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Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra , and featuring a remarkable lead performance by Dwayne Johnson , the spiky and majestic "Black Adam" is one of the best DC superhero films to date. This tale of a gloomy, seemingly malevolent god who reappears in a long-occupied Middle Eastern nation rejects most of the choices that bland-ify even the good entries in the genre. For its first third, it presents its title character—a champion who challenged a despotic king thousands of years earlier—as a frightening and unknowable force with a bottomless appetite for destruction. Known by his ancient moniker Teth-Adam, his reemergence from a desert tomb proves both a miracle and a curse for people who prayed for someone to defend them against corporate-mercenary thugs who have oppressed them for decades and strip-mined their land. 

Throughout the rest of its running time, “Black Adam” leans into the inevitability of Adam’s evolution toward good-guy status, condensing the transformation of the title character in the first two “Terminator” films (there are even comic bits where people try to teach Adam sarcasm and the Geneva Conventions). "Black Adam" then stirs in dollops of a macho sentimentality that used to be common in old Hollywood dramas about loners who needed to get involved in a cause to reset their moral compasses or recognize their worth. But the sharp edge that the film brings to the early parts of its story never dulls.

Adam initially seems as much of a literal as well as a figurative force of nature as Godzilla and other beasts in Japanese  kaiju  films. It’s initially hard for the people in Adam’s path to tell if he’s good, evil, or merely indifferent to human concerns. One thing’s for sure: everyone wants Adam to help them prevent a crown forged in hell and infused with the energy of six demons from being placed atop the head of someone in Intergang, a global corporate/mercenary consortium whose interests are represented by a two-faced charmer ( Marwan Kenzari ).

Decades ago, Humphrey Bogart played a lot of cynical men who insisted they weren’t interested in causes, then changed their minds and took up arms against corruption or tyranny. Viewers still love that story, and Johnson has updated it many times during his career, most recently in “ Jungle Cruise ,” in which he played a character modeled on Bogart's riverboat captain in "The African Queen." He channels vintage primordial acting by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger but also poet-brute performances like Anthony Quinn's strongman in " La Strada ," and infuses the totality with his unique charisma. "Black Adam" confirms that he’s studied the classics and cherry-picked bits that seem to work for him. There are even tenderhearted moments of regret and recrimination that seem inspired by 1950s moral awakening pictures like “ On the Waterfront .” 

The latter are usually triggered by three “civilian” characters who appeal to Adam’s presumed innate (though submerged) goodness. One is Adrianna Tomaz ( Sarah Shahi ), a university professor, resistance fighter, and widow of a resistance hero who was killed by the colonizers. Another is Adrianna’s cheerful and indomitable son Amon ( Bodhi Sabongui ), who zips around the bombed-out city on a skateboard that seems to have as many secondary uses as a Swiss Army Knife. And then there’s Adrianna’s brother Amir (comedian Mohammed Amer), who livens up a standard-issue earthy everyman role.

Somehow, though, the script by Adam Sztykiel , Rory Haines , and Sohrab Noshirvani resists the temptation to wallow in unearned sentiment. Nor does the movie insist, despite the evidence, that Adam and the superheroes brought into to confront him ( Aldis Hodge ’s Hawkman, Noah Centineo ’s Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell ’s wind-manipulating Cyclone, and Pierce Brosnan ’s dimension-hopping and clairvoyant Dr. Fate) are wonderful people who have pure motives and always mean well. In conversations about motivations and tactics, nobody is entirely right or wrong. The movie's edge comes from its determination to live in moral gray areas as long as it can. 

It also comes from the violence, which is presented as the inevitable result of the characters’ personalities, ambitions, and duties, rather than being associated with any particular code or philosophy. That framing, plus the sprays of blood and images of people being impaled, shot, and crushed, pushes the movie's PG-13 rating to the breaking point like “ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ” and “ Gremlins ” did with the PG rating nearly 40 years earlier. There were several walkouts at the “Black Adam” screening this writer attended, and in every case, it was somebody who brought a child under 10. 

In fairness, they may not have expected the movie to begin with a flashback that climaxes with a slave at a construction site getting gut-stabbed and thrown off a cliff, and a boy being threatened with beheading, or for the title character to obliterate an army with electrical bolts and his bare hands seconds after his first appearance. Nearly every other scene—including expository dialogue exchanges—is set against the backdrop of a chaotic city whose residents have been hardened not just by the occupation, but by the catastrophes that are unleashed whenever super-beings clash, which ties into recurring scenes and dialogue about what it means for a small country to be invaded and occupied by outsiders who set their own rules and are indifferent to daily life on the ground.

Film history buffs might note the studio that originated the project: the Warner Bros. subdivision New Line. It rose to prominence with horror films, grew by releasing auteur-driven, down-and-dirty genre pieces and dramas (including “ Menace II Society ” and “ Deep Cover ”), and got into blockbusters with the original “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. You can see that lineage reflected in many scenes and sequences of this film, which is PG-13 in fact but R in spirit. “Black Adam” immediately announces what sort of film it is by weaving in quotes from the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” (the melody of which is referenced in Lorne Balfe ’s score) and musical as well as visual snippets from “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”—key works from artists whose best work invites you to root for people who move through their worlds like threshers. 

The film’s director honed his mayhem chops in horror movies, then in R-rated thrillers in which Liam Neeson brutally dispatches adversaries. Collet-Serra makes a PG-13 film feel like an R by cutting away or jumping back from the nastiest violence, but letting us hear it (or imagine it when people watch from a great distance). He also does it by insisting, through actions as well as dialogue, that individuals, even superhuman ones, do things for multiple, often contradictory reasons. (A boy’s bedroom is filled with superhero posters and comics, and when a “good guy” and Adam fight in there, they burn and tear through DC’s most recognizable icons in a way that rhymes with scenes of the city's historic monuments being toppled or pulverized.)

Fidelity to basic film storytelling keeps "Black Adam" centered even when it's doing ten things at once. The film is packed with foreshadowings, setups, payoffs, twists, and surprises, and is filled with well-defined lead and supporting characters. One standout is Brosnan, who delivers a moving portrait of an immortal who is tired of seeing the future and thinking back on his past. Dr. Fate looks at those who can live in the present with a mixture of melancholy, wisdom, and envy. 

Another is Johnson, who has real acting chops but in recent years has often seemed to be constrained (maybe intimidated?) by his lucrative image as the people’s colossus. He’s as minimalist as one could be when playing a god. He takes a lot of his cues from the screen star that the film quotes most often, Clint Eastwood , but he also seems to have learned from action-hero performances by stars like Neeson, Toshiro Mifune , Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Charles Bronson , who understood that the camera can detect and amplify faint tremors of emotion as long as you act with the film—not just in it, and never against it. The peak is a fleeting moment when Johnson lets us know that something deep inside Adam has changed by glancing in a different direction and softening his features. It's maybe half a second. It’s not the kind of acting that wins prizes because if it’s done well—as it is here—you feel as if it happened in your mind rather than on the screen. 

The politics and spirituality of the movie are just as committed and consistent. Even when the story flirts with Orientalism or incorporates simplistic Western heaven-and-hell imagery, “Black Adam” never loses track of what Adam represents in our world: autonomy, liberation, the possibility of redemption and renewal, and a refusal to be defined by however things have always been done. 

The result sometimes plays like the DC answer to the pop culture quake that was “ Black Panther ,” serving up a Middle Eastern-inflected version of the Marvel film’s Afro-Futurist sensibility, and letting its setting stand in for any place that was colonized. But its politics are more clearly defined and less compromised. “Black Adam” is staunchly anti-imperialist to its marrow, even equating the Avengers-like crew sent to capture and imprison Black Adam to a United Nations “intervention” force that the people of the region don’t want because it only makes things worse. The movie is anti-royalist, too, which is even more of a surprise considering that the backstory hinges on kings and lineage. 

"Black Adam" is a superlative and clever example of this sort of movie, coloring within the lines while drawing fascinating doodles on the margins. In its brash, relentless, overscaled way, Collet-Serra's film respects its audience and wants to be respected by it. "Black Adam" gives the audience everything they wanted, along with things they never expected.

Only in theaters today.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Black Adam (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language.

125 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Teth Adam / Black Adam

Aldis Hodge as Carter Hall / Hawkman

Pierce Brosnan as Kent Nelson / Doctor Fate

Noah Centineo as Al Rothstein / Atom Smasher

Sarah Shahi as Adrianna Tomaz / Isis

Marwan Kenzari as Ishmael Gregor / Sabbac

Quintessa Swindell as Maxine Hunkel / Cyclone

Bodhi Sabongui as Amon Tomaz

Viola Davis as Amanda Waller

Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt

Mo Amer as Karim

• Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer (based on the characters created by)

• Bill Parker
• Adam Sztykiel
• Rory Haines
• Sohrab Noshirvani

Cinematographer

• Lawrence Sher
• Michael L. Sale
• Lorne Balfe

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‘Black Adam’ Review: Heroism, but Paint It Black

Dwayne Johnson stars in this overstuffed superhero film about an ancient figure granted god powers.

• Share full article

By Maya Phillips

Behold: the proselytizing superhero film! Listen as it cautions against moral absolutism! It is not the hero movie we need but, thanks to what’s now a tradition of beloved comic book stories shazam-ed into empty Hollywood schlock, it is the hero movie we deserve.

Which brings us to “Black Adam,” a dull, listless superhero movie that hits all the expected touchstones of the genre under the guise of a transgressive new antihero story.

We begin with a briskly delivered tragic back story involving a magical demon crown, a gaggle of wizards and a people’s rebellion in an ancient land called Kahndaq. We then skip forward 5,000 years to modern-day Kahndaq, a poor yet futuristic country that, for generations, has been under siege by various mercenary groups. Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), an Indiana Jones-esque Kahndaqi professor turned artifact hunter, is searching for the aforementioned diadem of doom, with help from her bumbling brother, Karim (Mohammed Amer), and hero-obsessed son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui).

Adrianna summons Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson), the champion of ancient Kahndaq who was granted god powers by the same sorcerer who — surprise! — transformed the teenage Billy Batson into the red-spandex-wearing capester Shazam (Zachary Levi) in that 2019 DC action-comedy .

But Black Adam has some rage issues and an inconvenient habit of zapping baddies to death with his lightning powers, so of course, according to the rules of superhero franchises, a superteam must unite to confront him: Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), a meek genius in colorful threads who can manipulate the wind; Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), a rookie hero who’s just trying his best; Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), a Doctor Strange type in a knight helmet; and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), the leader of this so-called Justice Society of America (not to be confused with the Justice League of America).

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‘Black Adam’ Review: Dwayne Johnson Plays an All-Powerful DC Villain Who Can Be Talked Into Heroism

Set in the imaginary Middle East country of Kahndaq, this meaty, feature-length teaser reframes a fan-favorite 'Shazam!' baddie as an antihero, though his greatest battles are still to come.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains mild spoilers for “ Black Adam .”

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After all, this summer’s “DC League of Super-Pets” wrapped with Krypto (Clark Kent’s companion, also voiced by Johnson) meeting Black Adam’s pet basenji, with whom he debates the meaning of “antihero”: “It’s basically exactly like a regular hero, except way cooler. You make up your own rules, and then you break them.” The prospect that the superegos attached to these two canines might one day collide transforms the spectacular (but otherwise pointless) one-off/origin story that is “Black Adam” into a feature-length tease. The payoff is still to come, but here, audiences are presented with the moral and emotional backstory for a future showdown.

