero. Though I offer no solutions on how to fix the costume, something needed to be done. Pierce Brosnan was an excellent Dr. Fate though. He brought a level of class to the film that was needed, and his character and backstory was very interesting. I wish he had more screentime because he was easily my favorite part of the movie. If we got a limited series about Dr. Fate with Brosnan returning, I would definitely watch it.

Cyclone and Atom Smasher were completely forgettable. All we know is that Cyclone is smart and does the same attack for every big fight, and Atom Smasher felt like a poor imitation of Paul Rudd as Ant-Man. For comic book fans, their inclusion is exciting in general, but mainstream fans can see through the smoke and mirrors on how poorly developed both characters were for the movie. Also, based off how this film went, you can’t sit there and tell me that The Rock…

Sorry, I mean Black Adam, couldn’t have completed this mission by himself. We are given no real reason or validation at all, as to why any member of the Justice Society were vital to the final fight.

In addition to the awfulness, the twist involving Hurut (Teth-Adam’s son) was unexpected, but it was frustrating to say the least. Why waste our time with the elongated intro if half of it wasn’t true, and the reveal wasn’t all that exciting anyway?

Along with Dr. Fate, there were some other positives. The action was pretty good (albeit predictable), and I loved how the Justice Society had no idea on how to respond once Adrianna points out Kahndaq has been under military occupation for 27 years, and they haven’t been helped once by this group despite their cries for help, with them only showing up to stop the lone hero they’ve gotten in their lifetime. Watching Hawkman stand there like a dumbass while changing the subject was hilarious. It was such an American thing to do.

Another big positive was the argument about what a hero should do and who they should be. Hawkman takes the side of not killing anyone and finding anyway to avoid this situation in getting to the ultimate goal, while Teth-Adam knows that killing and the threat of death in general gets results faster. It’s a nice back-and-forth between the two characters throughout the movie creating for some fun moments like when they decide to question prisoners and Hawkman has to keep on saving bad guys from Teth-Adam’s methods. I’ll admit I chuckled when Fate asked Adam to bring him the prisoner, and he tells him he didn’t make it after we see the guy falling through the air in the background. Additionally, this argument is put front and center with the area of Kahndaq too. Hawkman saves the lives of two mercenaries because he argues they deserve due process, but Teth-Adam immediately kills them to cheers from everyone in the city. Even though Hawkman is technically doing the right thing, the citizens have seen Teth-Adam’s results firsthand by going straight for the kill. Within days, he’s saved their country by doing so. It’s hard to argue with results and this is where the anti-hero thing comes into play for Black Adam, making things a bit more interesting from a morality standpoint.

It was a cool moment for Dr. Fate to admit that in certain situations, they don’t always need a “white knight”. Sometimes, they need to go darker and go past traditional superhero ways. Maybe it was the way Pierce Brosnan delivered this inspiring speech, but it’s easy to agree with him as an audience member once we see how the movie plays out. The only way to win is to dabble into nontraditional ways (“It’s his darkness that lets him do what heroes like you cannot”). Sometimes, the “hero” needs to make that extra step to achieve the goal, but they can’t because of their own morals and beliefs of what it means to be said hero. It’s kind of unfair.

How much easier would Batman’s life be if he just fucking killed the Joker? I think society would give him the pass considering the trouble the man’s caused. Thankfully, Black Adam doesn’t let a stupid thing like “morals” get in his way.

I think Rotten Tomatoes summed it up very well: For fans, Black Adam sets up an exciting future, but if you look at it as a solo origin story, it’s incredibly subpar. Unfortunately, with James Gunn cleaning house, he made this movie and all the positives coming from it almost completely irrelevant.

Even if he does fix the DCEU, the damage done to this movie is irreparable.