Black Adam‘s magic words are “fan service,” and that fan is Dwayne Johnson. Relentlessly working to make this movie happen for 15 years, Johnson has to be the ultimate Black Adam fan. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Initially cast as a foe in an earlier draft of Shazam!, Johnson thought he should headline. This was before Zachary Levi became the World’s Mightiest Mortal, but that casting didn’t deter Johnson. He was determined to climb to the top of the Rock… of Eternity.
Teamed with Jaume Collet-Serra as his director, Johnson willed Black Adam into existence as a decent action flick with a troubled and troubling anti-hero at its center. Despite his costume looking suspiciously like Levi’s and his word of power being the same, there’s no reference to that other, brighter film or that character. Johnson set his sights elsewhere. He’s fulfilling a childhood dream to fight someone a little better known. You don’t become the People’s Champion by taking down some random jobber.
Except for this outing, he sort of does. Warning: this review may get nerdy and potentially pedantic about comics.
After a brief origin story thousands of years ago, the man called Teth-Adam (Johnson) awakens in the 21st century. His beloved homeland of Kahndaq has been occupied by Intergang, in comics a powerful criminal organization secretly backed by Darkseid. Though Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Saga gets acknowledged in the credits, it’s just for the name. Intergang could have been any paramilitary outfit, so long as they were terrorists.
However, they are technologically advanced, because they know how to harness the power of Eternium, an element found only in this region. One huge piece was forged into the Crown of Macguffin. Intergang wants it, and Teth-Adam’s rescuers want to keep it out of their hands.
Okay, it’s really the Crown of Sabbac, which comics fans know means there’s a promise of a super big bad that only fans will know. Legitimately an arch-enemy of the character once known as Captain Marvel, Jr., Sabbac has been reshaped as an emissary of one of the subsections of Hell, so thanks to Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway.
Buried deep underneath the plot is a commentary about how impoverished nations are often disenfranchised and ignored as one colonial power after another takes their resources and ignores their people. We’d talk about it more but there’s another fight scene to be had. Kudos to screenwriters Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani for trying.
That’s the frustrating part. Every attempt to get a little depth gets punched away, except for Teth-Adam’s motivations. They form a central, if easily guessed, mystery. Yet at some point, the creative team were connecting dots. Two of the four Justice Society members called in to fight Teth-Adam have connections to ancient Kahndaq themselves.
In comics, both Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) are thousands of years old, if not in their current incarnations. Both did meet Teth-Adam in ancient times. Dialogue makes frustratingly brief references to the age of Doctor Fate’s helm, maybe an entity unto itself, maybe not. Death holds no terror for Carter Hall, but that’s all we get of his possibly endless cycle of reincarnation.
Every character has that deep shallow. A quick glimpse of a file reveals that Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) has descended from Red Tornado “Ma” Hunkel, but that’s a deep cut. She later mentions having been kidnapped by a mad scientist as her origin, but there’s no follow up. Let that drive you to comics, people! The same goes for Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), clearly following in a relative’s footsteps — terrific casting of that relative — but given no character trait beyond he’s a fumbling giant (literally) and eats a lot.
Each actor plays their part admirably, with a particular nod to Brosnan who must have come into this wondering what the heck was going on. Johnson has his usual charisma, with a few too brief moments of showing a different side before raging off. Look, he’s 100% a movie star of the old school variety. It would just be cool to see him take some real risks the way he did a couple of times on his way to the top.
Black Adam establishes a tenuous connection to whatever form the DCEU takes next, with an appearance by Amanda Waller from The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, and the poorly kept secret that a certain actor returns as a certain iconic character after it being certain Warner Bros. would never ask him back. That’s the power of Dwayne Johnson, and I’ll dare say the generosity. He isn’t just here for the accolades; he does want to be part of a larger universe.
Watching Black Adam is actually a lot like reading comics when I was a kid. You accepted certain characters because the comic book told you they were good guys and little more. Maybe they thrilled you with their displays of power and maybe they made you laugh a little. It wasn’t necessarily their book, though, and obviously you’d have to go to the drugstore next month and hope you find the resolution of “To Be Continued…” If you were lucky the story came to an end but you still wanted more.
Actually, it owes more than a little to the videogame franchise Injustice, as Doctor Fate’s fighting style comes right from there. A tip of the hat to writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Sean McManus who contributed much of the mythos around the character used here.
It’s not the best superhero movie ever made, nor the most original. But there’s obviously passion behind it. It is fun. It just could have been, should have been, more than that.
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