“Black Adam” is built around the notion that Teth Adam, as he’s referred to for most of the movie, isn’t evil so much as really, really angry. The surprisingly serious-minded (but still plenty pulpy) project deprives Johnson of his greatest superpower — his sense of humor — while giving the now-straight-faced star a chance to play a character with some interesting contradictions. His instinct is to kill anyone who upsets him, and yet, he can still be reasoned with. This flexibility will prove crucial, since there’s a far more malevolent (if not especially memorable) character scheming to liberate Kahndaq, the fictional quasi-Egyptian country where the film takes place.

It’s an unusual move for DC to base an entire superhero feature in the Middle East — although it’s a homecoming of sorts for Johnson, whose film career kicked off playing the Scorpion King in “The Mummy Returns.” Doubly daring is the way “Black Adam” aligns our sympathies with the locals, who call upon an ancient hero to help overthrow the white mercenaries extracting precious Eternium from their land. In the film’s “300”-style prologue, the powerful mineral is responsible for transforming a lowly slave into a practically godlike figure — with the help of several wizards.

Flash forward to the present day. Tired of living in a state of oppression, a group of rebels led by tough gal Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) go looking for a legendary crown made of Eternium. Co-written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, “Black Adam” features a lot more action than most DC movies, cramming the exposition into a series of supercharged set-pieces — including an early “Tomb Raider”-like sequence wherein Adrianna and three accomplices explore a cave, recovering the crown and unleashing Teth Adam from his millennia-long imprisonment.

Looking thoroughly annoyed, his neck thick as a banyan tree trunk, Johnson levitates into the first of many confrontations, blasting blue lightning from his fists. Bullets bounce off his bald dome; bazookas barely slow him down. Collet-Serra has studied everything from “The Matrix” to “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” basing his visual style on favorite tricks from more original films. Half the reason it’s so hard to take comic book movies seriously stems from lazy devices like Eternium and wizards, which “Black Adam” accepts without the slightest hesitation.

The movie is essentially “Shane” on steroids, set in the Middle East instead of the Old West, but still seen through the eyes of a young boy — Adrianna’s comic book-obsessed son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), in this case — who idolizes a figure of questionable morality. As with “Shane,” sticking a kid in the middle of the story brings the entire project down to a middle-school-level intellect. And yet, except for the recent Batman movies, that’s how most of the DC films feel.

The most out-of-place characters here are the quartet representing the JSA. Adrianna rightly questions why Hawkman and friends should show up now, after a villainous organization called Intergang has been exploiting them for years. Black Adam may be billed as an antihero, but by the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he’s more helpful to these Kahndaq freedom fighters than the JSA. Fight scenes involving Hawkman, Atom Smasher and Cyclone pose strange challenges, considering their powers, while Doctor Fate at least gives the visual effects team some fun tricks to animate.

No one’s allowed to upstage Johnson, however — not even a bulging demon named Sabbac who appears near the end. Clearly, the film’s whole purpose is to give Black Adam a suitably grand introduction on the assumption that he’ll be pitted against a more deserving adversary soon enough.

Reviewed at Dolby screening room, Burbank, Oct. 17, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema presentation of a Seven Bucks, Flynn Picture Co. production. Producers: Beau Flynn, Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia. Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Dave Neustadter, Chris Pan, Walter Hamada, Adam Schlagman, Geoff Johns, Eric McLeod, Scott Sheldon
• Crew: Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay: Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani, based on characters from DC created by Bill Parker, C.C. Beck. Camera: Lawrence Sher. Editors: Mike Sale, John Lee.
• With: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Mohammed Amer, Bodhi Sabongui, Pierce Brosnan.

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Black Adam Review

Black adam strikes out. .

What does it mean to be a hero? That’s the question posed by Black Adam, DC’s origin story about a super-violent anti-hero, but it struggles to find the answer amid a tiring string of non-stop action scenes.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as a powerhouse from ancient times who explodes into the present day with a bad attitude and lots of flashy lightning effects, but unfortunately he’s not the only thing from the distant past. The whole movie feels like it was made a few decades ago, before the golden age of superhero movies, and carries none of the wisdom Hollywood has learned from the likes of The Dark Knight and Iron Man. It’s made clunky by too much exposition, the villain is one-dimensional, and there’s an over-reliance on spectacle over character and story. There are some flashes of brilliance here and there, largely thanks to the members of the Justice Society, but overall Black Adam fizzles out.

Black Adam: Who's Who in the Cast

It certainly did start out with a lot of potential. The JSA comic run featuring Black Adam is one of DC’s all-time greats, as it showed how his brutal sense of justice made even the most upstanding heroes reexamine the line between what’s right and wrong. While this film doesn’t directly adapt those comics, it does try to embrace the themes that made them great. Thus, the topic of superhero morality is the crux of the story, and there’s a lot of talk about heroes and villains, good and evil, and killing versus mercy, but the debate devolves into a confusing garble of platitudes. By the end, it’s hard to say who stands where on the subject, and why.

Johnson plays Black Adam in the same vein as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: a stoic, seemingly soulless killing machine gains a glimmer of humanity and even a sense of humor. While he gets top marks for making his Black Adam just as steely and imposing as in the comics, the character feels a bit too confident and powerful. This makes him come across as one-note when there are clearly more layers begging to be explored.

The main figure opposing his violent ways is Justice Society member Hawkman, played by Aldis Hodge. While the veteran hero is a sight to behold with his gleaming wings and energized mace, his character feels criminally underdeveloped. Hawkman has one of the most notoriously complicated backstories in all of comics, so it’s understandable why the writers wouldn’t delve too deeply into alien reincarnation lore in another character’s movie, but, at the very least, he could have benefited from there being a foundation for his strong beliefs on delivering justice with compassion.

Instead, Hawkman mainly serves as a punching bag, both physically and metaphorically. He spends a majority of his screen time getting his bird butt kicked, and the rest of the time he’s attempting to persuade Black Adam to act more like a typical “hero.” Of course, this unintentionally makes a hypocrite out of Hawkman by virtue of a certain morally bankrupt mastermind he chooses to align himself with, plus he has no good answer for the people of a wartorn country when they question why his team of supposed heroes never came to save them.

On top of that, it’s hard to take Black Adam and Hawkman’s debate about whether it’s okay for heroes to kill evil-doers seriously when the film often makes jokes out of the outlandishly brutal way Black Adam murders them, not to mention the DCEU is a place where we've already seen premiere heroes Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman take lives.

Who do you most want to see Black Adam fight?

The rest of the Justice Society have their ups and downs. Pierce Brosnan delivers a charming and mysterious performance as Doctor Fate, although the script tries to do too much with his character without spending enough of their two hours of screen time to earn it. To help deal with Black Adam the team recruits Atom Smasher and Cyclone, and Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell have instant chemistry as two budding young heroes, but they don’t have a noticeable effect on the plot. That’s a shame, especially for Centineo, as his Atom Smasher is the most earnest and entertaining hero of the bunch. Everyone else spends most of their time explaining the MacGuffin or their backstory.

With a bit too much going on, Black Adam feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped. It bites off more than it can chew when it comes to squeezing the origin of its main character, four members of the Justice Society, a trio of relatable human characters, and a villain for them to fight all in one movie. Most of these elements feel shortchanged, and it’s hard not to feel as though that’s because so much emphasis was put on the relentless barrage of action scenes.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with a superhero movie being driven by action, especially one featuring a Superman-level character. But when it’s the same kind of action on repeat, where we see Black Adam perform an endless string of PG-13 Mortal Kombat Fatalities against nameless goons, then it starts to get old. After about the fourth scene of him mowing down dozens of baddies who didn’t stand a chance, I started to wonder why a sort of “Black Adam Kryptonite'' was introduced in the first act but none of the bad guys thought to use it against him later on. It would have made things a little more interesting to have him face an enemy he couldn’t simply snap in half, at least.

The DC Movies in (Chronological) Order

There are heaps of action scenes featuring the Justice Society, too. Cyclone’s beautiful twisters are a unique joy to watch and they add some welcome color to the film’s visual palette. On the other hand, Doctor Fate’s abilities look a bit too similar to what we saw Marvel’s Doctor Strange do in Avengers: Infinity War, so it’s a shame they didn’t give Fate a more distinct visual identity.

Also, it has to be said how incredibly strange it is for this Black Adam movie to completely ignore the fact that the character is intrinsically linked to Zachary Levi’s Shazam – to the point where the two share the same powers, transformation word, and lightning bolt logo – and instead make several references to Superman as a rival instead. Considering there’s a second Shazam movie in the works while Superman is pretty much MIA following 2017’s Justice League, that’s a heck of a choice.

Black Adam overindulges to the point where it’s hard to enjoy the DC anti-hero’s debut. It’s packed with undeveloped characters and an excessive number of repetitive action scenes, to the point where its half-baked debate on what it means to be a hero is lost in all the noise. Try as it might to capture lightning in a bottle, Black Adam never manages to find its spark.

In This Article

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Black Adam Reviews

One of the most notable issues with Johnson as an actor is his constant mugging for the camera.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 5, 2023

Dwayne Johnson saves the day, despite some hiccups.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Black Adam is clearly a major passion project for the Rock, and he clearly wanted to go for something of a more dramatic role, but it doesn't always feel like the film is making the best use of his talents.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2023

The cast’s chemistry and running jokes help rescue an otherwise formulaic action film. Brosnan’s elegant performance stands out, and the post-credits scene will leave moviegoers begging for a sequel.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 16, 2023

Tiresomely heavy exposition, story with little to no creativity, and inconsistent humor make it impossible for the DCEU to take "the next step" in a truly impactful manner.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

A misunderstood epic kick off to the next era of the DC UNIVERSE. Visceral & Intense action scenes create such a kinetic time that I loved. @TheRock completely became Black Adam & added much needed mythology to the word SHAZAM.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Black Adam is an action-driven film that knows it is in service of the fans, which means plenty of spectacle and a focus on entertainment with a capital E, for better and worse.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Black Adam compensates for the copious amounts of expository dialogue with copious amounts of action and spectacle. Dwayne Johnson’s entry as the titular character is fantastic. There’s visual comedy. It is quite barbaric.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2023

Sabbac's late-stage introduction in Black Adam does not justify the ill timing of his arrival. It only strains an already-thin plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Feb 23, 2023

It is NOT all doom and gloom, thankfully. It has a tongue placed firmly in its cheek and a sly sense of humor, never allowing the movie to get too light or dark; just the right amount of entertainment and humor. The Rock gets to let loose.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 19, 2023

I thought it was enjoyable and a different take on the superhero genre. But given everything happening in DC with James Gunn, this story is pretty much irrelevant.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 29, 2023

This is my least favorite superhero movie in recent memory. I'm hoping "The Rock" will choose projects that truly challenge him as an actor and that go beyond cliche action set pieces and poor character development.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 29, 2023

Maybe there was a coherent film being developed at some point, but those days are long gone.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 20, 2023

While DC might have produced the best superhero saga of 2022 with The Batman (take that, Marvel!), it was also responsible for the worst with Black Adam (take that, DC!).

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 14, 2023

Big, loud, and full of energy. Absolutely nothing that you're going to remember after a couple of days, but it does go down easy and is very watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2023

To do both characters of Shazam and Black Adam justice, they needed their own separate films with separate tones. We finally have that Black Adam movie, which is just as brutal and action packed as the Rock has always promised. ... I had a blast.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2023

It is obvious why Johnson was cast in the title role. He is a HUGE box office draw, can portray an extremely menacing character, and would be believable as an ancient superhero.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 2, 2023

With its uninspired narrative, paper-thin characters, and an uncharacteristically uncharismatic Dwayne Johnson, Black Adam merely presents yet another DC dud that fails to excite, entertain, or even remotely engage.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2023

... it’s so intent on creating literal blockbusting action sequences that all of the good stuff gets lost in the rubble.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 2, 2023

It’s a slog to sit through, a painfully dull, and lackluster superhero movie that can never decide if its titular character is a superhero or a villain in the making...

Full Review | Dec 29, 2022

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Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods--and imprisoned just as quickly--Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique... Read all Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods--and imprisoned just as quickly--Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world. Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods--and imprisoned just as quickly--Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world.

• Jaume Collet-Serra
• Adam Sztykiel
• Rory Haines
• Sohrab Noshirvani
• Dwayne Johnson
• Aldis Hodge
• Pierce Brosnan
• 1.8K User reviews
• 285 Critic reviews
• 41 Metascore
• 1 win & 12 nominations

Top cast 65

• Black Adam …

• Atom Smasher …

• Adrianna Tomaz

• Skinny Teth Adam

• The Champion

• Emilia Harcourt

• Mrs. Farmer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Rock On: The Life and Times of Dwayne Johnson

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Did you know

• Trivia Jordan Peele was originally offered the chance to direct the film when it was first announced in 2017, but Peele declined, saying, "I'm not a fan of superhero movies and I'd hate to take that chance away from a director who is passionate about them."
• Goofs At one point, they state the crown weighs 23 pounds. However, in several places in the movie, people are carrying/lifting it like it weighs a few ounces.

Hawkman : In this world, there are heroes and there are villains. Heroes don't kill people!

Teth-Adam : Well, I do.

• Crazy credits The Warner Bros logo is made of Kahndaq's eternium metal, and through lightning strikes it changes to the New Line Cinema logo.
• Connections Featured in The Observant Lineman: DC Fandome LIVE (2020)
• Soundtracks Bullet with Butterfly Wings Written by Billy Corgan (as William Corgan) Performed by The Smashing Pumpkins Courtesy of Virgin Records Under license from Universal Music Enteprises

User reviews 1.8K

• namob-43673
• Oct 21, 2022

Everything New on Max in July

• How long is Black Adam? Powered by Alexa
• October 21, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• New Zealand
• Black Adam France
• Official Facebook
• Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Warner Bros.
• New Line Cinema
• DC Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $195,000,000 (estimated)
• $168,152,111
• $67,004,323
• Oct 23, 2022
• $393,452,111

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos
• IMAX 6-Track

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Black Adam is Warner Bros.’ most brutal superhero letdown yet

Warner bros.’ long-awaited black adam movie starring dwayne ‘the rock’ johnson is a one-note spectacle for children about how cool murder is.

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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Black Adam , Warner Bros.’ latest superhero movie based on DC’s comic books, has been in the works ever since the studio first came around on the genuinely inspired idea of casting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a terrifying Superman analogue best known for beefing with children . In Black Adam , you can plainly see how much hope and faith Warner Bros. has placed in the idea that a darker, more brutal antiheroic figure might be just what its beleaguered cinematic universe of cape films needs to pull itself out of what seems like a death spiral . What’s harder to see, though, is how anyone at Warner Bros. looked at the completed Black Adam and didn’t immediately recognize it as yet another sign of what a messy place the DCEU’s become.

Black Adam, from director Jaume Collet-Serra, tells the story of Teth-Adam (Johnson), an ancient, magically empowered demigod who first walked the Earth as a mortal man thousands of years ago in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq. Though the bulk of Black Adam is set in present-day Kahndaq and follows Teth-Adam as he confusedly tries to understand what became of his nation after he vanished one day in the past, the movie also repeatedly flashes back to his life as an ordinary man in order to make you understand what it is that drives him to be the way he is.

Before Teth-Adam became a hulking, invulnerable thunderstorm shaped like a professional wrestler, he was one of the countless enslaved Kahndaqi forced by their tyrannical king to mine their land for its Eternium, a glowing rare metal whose properties are never really spelled out. Brutal as life under their king was, no one ever dared to rise up against their oppressors for fear of death. But Black Adam ’s earliest scenes detail how that all changed one day thanks to Teth-Adam’s son Hurut (​​Jalon Christian) — a young boy whose act of defiance sparked a revolution and subsequently led to his death.

Though Black Adam’s backstory has always been an important part of understanding him as a character, the movie’s way of gradually teasing out what happened to his family while also playing coy about some rather obvious details is one of the first signs that Black Adam ’s script isn’t firing on all cylinders. It’s not hard to figure out the big secret Black Adam’s hiding in the present day after professor Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) wakes him from a centuries-long sleep by saying the word “shazam.” And to be fair, Black Adam doesn’t try all that hard to keep the secret hidden or make it intriguing because, once Teth-Adam’s up and operating in modern Kahndaq, the movie shifts gears dramatically to focus on giving its protagonist the flashiest, most murder-filled debut the DCEU’s had yet.

In the same way that Teth-Adam often beats his enemies with his fists, Black Adam beats you over the head with the idea that Kahndaq has been repeatedly besieged, occupied, and in desperate need of a Hero™ over the ages. Were it not for Tomaz’s cape-obsessed son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), it might take longer for Teth-Adam to understand how superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman are to the modern world what the Champion of Kahndaq once was to his own home country. But when Teth-Adam comes face-to-face with the first of the many groups of soldiers sent to neutralize him after he wakes up, Black Adam starts doing what pretty much every American superhero movie does: find a multitude of different ways to make murder look cool.

As many superheroes as there are in DC’s catalog of IP, there are only but so many imaginative ways that Hollywood’s developed to bring them and their powers to the big screen. Rather than placing Teth-Adam into imaginative situations designed to show off his power set, Black Adam instead features an overabundance of visceral 300 -style action sequences that slow down and speed up in order to accentuate how unbothered the demigod is as he’s zapping people with lightning or tossing them into the sky before their spines are crushed. But because the movie never really tries to establish what Black Adam’s worldview is or how he feels about… anything, its attempt at framing him as a solemn, self-assured arbiter of justice instead makes him come across like an uncharming sociopath à la Brightburn .

A big part of what makes Black Adam feel like such a weird misfire is how undeniably charismatic we all know Johnson is capable of being even when he’s portraying characters that you aren’t exactly meant to see as “good” people. You can see shades of that magnetism and how much more compelling it might make Teth-Adam as Black Adam introduces a curious new version of the Justice Society of America consisting of Carter Hall / Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Kent Nelson / Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Maxine Hunkel / Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Albert Rothstein / Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo).

It’s when the JSA shows up in Kahndaq to fight Teth-Adam that Black Adam remembers how fun and exciting superhero stories can be no matter how serious their main characters are. In sharp contrast to the uninspired way Black Adam shows off Teth-Adam’s strength, the movie’s action sequences featuring Cyclone’s sky-dancing aerokinesis and Doctor Fate’s theatrical parlor tricks are some of its most memorable. Hawkman’s never really needed the sort of rebranding that made everyone take the DCEU’s Aquaman more seriously , but Hodge’s Hall exudes a magnetism and worldliness that immediately makes you want to know more about him, his team, and what kind of presence they have outside of Black Adam .

But the JSA’s arrival in Kahndaq, and the way Black Adam pits them against Teth-Adam, has an unfortunate way of highlighting how hesitant the movie is to say what it really wants to say about our pop cultural obsession with mythic superhumans sworn to protect us. It would make all the sense in the world for Teth-Adam to have nothing but fury and thunderbolts for foreign vigilantes coming into his home. But Black Adam stops short of being that logical, both because Warner Bros. knows how irredeemable it might make the character seem in people’s eyes and because the studio has some rather obvious plans for him in the future.

For those who’ve been waiting for a big, bombastic celebration of how powerful Black Adam is that also strips away most of the narrative context that makes him work in DC’s comic, neither Black Adam nor its mid-credits scene will disappoint. But for anyone hoping that Black Adam might actually herald a new era of quality and substantive superhero features from Warner Bros., there’s always the chance that the next movie he pops up in might be a good one.

Black Adam also stars Marwan Kenzari, Mohammed Amer, and Uli Latukefu. The movie hits theaters on October 21st.

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Review: Style and great supporting players make ‘Black Adam’ forgettably entertaining

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The newest entry in the DC Extended Universe, “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, has been hyped as a “new phase” and a “change in the hierarchy” for the embattled comic book franchise, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t also been cause for concern. The trailers looked ponderous and gray, and though the film is directed by the auteur of many lively Liam Neeson actioners , Jaume Collet-Serra, his prior outing with Johnson, “Jungle Cruise,” left his signature verve behind. But, it seems Collet-Serra has got his groove back for “Black Adam,” or perhaps he was saving it for this film, which is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

It helps that “Black Adam” has a distinct and dynamic visual style and tone that distinguishes itself against the Marvel “house style” we’ve become accustomed to over many, many phases of superhero flicks, which have devolved into a depressing digital sludge offset by an onslaught of cutesy, quippy dialogue. In “Black Adam,” the setting is a bustling Middle Eastern city, the cinematography and digital effects crisp and saturated, the action brutal and bruising enough to test that PG-13 rating and the quips judiciously metered out.

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Johnson plays an ancient champion from the kingdom of Kahndaq, who received his powers from the Council of Wizards (you might remember them from the DCEU movie “Shazam” ). Kahndaq is now a modern metropolis, overrun by an organized crime outfit known as Intergang. Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ), who has been searching for a cursed crown made of “eternium,” awakens Teth-Adam (Johnson) from a 5,000-year slumber while escaping an Intergang faction. The all-powerful champion is essentially a “Dark Superman” — he flies, he has super strength, lightning shoots out of his hands, etc. After a violent clash in the desert, this supercharged Encino Man becomes the protector of Adrianna and her plucky son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui, who steals the whole movie).

But in this universe, there need to be checks and balances on all-powerful beings, so the Justice Society is called up to rein in Teth-Adam (and also to introduce new characters for spin-off movies). Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) swoop in to “promote stability” in the world and battle it out with Teth-Adam in the streets of Kahndaq. They eventually decide to team up to take on Intergang, who have occupied the country for 27 years, mining eternium and searching for the cursed crown so that their leader, Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari), can ascend the throne as some kind of hell demon king.

Screenwriters Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani have to power through a lot of expository lore, character intros and various mumbo jumbo, so they take the tack of repeating the beats over and over again: Teth-Adam lost his son in the process of gaining his power, he’s reckoning with 5,000 years of trauma, he’s not a hero, but his damage makes him powerful. There’s also a refreshingly anticolonialist bent lurking in the story of Kahndaq overthrowing their occupiers, embodied by the rebellious Amon.

While massive global star Johnson is clearly the box office draw, dramatic roles aren’t his forte, and that’s especially clear here as he delivers a dour and dark dramatic performance that’s lacking his natural charisma. Surprisingly, he’s the weak link. Collet-Serra surrounds Johnson with a charm offensive of supporting actors, including Hodge and Brosnan, who are great, as well as Shahi, Sabongui and comedian Mohammed Amer as Adrianna’s brother Karim. The director does heroic work crafting a film around Johnson that is fast and entertaining, tossing needle drops and skateboard stunts and movie references and zombies and funny uncles and fire demons in the mix just to keep us somewhat distracted from the void that is Black Adam himself.

The whole proposition is all a bit silly, and everyone seems in on the joke except for Johnson. While the film feels cobbled together out of spare parts of other superhero movies, and it’s almost instantly forgettable, Collet-Serra manages to hold it all together out of sheer force of will and an inherent sense of style. If there’s any superhero to write about with “Black Adam,” it’s the director, and it’s a good thing to see he still has some lightning coming out of his fingers.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Black Adam’ Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 in general release

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‘Black Adam’ Review: Dwayne Johnson’s Superhero Debut Is Another Catastrophe for DC’s Film Universe

David ehrlich.

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The question that “ Black Adam ” poses is a simple one: What happens when Hollywood’s most risk-averse movie star collides with Hollywood’s most risk-averse movie genre? The answer provided by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s depressingly inevitable (and inevitably depressing) foray into the superhero-industrial complex is, of course, even simpler: Exactly what you’d expect . Only worse.

All due respect to whatever unique and illustrious history Black Adam may have developed since his DC Comics debut in 1945, but the lifeless spectacle that director Jaume Collet-Serra — who made some nifty thrillers before “Jungle Cruise” reduced him to the John Ford of Rawson Marshall Thurbers — has cobbled together for the character’s big screen origin story is so exhaustingly derivative of other superhero movies that the ancient Egyptian antihero might as well not have any history at all.

The problems stem from an irreconcilable mismatch between star and subject. Part of the issue is that playing the Scorpion King does not, in fact, make someone of Middle Eastern descent (even if they did it twice). The other major cause of the disconnect is that Johnson’s fatal allergy to bold creative choices makes his brand a hopeless fit for such a politically fraught blockbuster — the tale of a superpowered former slave who wakes up from a 5,000-year nap and chooses to resist the American “liberators” in his fictional, Iraq-coded country with extreme force. Later, they team up to fight what might be the single most forgettable villain in comic book movie history, which is a wild thing to say about a giant hell demon with a pentagram scar across its entire chest, or about a genre that once pitted the Hulk against… a slightly neckier version of the Hulk.

“Black Adam” so desperately wants to be a darker and gristlier version of the same hamburger that audiences have been served over and over again for the last 15 years, but Johnson — who’s also a producer on the film, and a part-time architect of this cinematic universe in addition to our own — can’t abide the idea of doing something that might leave even one audience member behind. He doesn’t have the stomach to make Black Adam much of an antihero, let alone a bad guy (the character is workshopping catchphrases within a few scenes of waking up, and has a habit of disappearing from sight whenever things get complicated).

And so Johnson has made a decidedly PG-13 movie that lacks the imagination to take anyone with it. There isn’t a single character here that doesn’t feel like a cheap photocopy of one from Gotham or the MCU, not a single beat that doesn’t feel like it hasn’t been audience-tested within an inch of its life, not a single fight scene that isn’t smothered to death by the DCEU’s signature CGI gloop. “The superhero-industrial complex is worth a lot of money,” a character whose name I’ve already forgotten observes at one point, and “Black Adam” becomes a part of that business with all the fun and enthusiasm of a hedge fund buying $200 million worth of blue chip stocks.

That’s a shame, because Johnson remains one of the most enormously charismatic (and charismatically enormous) movie stars on Earth. And while “Black Adam” may not have been the best fit for his particular ethos or ethnicity, there’s oodles of potential in the idea of a mega-budget Hollywood superhero movie that centers Middle Eastern characters and/or reflects upon the legacy of Western imperialism in a way that Marvel films only pretend to.

At first, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani, and Adam Sztykiel’s script appears intent on doing that, even if retconning Egypt into the fictional country of Kahndaq — a precedent first set by David Goyer and Geoff Johns’ run of “JSA” comics — strips the film’s setting of valuable context and urgency. A Wakandian prologue set in 2600 B.C.E. introduces us to a magical ore called Eternium, and also to a young slave who impresses the wizards from “Shazam!” by rebelling against his king; those guys are always on the lookout for a hero worthy of their god-like powers, but their vetting process could probably stand to be a little bit more rigorous, given the consequences.

A safer candidate doesn’t skateboard into the picture until a few millennia later, when the story picks up with a puckish, comics-obsessed tween named Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) in present-day Shiruta, the capital city of Khandaq and home to the roundabout where 80 percent of this strangely confined movie takes place. While Amon spends his days messing with the white military types who police his people, his resistance fighter mom Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) searches the ruins outside of town for… I’m not quite sure. Is she trying to reawaken the mythical hero Teth-Adam, or is she hoping to find the same demonically infused Eternium crown that Teth-Adam’s king once sought all those years ago? It doesn’t really matter, because she does both.

Bringing Teth-Adam back from his coma pisses off Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, a character who always seems as annoyed to be in these movies as some of us are about having to watch them; she dispatches the Justice Society of America to get him under control, because there’s nothing DCEU movies love more than assembling a team of people that general audiences have never heard of and couldn’t possibly care about.

Meanwhile, finding Sauron’s tiara or whatever it is pisses off a criminal organization called Intergang, whose name sounds more like a new Pornhub tag than it does some kind of apocalyptic cartel. Who are they, where did they come from, and what do they want? “Black Adam” doesn’t bother to ask any of these questions, let alone try to answer them.

Intergang’s narrative purpose is to supply bad guy Ishmael Gregor (Marwan Kenzari) with some disposable goons, and Teth-Adam with some white targets who are unaffiliated with the American military. He slaughters them with a style and relish that skews more toward Zack Snyder than Kevin Feige — more towards speed-ramped carnage than colorful gymnastics, more towards vengeful power than winking heroism — but the character’s edges are completely sanded off the moment he forms a paternalistic alliance with Amon and his family (a group that also includes Palestinian-American stand-up Mohammed Amer as Adrianna’s brother, who manages to rescue a few solid laughs from a movie that keeps tripping over its comic beats).

Despite how their relationship should trigger certain resonances from Teth-Adam, the ancient’s bond with Amon never cuts any deeper than a running joke about sarcasm that feels even older than he is. Touching as it should be that Amon is so desperate for a hero, it’s also odd that a kid whose bedroom walls are plastered with DC merchandise wouldn’t be more excited about having a meta-human of his own. But don’t get too comfortable, because that oddness is soon replaced by an even more bizarre sense of irony when an entire phase’s worth of knock-off Marvel characters drop into Amon’s backyard.

Again, I’m not saying that the Justice Society of America were always a pale imitation of the Avengers on the page — that timeline wouldn’t check out — only that the Justice Society of America that’s introduced in “Black Adam” definitely feels like a counterfeit version of the Avengers on the screen. Of the X-Men, too.

I don’t care that Doctor Fate was created long before Doctor Strange was even a twinkle in Steve Ditko’s eye, only that Benedict Cumberbatch has cornered the market on goateed and dry-witted psychic wizards to the point that Pierce Brosnan’s performance here seems like nothing more than some very expensive cosplay (the fact that most of his screen time is spent yelling the word “Sabbac!” doesn’t help). Noah Centineo’s guileless Atom-Smasher is cute enough, but his take on the character has so clearly been recycled from Tom Holland’s innocent Spider-Man and Mark Ruffalo’s shaggy Hulk that the character’s explicit Jewishness becomes his only “original” detail (another reason why returning Teth-Adam to his roots as an Egyptian slave might have been a more rewarding choice). He gets to make a lot of googly eyes at Quintessa Swindell’s Cyclone — essentially just a glitzier Storm — and the compelling “Master Gardener” star gets to make them back. That’s their entire character.

Most disappointing of all might be Aldis Hodge ’s Hawkman, whose golden-winged costume brings some awesome “Stargate” energy to the most banal of hero archetypes. All told, the JSA doesn’t feel like the next generation of the Justice League so much as it does the DCEU’s farm team, and the minor-league scraps they get into on the streets of Shiruta do nothing to suggest otherwise.

Collet-Serra may have traded in his B-movie bonafides for beefier corporate paychecks, but last year’s clumsy “Jungle Cruise” still found him sneaking a few genuine thrills into a film adapted from a Disney theme park ride. Alas, even that meager dose of ambition has been snuffed out from him here, as virtually nothing about “Black Adam” — from its muddled fight scenes to its painful needle drops — suggests any kind of creative vision behind the camera (“Paint it Black” is practically Tarantino-esque compared to the bit where Kanye West’s “Power” is shoehorned into the mix for 20 seconds). The only moment with any pronounced style is a direct homage to Sergio Leone, which also works because Johnson is at his most comfortable making hard faces at the camera and flexing his eyebrows in extreme close-up. Grappling with several millennia worth of grief or arguing for the self-governance of his people… not so much.

The problem isn’t that Johnson can’t act — he definitely can! — the problem is that he doesn’t want to. He still wants the simple idolatry that a kid might have for their favorite athlete. He wants to be larger than life. But even the biggest of movie stars need to be a little smaller than that in order to give people something to watch, and not just look up to. “Force is always necessary,” Teth-Adam insists, and it’s refreshing that “Black Adam” doesn’t talk him down from that. But risk is always necessary, too; for heroes, yes, but even more so for anyone who’s supposedly willing to be something more complicated than that.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Black Adam” in theaters on Friday, October 21.

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Black Adam Review

The DC Film universe has, for nearly a decade now, been pinballing between the lightness of Shazam! or Wonder Woman and the grim violence of Batman v Superman . With Black Adam , Dwayne Johnson and director Jaume Collet-Serra attempt to offer a grand unified theory of DC, mixing family-film tropes with a protagonist who straight-up murders people. The result is sometimes a mess, but it’s a generally entertaining one.

As is traditional, a complicated prologue set in 2600 BCE introduces a superpowered hero who then disappears. Cut to the present day, and the vaguely scholarly freedom fighter Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ) goes to visit an ancient tomb (as is also traditional). She reads out an inscription and whaddya know, lightning strikes to release Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) to battle the enemies who threaten her, and their shared homeland of Kahndaq. Adam is so powerful, however, that soon Viola Davis ’ Amanda Waller gets the Justice Society involved. They’re led by flying fighter Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ) and magic user Doctor Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), who bring newbies Atom Smasher ( Noah Centineo ) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) to stop this new threat.

There’s never much doubt where all this is going. Black Adam clearly isn’t that bad, given how he bonds with Adrianna (a largely undeveloped character) and her likeable son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui). And the Justice Society, while rightly accused of only caring about Kahndaq’s plight when a superpowered being arises there, are clearly well-meaning. There’s obviously going to be a greater threat to come. But first Collet-Sera stages some fun, destructive action scenes to allow Adam and the Justice Society to strut their stuff in. Brosnan’s a standout: his powers are extremely Doctor Strange-y, down to the glass-shattering of reality, but he has a fatalistic sense of the future and a lightness of touch that feels fresh. The film also wisely doesn’t pretend that Black Adam is ever in much danger: it’s only a question of how angry he gets, and who's hit in the crossfire.

The film’s greatest strength, which runs like a current through it, is the sense that superpowers can be terrifying.

Still, that weird contradiction remains: Johnson, Collet-Serra and their team want edge, but without alienating family audiences. So you get massive action scenes without any obvious civilian casualties, and godlike powers without consequence. It’s all nicely shot in low-lying sun and dusty vistas, but it suffers from the weightlessness that gives superhero movies their bad name: great power, no responsibility.

The film’s greatest strength, which runs like a current through it, is the sense that superpowers can be terrifying. Johnson, far stiller and more stony-faced than usual, shows a sort of bemused amorality, and his killing of bad guys seems as natural as breathing during his impressive introductory scenes. The idea of a superhuman who fights for his oppressed people is also a solid one, and an interesting challenge to the usual small-c conservative superheroes who just save a few individuals from baddies. Black Adam may not make his world better, not yet, but he shows the potential to shake up the DC Universe in ways that may yet succeed in uniting its disparate elements.

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Black Adam review: New superheroes and villains rise, but the slog remains the same

The DCEU expands with its B team, promoted to an underwhelming movie of its own.

Senior Editor, Movies

Being steeped in comics lore is a very different thing than being emotionally invested in a movie. Suffice to say, there are people — many people — who have been anticipating a Black Adam spinoff for years. But apart from a fleeting end-credits scene which we won't spoil here, none of the film's DC Comics-derived characters, major or minor, will be recognizable to nonfans. The fact that they haven't gotten franchises of their own speaks not to unearthed gold but the restless, insatiable appetite of today's superhero industrial complex (a phrase actually uttered in Black Adam 's dialogue), now moving onto the crumbs. It's a bit like wandering into another family's heated domestic argument already in progress.

If you just go with it, though, you'll get a pre-chewed experience that's vaguely familiar and generic, but with a subversive zag or two that shouldn't be discounted. Black Adam (now in theaters) begins with a breathless, boy-narrated rush through thousands of years of history sketching the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq; before your eyes glaze over, the takeaways are: oppressed slaves, glowing blue crown of power, a hero will rise, etc. Today's Kahndaq — sun-blasted, overcrowded, specked with military checkpoints and British-accented soldiers — indicates the anti-colonialist movie that Black Adam sometimes gestures at (as forcefully as a multimillion-dollar product from a global media conglomerate can).

When that hero does rise, floating ominously above the city, he's Teth-Adam ( Dwayne Johnson ), immortal, accidentally freed from his prison tomb, and not hip to today's morality, never mind its wokeness. Johnson has gone on record about his longtime obsession with the character, yet, in a paradox more interesting than the movie itself, he's distinctly unsuited for the role, despite his build. As an actor, the Rock has been not merely serviceable but terrific in parts that lean on his speed and slyness. ( Michael Bay , of all people, got something subtle out of him in 2013's underrated Pain & Gain .) "Glower!" you'll yell at the screen, but Johnson's not the glowering type.

The viciousness feels unearned; Black Adam bends over backward to link its antihero to Clint Eastwood's iconic Man with No Name, but apart from a few flashes of PG-13 gore (signature-free Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra grasps for the vibe of Terminator 2: Judgment Day ), the film is unusually toothless. It doesn't help that the plot brings on a whole host of nobodies — Doctor Fate! ( Pierce Brosnan ), Cyclone! ( Quintessa Swindell ), Atom Smasher! ( Noah Centineo ), Hawkman! ( Aldis Hodge ) — all of them bent on trying to take down the one mildly interesting presence in the film. Black Adam is what happens when artists say they want to go dark but don't really have the stomach for it. Cue scenes of humorless mid-air wrestling, shake vigorously, wait for the sequel. Grade: C+

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'Black Adam' review: Dwayne Johnson's DC superhero movie rides the lightning, fizzles out

Finally, “The Rock” is starring in his own superhero movie:  Dwayne Johnson carries “Black Adam” atop his mighty shoulders, but it proves too weighty a task. 

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( “Jungle Cruise” ), the newest DC film is full of swagger and intensity, yet it sadly lacks character – which is a problem considering “Black Adam” (★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters now) rolls out all sorts of new personalities. This is Johnson’s baby, a film spotlighting a complicated antihero he has championed for years. It wins some battles and packs plenty of punch, yet it just can’t get past familiar tropes and flaws.

Teth Adam (Johnson) is a former enslaved man with godlike abilities from ancient times who has been imprisoned for 5,000 years. After being released, he discovers that his home country of Kahndaq, a fictional country in the Middle East where he was once a champion, is now ruled by the mercenary organization Intergang and in desperate need of a revolutionary type of dude. None of it exactly pleases this dark figure with a hooded cape and a mean streak, so Adam starts taking out bad guys in violent fashion.

Enter the Justice Society of America, a group of heroes led by Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) – a mix of Bruce Wayne and Professor X running a superteam out of his extremely high-tech mansion – tasked with confronting this new global metahuman threat. The squad includes helmeted sorcerer Doctor Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), human tornado Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and fresh-faced, size-changing youngster Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo).  But even together they have trouble tussling with a wrecking machine who harnesses lightning and doesn’t dig people getting in his way.

While he sports a morally questionable attitude when it comes to killing people, Adam’s not the real big bad of his movie. An evil being connected to the title character’s tragic backstory emerges, and after they smack each other around for a bit, the JSA and Black Adam team up to take on the bigger problem.

Happy 50th birthday, The Rock!: Every Dwayne Johnson movie role, definitively ranked

Yes, it’s a lesson right out of Comic Book Movie 101. “Black Adam” also takes a step back from DC movies like “Shazam!” and “The Suicide Squad,” efforts that hinted at the larger DC world but had their own interesting vibe and were mostly self-contained narratives. The new movie stylistically harks back to earlier Zack Snyder superhero works, and in many ways is a two-hour buildup to a major scene at the end that foreshadows what’s to come. (It is pretty nifty.)

Like a lot of its ilk, “Black Adam” tosses out too many new characters without adequate development. Hodge and especially Brosnan are most effective at giving audiences rousing new heroes, even though we don't get a chance to know them well. Then there’s Black Adam himself, who at least earns somewhat of a character arc. While the film’s definitely going for a Man with No Name bent – a Clint Eastwood movie even plays on a TV before Johnson’s antihero blasts it – results are mixed.

'Black Adam': Why Pierce Brosnan wore his own wedding ring as Doctor Fate

To his credit, Johnson eagerly takes on a role that's much different from his popular work (for example, "Central Intelligence" and the "Fast and Furious" and "Jumanji" movies) and uses his physical presence and his natural magnetism. Black Adam is not a likable guy at the start, and Johnson works overtime to mold him into a cool, stoic and havoc-wreaking customer, first on a quest for vengeance and then an enlightening journey (although Adam reminding various folks every five minutes that “I’m not a hero” doesn’t help).

“Black Adam” is decent when it comes to world-building – Collet-Serra’s depiction of old Kahndaq is a standout, although he could have cut down on the many slow-motion action sequences throughout the film. And it intriguingly goes where other similar flicks haven’t by digging into themes of imperialism and what makes a champion in a modern world.

If the suit fits, wear it, and Black Adam is perfect for Johnson’s action-figure frame. He just deserves a better first superhero outing than this.

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In 'Black Adam,' a lightning-based champion can't hold a charge

Glen Weldon

Black Adam the character (Dwayne Johnson) tosses lightning, but Black Adam the movie is a Faraday cage. Warner Bros. hide caption

Black Adam the character (Dwayne Johnson) tosses lightning, but Black Adam the movie is a Faraday cage.

Black Adam is what happens when you build a movie from the outside in — when you start with the visuals and figure everything else will just fall into place.

More to the point: Black Adam doesn't work. To understand why, it helps to know where the character comes from.

In the early 2000s, writers Geoff Johns and David S. Goyer — with art by Stephen Sadowski and many others — introduced to the comics pages a new version of Black Adam. The character had been around since the 1940s as a supervillain who dogged the family of superheroes that, like him, had been given powers by the wizard Shazam. As such, he came factory-installed with the basic supervillain-threats package: I'll destroy you, I'll rule the world, etc.

Their new Black Adam, however, was a statesman in spandex, ruler of the fictional nation of Kandhaq. He was haughty, superior, imperious, humorless. They were careful never to depict him doing anything so prosaic as walking, or even standing. No — whenever you saw him, he hovered about a foot above the floor, peering down his aquiline nose at those (literally and figuratively!) beneath him. It was a power move, obviously — and it made for a great visual. Not for nothing.

When what the Rock is cooking is under-seasoned

From the moment he was first revamped in the comics, fan sites lit up with posts dreamcasting Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Black Adam. In their defense, there was a strong resemblance. And as this is superhero comics we're talking about, keep in mind that the essential appeal of any character is partly — let's be real, largely — visual. Particularly for readers of comics who start young, it's a hero or villain's look — their color palette, costume design, logo, and their sheer physicality as rendered across splash pages and bursting out of panel grids — that first pulls you in, and will likely retain its visceral power over you for the rest of your life.

So those fans posting their composite renderings of Black Adam's costume crudely (and sometimes not-so-crudely) Photoshopped over Johnson's superhero-ready physique were responding to something real — but that something was strictly visual. It ignored all of the dutiful work that comics writers and artists had devoted to defining the character's newly made-over vibe as a kind of diet Doctor Doom. (Doctor Vague Dread? Doctor Outlook Not So Good? Doctor Don't Count Your Chickens?)

Among the many fans of the comics' Black Adam who didn't get this particular memo, if we're to simply judge by the evidence available onscreen in Black Adam , is Dwayne Johnson himself.

Because while the actor played the heel back in his wrestling days, he's spent his retirement from the ring assiduously cultivating a charming, wisecracking, everyone's-older-brother persona, both on and off the screen. His is a charismatic presence that flatly, emphatically and very intentionally exists to dispel notions like "haughty," "imperious" and especially "humorless."

It's easy to imagine the big lug reading a comic depicting Black Adam as an all-powerful badass who slaughters hundreds of bad guys and thinking: That'd be cool to play. And then, after checking his socials, going even further than that: And people want to see me play it!

But his performance in director Jaume Collet-Serra's middling, muddled foray into the DCU keeps fighting against itself — and losing. The actor's dogged attempt to play aloof and imperious effectively quashes his natural, movie-star charisma — his ability to connect to audiences — and shuts him down completely. As a result, his Adam comes across as simply dour. Distant. Ponderous. Persnickety, even.

Hey Mr. Producer, I'm talking to you, sir

Perhaps he thinks he's serving Clint Eastwood's stoic Man With No Name? Certainly the film itself explicitly and repeatedly references that character. The difference, which turns out to be an all-important one, lies in the two actors' respective approaches to stardom.

Eastwood never particularly cared what we thought of him as a person. Johnson, however, has always displayed an innate yet carefully cultivated sense of what he believes his audience wants from him, and a baseline desire to move through the world as Four-Quadrant Appeal made flesh. You can feel that brand-awareness, that abiding cautiousness, leaking out of Johnson every moment he spends onscreen here.

That the star is also a producer of Black Adam will be lost on no one, as it keeps manifesting in ways small and large.

Small first: In the comics, Black Adam sports a Dracula-esque widow's peak and pointy little elf-ears. Both of those attributes got nixed — in a very early production meeting, no doubt.

Again and again in the film, physical representations of other, much better-known DC Comics characters — posters, action figures, etc. — get crushed or shredded or pulverized into a fine dust. It feels playful at first — a shot across the bow! — but then, somewhere after the fifth occurrence, it becomes something else.

More centrally, we have Johnson's insistence that Black Adam's story merited its own film, and should not get shunted into a Shazam! sequel, as was originally planned. This despite the fact that the two characters share the same origin, power set and visual iconography. What are we to make of the fact that Zachary Levi's Shazam! character, a powerful flying guy with lightning powers, doesn't even rate a mention in a film whose central plot finds Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, again) scrambling to find heroes capable of going up against...a powerful flying guy with lightning powers?

If there's a difference between being a producer and convincing a major studio to bankroll your vanity project, Black Adam doesn't argue strongly for it.

Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) would like a word. (Pssst. It's "Shazam." "Shazam" is the word he would like.) Warner Bros. hide caption

Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) would like a word. (Pssst. It's "Shazam." "Shazam" is the word he would like.)

Going back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths

It seems both obvious and inevitable to note that, this many years into superhero cinema's ascendancy, novelty comes at a premium.

Even so, Black Adam seems perfectly content to pick over the wilted remains of the superhero-movie salad bar. Its wry, goateed wizard Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan) plays like warmed-over wry, goateed wizard Dr. Strange. Its gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Atom-Smasher (Noah Centineo) can't help but remind us of gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Ant-Man. Its magical element Eternium feels like something scribbled on the whiteboard at the naming session where they brainstormed Vibranium. And the nerdy kid who eagerly advises Black Adam about his powers and catchphrases (Bodhi Sabongui) owes so much to the nerdy kid who eagerly advised Zachary Levi's character about his powers and catchphrases that it's gotta be an intentional attempt at parallelism. Right?

What is arguably new — new-ish, anyway — about Black Adam is how matter-of-factly it positioning at its center an all-powerful anti-hero who kills without remorse.

But even this gets in the way of the film's storytelling. We kick off with the Kandhaqi freedom-fighter Arianna (Sarah Shahi) unwittingly awakening Black Adam from his millennia-long sleep and, equally unwittingly, leading many, many, many generic bad guys to his location. Black Adam unceremoniously proceeds to slaughter them in a set-piece marked by Zack Snyder-esque camera flourishes — but in the aftermath, as he hovers over a field strewn with dismembered corpses, you start wondering where the film can go from there. How does it escalate? How does it hope to increase the tension?

For a while, Black Adam simply opts not to bother. Instead, it just keeps throwing more generic bad guys into the po-faced, levitating sausage grinder that is Johnson's character. When the Justice Society arrives, with its more powerful opponents, it's reasonable to hope that they'd pose something of a challenge. But no, not really — he still kicks their asses in a series of hero-on-hero fight scenes. It just takes him a little longer.

You'd think, in a movie that featured so many of the kind of super-powered confrontations that most films like this shunt to the third act, we'd be mercifully spared the climactic clash in which the hero fights an evil version of themselves.

Don't hold your breath.

When CGI catches up to comics artists

But back to the Justice Society — there's Brosnan's Dr. Fate, Centineo's Atom-Smasher, plus Aldis Hodge's Hawkman and Quintessa Swindell's Cyclone. Don't worry, you haven't missed the movie that introduced any of them before — this isn't the MCU, after all, where characters get a trot around the track on their own before getting dragooned into a team. In DC, everyone hits the ground running at the same time.

Consequently, the film asks us to invest far more emotional weight in the Dr. Fate/Hawkman friendship than Brosnan and Hodge manage to generate in their scant minutes of screen time together.

But at least they look great, which is no small feat. Growing up reading Dr. Fate comics (yes, I was the one!) I've always loved the bold simplicity of his blue-and-gold outfit — whenever he dons the helm that obscures his face, he could pass for the mascot of University of Michigan's fencing team. And while Hawkman's costume always looks great on paper, there's a nagging goofiness that's crept into his few previous live-action forays.

Think about it: In the comics, you've got a guy hovering in the air with wings dramatically extended. Awesome! Iconic!

But in live-action, the only way that same guy stays airborne is by...flapping. And flapping. And flapping. It's much less striking. It's vaguely uncomfortable to look at, frankly.

This Hawkman works, though. So well that you hardly even notice the flapping.

The hero Cyclone isn't given much to do, but what little she does, she does colorfully. As she generates and controls the wind, she transforms into a multi-hued blur — until, that is, director Collet-Serra ramps down the camera speed, and we get a glamour shot that looks like a Sears Portrait Studio photographer instructed her to poke her head through a bed of rainbow cotton candy.

Keep it simple, for the shareholders

Early on, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Black Adam aims to engage with ideas that, historically, PG-13 studio superhero movies studiously avoid: the brutal legacy of imperialism and colonization, for example. The inadequacy of individual action – even superheroic action — within systems built to oppress. For a thrilling moment, even the most essential tenet of superheroism — the whole notion of putting one's faith in a single individual, any individual, instead of taking collective action — seems like it might be on the table. But in the end these ideas, and others, get only gestured toward, never seriously engaged with.

Most mystifying is the film's decision to depict Kandhaq as a country under the thumb of a white occupying force, only to then primly insist that the true enemy here is a homegrown would-be tyrant. It's a dodge, and it's put there intentionally to assuage, to reassure, to smooth any feathers that might get ruffled by the blandest suggestion of Western culpability in the oppression of even a fictional people.

It's just one more of this film's many frustrating aspects, but it's rooted, like all the rest of them, in the overcautious, risk-avoidant hollowness of its central performance.

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‘black adam’ review: dwayne johnson’s charisma carries a morally muddy superhero flick.

The star brings Shazam's maybe-nemesis to the screen in director Jaume Collet-Serra's DC debut, costarring Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Politics be damned, the first thing most comics buffs will notice is that, though we’ve prayed DC would move on, there are more than echoes of the Snyderverse here. In the very first sequence, we get slo-mo and flying globules of blood that could almost be outtakes from 300 . Conspicuous slo-mo plagues the film, and rumor-mongers will already know of stronger ties to Zack Snyder’s films.

Identification with the macho side of DC’s mythology might explain why, of the many superpowered costars here, the expected one is absent. The Shazam of David F. Sandberg’s surprisingly charming 2019 film would be welcome, shifting the focus away from revved-up egos and ancient grievances, but no: Don’t expect Zachary Levi’s boy-turned-hero to show up.

Millennia later, a Kahndaq scholar named Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) hunts for the king’s Eternium crown in a forgotten tomb. She finds it, and unwittingly revives the long-dead champion, just as her expedition is ambushed by Intergang, the crew of mercenaries that has terrorized Kahndaq for decades. Violence ensues.

Johnson’s resurrected warrior, Teth Adam, gets most of his briefing on the modern world from Adrianna’s son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui). Mother and son have secretly been working against Intergang, and possessing the magic crown only makes them bigger targets. But Teth Adam cares little about their troubles, and chides the boy for not knowing violence is the answer to such problems.

Others take a greater interest. In America, Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ) enlists Doctor Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ) and some less famous heroes to go retrieve the crown and lock it up. They zip around the globe in a jet whose detachable cockpit would make any billionaire owner of phallic rockets envious, and proceed to behave (to Adrianna’s eyes, at least) like enforcers of a paternalistic Western power structure.

(The script does little to help non-DC-scholars here, briefly alluding to nanobots and relics and the Justice Society of America as if other movies had introduced them already. With so many new characters in what is basically a two-hour fight scene, there’s no place for much exposition.)

Johnson creates a magnetic antihero, volatile and antisocial. He doesn’t fly so much as stalk the sky; he swats opponents like the bundles of weightless CG pixels they are. And this passion project serves the character well, setting him up for adventures one hopes will be less predictable than this one.

And maybe, while Teth Adam slowly assembles a coherent moral worldview over the course of many movies, America can grow out of its appalling tendency to elect celebrities with no experience in making governments work. Sadly, that’ll take more than wizards and magic rocks.

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Black Adam isn’t nearly as subversive as it’s meant to be

The overstuffed film has some fuzzy, unclear ideas about heroism

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Share All sharing options for: Black Adam isn’t nearly as subversive as it’s meant to be

One of Black Adam ’s many unnecessary brawls between Dwayne Johnson’s eponymous antihero and the more conventional superheroes of the Justice Society of America takes place in the room of a superhero-obsessed kid. The blows and blasts of the fight rip apart posters dedicated to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, in a visual representation that director Jaume Collet-Serra is trying to distance himself from Zack Snyder and his DC Snyderverse. But the film never makes a convincing argument for what should be built in its place.

Black Adam is overstuffed with underdeveloped concepts and characters that have been done better in other shows and films. Loosely combining plot elements from Black Adam’s arc in 52 and JSA , the film is mostly set in the generic Middle Eastern nation of Kahndaq, which was home to the earliest human civilization. Using the same fairy-tale structure as the intro to Black Panther , a lengthy exposition dump at the beginning of the film explains that Kahndaq was conquered nearly 5,000 years ago by a tyrant who enslaved his own people in order to craft a magical crown that would give him demonic powers.

When a young champion had the courage to stand against the king, a group of wizards gifted him with mighty powers — the same abilities that would eventually be given to Billy Batson in Shazam . Imbued with the literal power of the gods, Teth-Adam destroyed the king and his palace, but afterward, he was sealed away, along with the crown. Kahndaq has since become a resource-cursed country ruled by the criminal syndicate Intergang.

Intergang reads as a substitute for private military companies like Blackwater or Wagner Group, but Black Adam ’s three-man writing team doesn’t have the courage to get political about such groups’ role in the world, even as they’re trying to write a superhero spin on the Arab Spring . Academic/tomb raider Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) leads a group with the brilliant plan of rooting the crown out of its 5,000-year hiding place in order to re-hide it elsewhere, all to keep it out of Intergang’s hands. That project goes about as well as efforts to protect a McGuffin always do. Adrianna winds up releasing Teth-Adam, who starts off by frying Adrianna’s captors like a living Ark of the Covenant, then solemnly annihilates an entire Intergang squad to the tune of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.”

All the killing Adam does is meant to be some combination of funny, because he’s so casual about his overwhelming power, and triumphant: He’s liberating his homeland from a group of goons with bad teeth and future-tech powered by Eternium, an obscure mineral in DC lore that acts like Kryptonite for heroes who rely on magic. Here, it’s also basically the DC equivalent of Black Panther ’s tech-enabling element vibranium, allowing Intergang to ride around on flying scooters that look like they were designed by the Green Goblin. For a while, the biggest problem Adam has is that he tends to kill people too quickly to properly deliver the heroic catchphrase Adrianna’s son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) insists he should have.

But Adam is too volatile to be left free, according to Task Force X leader Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising her role from Peacemaker and various Suicide Squads ). She deploys the Justice Society of America to take him captive. The JSA sternly insists that Adam isn’t a hero, because heroes don’t kill. At the same time, every time they go into action, they cause collateral damage on the scale of Team America: World Police . Refusing to negotiate with Adam or even try to understand his millennia-old perspective, they keep forcing new fights with him — until they inevitably all have to team up to fight the film’s thinly developed true villain, in a CGI-heavy sequence that shares all the problems of the conclusions of Wonder Woman , Shazam , and many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies before them.

Watchmen and The Boys deliver much sharper commentary on superheroes as a version of American military intervention. The problem is that Black Adam still argues that superheroes are a net good for the world, and that they deserve their power, even though it continually shows them abusing that power and ignoring the will of the people they claim they’re representing. The writers basically just land on the idea that countries’ right to self-determination means they’re each entitled to have their own representative godlike avatar. The theme of heroes rising up against oppression would also probably have worked better if Johnson agreed to occasionally lose a fight .

Black Adam never develops its JSA members enough to let audiences care about them, which is a problem, since much of the film’s emotional payoff revolves around the bond between their leader, Hawkman, aka Carter Hall (Aldis Hodge), and the powerful wizard Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan). While Brosnan brings his usual charm to the role of an aging hero looking to pass the torch to the next generation, there’s never any explanation of what his time serving in the JSA has meant to him or Carter. There’s also a big missed opportunity to create common ground between Adam and Hawkman, who is typically a reincarnating hero from ancient Egypt. The film doesn’t even mention his backstory.

Instead, we get a bunch of time wasted on new JSA recruits Maxine Hunkel, aka Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Al Rothstein, aka Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). They mostly seem to be in the movie to add youth interest and a minimal romance plot, and to inject more colorful powers into all the battles, which feel cribbed from Captain America: Civil War . The colorful way Cyclone whirls is admittedly stunning, but Al is bumbling comic relief as a version of Ant-Man who can only go big. There’s huge overlap in the power sets of characters between DC and Marvel, and the MCU has a massive edge in that it’s beaten DC to the punch in putting many of those characters on screen, which leaves DC’s versions feeling derivative. But Black Adam is also packed with slo-mo high-def sequences that feel cribbed straight from Zack Snyder’s 300 , so Collet-Serra doesn’t seem overly concerned with visual originality.

Waller’s presence and a quick cameo from her lieutenant Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) are a reminder of better, more subversive comic book stories like Peacemaker , which provides a far deeper view on why heroes shouldn’t kill. The creators could have even stood to take some notes from Marvel’s irreverent and far more tightly written Venom movies . The writers keep inserting new facts about Kahndaq and the evil crown all the way through Black Adam ’s third act, whereas Venom: Let There Be Carnage largely boils its exposition down to the titular alien symbiote freaking out when he first sees the villain Carnage, because he’s a red symbiote , which is apparently all the audience needs to know.

The best criticism of Black Adam might have been made by Johnson himself, well before the movie came out, in the post-credits sequence for DC League of Super-Pets . As Black Adam’s canine companion Anubis, Johnson notes that being an antihero is “basically exactly like a regular hero, except way cooler. You make up your own rules and then you break them. Also, you can ignore most moral and ethical conventions because no one can stop you.” Black Adam ’s take on antiheroism never really contradicts that pointed takedown. The film is so focused on the idea of a black-clad mass murderer being cool that it doesn’t ever answer the questions it starts to raise about what code a hero should live by, or where the limits of redemption lie. In that regard, Black Adam is just like the many other mediocre superhero movies it plays at subverting: It’s more focused on spectacle than on critiquing the genre, or developing any of the deeper themes it feints at exploring.

Black Adam is in theaters now.

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“Black Adam,” Reviewed: Dwayne Johnson Emerges from a Tomb and Finds Nothing

There’s nothing so wrong with “Black Adam” that it should be avoided, but nothing—besides the appealing presence of Dwayne Johnson—that makes it worth rushing out to see. The movie’s many small flaws—and even its few small virtues—arise from its one big problem, namely, its positioning in the DC corporate-cinematic empire. It isn’t worse than many of the big-budget C.G.I. superhero spectacles that have more or less taken over studio filmmaking, but it accumulates the genre’s—and the business’s—bad habits into a single two-hour-plus package, and only hints at the format’s occasional pleasures. “Black Adam” feels like a place-filler for a movie that’s remaining to be made, but, in its bare and shrugged-off sufficiency, it does one positive thing that, if nothing else, at least accounts for its success: for all the churning action and elaborately jerry-rigged plot, there’s little to distract from the movie’s pedestal-like display of Johnson, its real-life superhero.

It begins with an immense backstory of mumbo-jumbo, set in 2600 B.C.E., in a fictitious Middle Eastern or North African land called Kahndaq, where a tyrant named Ahk-Ton (Marwan Kenzari) enslaves his subjects to dig for a mineral called Eternium with which he’ll forge a superpowered crown. One young subject, however, rebels and exhorts his countrymen to revolt; he is endowed with his own superheroic power that’s summoned with the word “shazam,” and, in the resulting melee, Akh-Ton is killed and his palace is blown to rubble. Flash forward to present-day Kahndaq: it’s occupied by a paramilitary crime ring called Intergang, and a trio of dissidents led by an archeologist named Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), and helped by her teen-age son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), are searching, among remote subterranean ruins, for the crown in the hope of its aiding their resistance. When Intergang follows and attacks them there, she summons (“Shazam!”) the hero of 2600 B.C.E., Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), from his four thousand-plus of years in an underground tomb. He emerges and lays waste to the assailants.

But this seemingly invulnerable liberator, who catches R.P.G.s and hurls blue thunderbolts, is viewed with suspicion by the American agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising this role from the two recent Suicide Squad movies). In order to stop him, she unites the so-called Justice Society—Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), who’s endowed with wings and a beak; Kent Nelson, a.k.a. Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), who, by means of his golden helmet, can see the future; Maxine Hunkel, a.k.a. Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), who swirls up devastating green windstorms; and Al Rothstein, a.k.a. Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), who can expand to the size of a city walkup, or taller. (Al’s uncle gets a seconds-long cameo, and it’s one of the movie’s few highlights: Henry Winkler.)

That’s where the movie’s philosophical dimension comes in. Teth-Adam is an angry man, still seething over what happened in ancient Kahndaq, and his mores are atavistic, with no compunctions about the use of violence, the practice of killing, the collateral damage of mass destruction. (He also sees a TV set for the first time—which, with primeval wisdom, he blasts to smithereens.) But the Justice Society protests: they believe, as Hawkman says, in “due process,” and they warn him to lay off the “extrajudicial killings.” Try as they might, they can’t rein the invulnerable fighter in by force, but, when he himself recognizes the danger posed by his rage, he allows himself to be reëntombed—and gagged—in order not to utter the magic word again. Then a brutal revenant from early Kahndaq seeks—with the aid of smoldering, ancient zombies—to restore Akh-Ton’s dynasty, and the Justice Society needs Teth-Adam back.

In contrast to the 2019 movie “ Shazam !,” which treats its premise with an apt silliness that yields an unusually amiable superhero comedy, “Black Adam,” sparked by its historical backstory and its enduring implications in current-day political conflict, has a thudding earnestness that its specifics belie. Thus, Davis and Hodge offer performances of grand severity (Davis’s diction alone could smash concrete) that belong to the Shakespearean movie in which neither has yet been cast. Brosnan coasts charmingly in a role that offers him nothing but elegant manners; Swindell and Centineo are part of a Y.A. romance that’s itself entombed in anticipation of a sequel. As for Johnson, he has the star power and the physical prowess to hold attention with minimal fuss, but the role itself, with its tragic implications and mighty gestures, is rote and empty. (I’m still waiting for Johnson to find his way into another movie that offers him as exuberant a showcase as did “ Pain and Gain ”; his talent is far greater than most of his vehicles, no pun intended.) Teth-Adam’s struggles with himself, the weight of his memories, the rise of self-awareness, even the simple fact of his encounters with a new world (trivialized in a single line of dialogue) turn the hero into a mere plaything of the rickety plot, which appears to add its byways as part of a just-so story crafted to yield a franchise.

If the wry details that glitter on the movie’s surface—such as Amon’s effort to teach Teth-Adam the proper use of a catchphrase, or Teth-Adam’s introduction to the concept of sarcasm—stand out in memory, it’s because the substance that it attaches to dries up and blows away like the ashes of half the universe at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.” What “Black Adam” lacks is the sense of a point of view; even the Russo brothers’ armchair-army bluster in Marvel epics suggests a greater sense of personality, of personal commitment and aesthetic attitude, than the synthetic enormity of “Black Adam.” Jaume Collet-Serra, the movie’s director, comes off as a skillful coördinator whose connection to the very essence of superheroes, their fantastic natures and outsized powers, seems merely technical, a problem to be solved rather than a realm of limitless possibilities.

Those limitless possibilities are part of the reason that superhero movies aptly wore out their critical welcomes very quickly. As ultra-high-budget tentpole productions meant for international consumption, these films have production demands that tend to dominate the imagination of direction, with only a few notable exceptions, such as “ Ant-Man ,” “ Black Panther ,” and “ Man of Steel ” (or, for that matter, brief exceptional interludes within unexceptional films, such as “ Doctor Strange ”). There’s something morally deadening and aesthetically depressing about the bottomless toy chest of C.G.I. being reduced to the toolbox of cinematic bureaucracy.

It’s no less numbing to find material meant for children retconned for adults—and, in the process, for most of the naïve delight to be leached out, and for any serious concerns to be shoehorned in and then waved away with dazzle and noise. With no discernible artistic perspective, “Black Adam” offers a moral realm that draws no lines, a personal one of simplistic stakes, a political one that suggests any interpretation, an audiovisual one that rehashes long-familiar tropes and repackages overused devices for a commercial experiment that might as well wear its import as its title. When I was in Paris in 1983, Jerry Lewis—yes, they really did love him there—had a new movie in theatres. In the U.S., it was originally titled “Smorgasbord” (and later reissued as “ Cracking Up ”); in France, they adored him so that they released it as “T’es fou Jerry”—“You’re Crazy, Jerry.” “Black Adam” could be retitled “You’re a Superhero, Dwayne”—it’s the marketing team’s PowerPoint presentation extended to feature length. ♦

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‘Black Adam’: Dwayne Johnson Enters the DCEU. You Run for the Exits

By David Fear

In the Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, circa 2500 B.C., a tyrannical king is desperate to mine a rare mineral known as “Eternium.” Slaves toil day and night in search of this magical resource, so that he may fashion a supernatural crown out of it that will grant him immeasurable power. Luckily, a boy is deemed worthy by a council of ancient wizards to be the defender of his people, and with one word (“Shazam!”), he is transformed into a mighty hero. He destroys the palace before this wretched regent becomes unstoppable and immortal, burying the crown and, unfortunately, himself along with it. He will slumber for some 5000 years before he’s awoken…and he will be angry….

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Boom! Enter Johnson. Bang! The soldiers open fire. Splat! Bodies are flung like rag dolls, as well as being ripped apart, crushed, and incinerated by lightning. Once the melee moves outside, fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and heavy weaponry, not to mention the men who operate all of these things, are casually, brutally destroyed to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.” They wanted a hero. Because this superhuman woke up on the wrong side of the tomb, they got a killing machine instead.

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Should you not have entire multicharacter histories at your beck and call, you may find yourself lost in the worldbuilding wilderness, wondering how so much of this fits together, who’s capable of doing what, why certain sacrifices matter, and why you should care about these peripheral, yet supposedly important characters that take up so much screen time. At least Hodge and Brosnan seem to know what movie they’re in, striking splash-page poses and saying the lines with the requisite end-of-the-universe solemnity. But there’s making a movie for the fans, and making a movie that only fans can decipher and appreciate. All of it could have been fixed, and easily. This is just lazy superhero storytelling.

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Lots of bashing and smashing in disappointing DC movie.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie poses (but doesn't follow up on) interes

The superheroes are all brave and try to do what t

The setting of Kahndaq is a fictional place, but i

High body count, and lots of guns and shooting. Ch

Sporadic use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss,"

Several posters and toys for various DC characters

Parents need to know that Black Adam is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie, and a spin-off from Shazam! . Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it…

Positive Messages

The movie poses (but doesn't follow up on) interesting questions about good and evil, such as who decides what's good and what's evil, and is itOK to cross the line between the two if good comes out of it? Also: What if there's no such thing as absolutes?

Positive Role Models

The superheroes are all brave and try to do what they think is right, even though they sometimes make mistakes. And they all seem open to learning, even if things are sometimes ambiguous. Adrianna is central to the plot, both as a voice for moral inquiry about military occupation and political resistance and for family unity.

Diverse Representations

The setting of Kahndaq is a fictional place, but it's populated by a diverse group of actors/characters, including star Dwayne Johnson, co-stars Aldis Hodge and Sarah Shahi, and many more. Women characters have power and agency, especially Adrianna, who is a strong, brave leader. The main group of superheroes does include two White men. But the movie's story puts decisions in the hands of local people, rather than White interlopers. A heavyset character is portrayed as lovably comic/ridiculous.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

High body count, and lots of guns and shooting. Characters get shot, and there are bloody wounds. Frequent fighting, punching, kicking, bashing against surfaces, hitting with blunt objects. Character grabbed by throat, electrocuted, turned into skeleton. Character sliced by blade. Child shot with arrow. Severed hand. Character stabbed and thrown over cliff, with blood trailing after him. A character thrown from a mountaintop lands with an icky thud. Cars and other vehicles crash. Zombies. Some symbology/imagery traditionally associated with satanism.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss," "damn," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Several posters and toys for various DC characters are seen in a boy's bedroom. FedEx sign shown.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Black Adam is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie, and a spin-off from Shazam! . Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it ultimately becomes a dull smash-and-bash-fest without much time for character development or anything else. Expect large-scale action violence, with explosions/destruction, guns and shooting, and lots of fighting. Many characters (including women and children) are killed, sometimes in gruesome -- though bloodless -- ways: electrocution, stabbing, etc. Language includes occasional use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss," "damn," and "hell." There's a bit of flirting, and several posters and toys depicting other DC characters are shown in a boy's room. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (28)
• Kids say (35)

Based on 28 parent reviews

Have no part with the deeds of darkness.

Very good movie, what's the story.

BLACK ADAM begins 5,000 years ago, with the city of Kahndaq ruled by a tyrant who works to build a magical crown that will give him great powers. A boy sparks rebellion, and, just as the tyrant is about to don the special crown, the boy is given the powers of Shazam! to save the day. In the present day, the crown re-surfaces, and Teth-Adam ( Dwayne Johnson ) is summoned once again. But, rather than a hero, he appears to be a killer, dispatching everyone who tries to get in his way. The crown temporarily ends up in the hands of powerful resistance fighter Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ), whose rebellious son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), believes that Teth-Adam can be the city's hero. Meanwhile, the Justice Society -- comprised of Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ), Dr. Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher ( Noah Centineo ) -- has been called in to deal with what they see as a threat. But something even worse is on the horizon.

Is It Any Good?

Occasionally exploring themes of what it means to be heroic or villainous, with shades of gray in between, this superhero movie collapses into a boring bash-fest with barely any time to breathe. Like many other villain-as-protagonist movies, ranging from Venom and Morbius to Maleficent and Cruella , Black Adam takes the opportunity to explore such questions as "Who decides who the 'good guy' is?" And "Is it OK to hurt people if some good comes out of it?" Unfortunately, once the movie asks those questions, it forgets all about them as the characters whiz around the screen, hammering away at one another, as well as any solid object that happens to be in the way. In this movie, bodies and debris soar far more frequently than viewers' spirits.

It's safe to say that the majority of Black Adam 's running time consists of fights, chases or battles, and sections of blocky exposition. Much is made of what's supposed to be a tender friendship between Hawkman and Dr. Fate, but we never feel this; it's only told to us through dialogue and goopy music in rare moments between punches. The same goes for a sweet friendship/romance between Cyclone and Atom Smasher; it's just too scarce and fragmented to amount to much. Even the human characters are cookie cutters, from the generic movie "kid" to the lovably comic uncle, rotund and ridiculous (though the actors playing both parts give them their all!). As far as Black Adam goes, those who enjoy The Rock's comedic chops and charismatic smirk may be surprised to encounter an antihero who's stoic in the face of loss and trauma. Unfortunately, though, viewers never really learn who he is or what he wants to be, and that question is ultimately less intriguing than it is uninteresting.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Black Adam 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What's interesting, useful, or entertaining about a movie centered on a character who's usually depicted as a villain?

In your opinion, what does define "good" and "evil"? Where does Black Adam fall into this scale? Do violent means justify peaceful ends?

How does the representation in the cast of this movie compare to other superhero films you've seen? Why is positive representation important in the media?

What's the appeal of superhero movies? Are superheroes automatically role models ? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 21, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : December 5, 2022
• Cast : Dwayne Johnson , Sarah Shahi , Aldis Hodge
• Director : Jaume Collet-Serra
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors, Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
• Studio : New Line Cinema
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Superheroes
• Run time : 124 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language
• Last updated : April 20, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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'Black Adam' Review: The Rock's Big, Loud Supervillain Showdown Is OK, I Guess

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the bad guy in this big and loud DC blockbuster, now on HBO Max, DVD and Blu-ray.

Dwayne Johnson is Teth-Adam, sorry, Black Adam.

Those crazy fools, they finally did it. They put The Rock in a superhero movie. Cross the biggest action superstar with the most overblown effects-driven genre and you get Black Adam, a face-melting big-screen spectacular available to now to watch on Blu-ray and DVD, and it's streaming on HBO Max .

This is peak 2022 blockbuster -- for better and for worse.

Either a hit or a flop (depending on who you believe ) during its theatrical run in October and November, Black Adam is a ton of fun, if you like that sort of thing. Introducing a humorously homicidal antihero who puts an irreverent spin on the superhero formula, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a rare villain(ish) role, let loose to create carnage with a knowing smirk to camera. 

From the title character's skull-crushing entrance and through a ludicrously violent riff on the super-speed sequences from the X-Men movies, director Jaume Collet-Serra delights in dealing out death and destruction (but y'know, in a fun way). Start to finish (including  inevitable post-credits scene and fan-pleasing cameo) , Black Adam is a guilty pleasure that isn't even the slightest bit guilty.

Story-wise, Johnson plays Teth-Adam, ancient champion of a perennially oppressed (fictional) Middle Eastern nation called Kahndaq. An introductory voice-over fills us in on his past, his powers and, of course, the magical superweapon everyone will be chasing. (This time, it's the Crown of Something Or Other.) 

Awakening in the present day, Adam is bemused by new-fangled progressive ideas like not melting people into skeletons for looking at him funny. A team of superheroes called The Justice Society is dispatched to take him down, plus an army of mercenaries with infinite ammo and a council of demons looking to unleash hell. It won't surprise you that things get very loud very fast and basically stay that way for two hours.

Johnson is the titular antihero, but this much-delayed flick sees a whole squadron of DC Comics heroes make the leap from comic book pages to big screen. Noah Cintineo, Quintessa Swindell, Aldis Hodge and former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan are along for the ride as the Justice Society of America, a bunch of DC comics superheroes you may know and love -- but probably not. They're hardly Superman or Spider-man league, let's put it that way.

Sarah Shahi and Pierce Brosnan face Black Adam.

With so many new and probably unfamiliar superheroes crammed into one film, you might wonder how the filmmakers manage to introduce them with meaningful, organic storytelling that connects emotionally with -- oh wait, nope, they don't even try. The superheroes just walk in, give a one-line description of their superpowers, then get on this random unexplained super-jet and off we go. 

DC movies are often guilty of leaning on your comics knowledge to understand the characters, which is fine for a proportion of the target audience but isn't going to help with DC's quest to reach Marvel's massive mainstream audience. And no movie should come with homework.

Admittedly, we've reached the point in the superhero movie's dominance where we can probably cope with a new squad of improbably powered randos in every film. But it would be nice if they gave us something to root for. Aside from the odd blink-and-you-miss-it snippet of dialogue (Brosnan huffing something about watching aeroplanes flying off to World War I), no one is crafted with any history, personality, goals or flaws. Each character is only really delineated by what kind of quip they make when punching people. Hodge is Hawkman (wings, grumpy quip); Brosnan is Dr Fate (magic, twinkly quip); Swindell is Cyclone (wind, no quip); and Centineo is Atom Smasher (giant, awkward quip). 

Brosnan brings much-needed gravitas even while cruising on half-speed -- a helmet hides his face for the action scenes -- while Centineo blends Mark Ruffalo-esque befuddlement with Tom Holland-style adorkability. Swindell is sadly under-used, and Hodge spends most of his time shouting. Among the supporting cast, Sarah Shahi's capable rebel drives much of the story. Playing her teen son, Bodhi Sabongui apparently skateboards in from some totally radical early '90s movie, but Mohammed Amer's bumbling sidekick is a scene-stealing highlight.

The large cast oddly pushes Johnson into the sidelines of his own movie for a surprising amount of the film. On top of that, a digital double of Johnson is glaringly subbed in for the action sequences. Why cast this former pro wrestler, one of the most physical dudes in showbiz, and then fill the fights with over-edited CGI? 

Away from the CGI punch-ups, Johnson's acting skills aren't exactly stretched. He's mostly required to loom, and occasionally deliver deadpan one-liners. Teth-Adam spends a lot of time staring at a statue, which hints at some vulnerability as the character grapples with the weight of his own myth. But Black Adam is a pretty safe for a bad guy -- sure, he's not afraid to toss a henchman into a mountain (played for a laugh), but Johnson (and his digital double) lack the seething rage and unpredictable menace that would make Black Adam truly scary (compared to, say, the unsettling simmering volatility Joaquin Phoenix brought to DC's previous villain-focused story Joker ). One computer-generated version of Johnson is sure to raise a smile, however.

There is some substance under the deafening banging and crashing, if you can believe it. Black Adam is set in a fictional Middle Eastern country under military occupation, where armed foreign mercenaries shove kids around at checkpoints. Hawkman spouts platitudes about "global stability" in the same breath as threatening the use of force, and Shahi's rebel character chastises the Justice Society for showing up 27 years too late after showing no interest in the repressive subjugation of her people. 

A scathing indictment of high-handed western foreign policy in a superhero movie? Yeah, you tell 'em! Then the same character insists that Black Adam's murderous violence is what makes him better. Ohhhkaayyy…? Despite some muddled ideas, Black Adam's themes around globalization and power shows hints of a smart movie hidden inside a very, very dumb movie.

The arrival of megastar Dwayne Johnson in the DC universe, plus the long wait for the film's arrival, built Black Adam into feeling like an event. Now it's here, and it doesn't feel that momentous. Still, it's a big spectacular time at the movies, and what more do you want from The Rock?

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Everything We Know

Everything we know about black adam, we break down the cast and crew, the characters, the comic book backstory, and more, including details from the first trailer..

TAGGED AS: blockbusters , comic book movies , comic books , DC Comics , dceu , Film , films , movie , movies , Superheroes

At the 2020 DC FanDome, Dwayne Johnson claimed “the hierarchy of power in the DC is about to change” while talking up his upcoming film, Black Adam . As it happens, the actor has been making proclamations about the character since at least 2014, when he was meant to play him in the film that eventually became Shazam! In 2017, Johnson and Black Adam were spun off into their own project and, for the next several years, a nebulous “next summer” was penciled in for production.

But every comic book character gets their day in the fullness of time and Black Adam ’s “next summer” has finally arrived, leading to a release set for this Fall. And now that Warner Bros. has released a teaser trailer for the film, we thought it would be a good time to collect everything we know about it to see how it fits into the DC film universe and whether or not Black Adam can pose a threat to the established DC superheroes and their status quo.

“The World Needed A Hero. It Got Black Adam”

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Black Adam appeared in a single 1945 issue of the original Fawcett Comics’ The Marvel Family as the Wizard Shazam’s former and failed apprentice. Seeing promise in the young Egyptian warrior named Teth-Adam, the Wizard granted him all the powers he eventually gave Billy Batson. But when the power corrupted the then “Mighty Adam,” who used his abilities to kill the sitting Pharaoh and assume the throne, the Wizard dubbed him “Black Adam” and cast him out into space some 5000 light years from Earth. Finally returning five millennia later, Black Adam extended his anger to Billy and the rest of the Marvel Family. But that first story ended with a certain finality; the character ages rapidly to death when he is tricked into saying “Shazam” and relinquishing his powers.

He became a much bigger deal when Fawcett’s Marvel Family — eventually renamed the Shazam Family — became firmly part of the DC Universe in the 1970s. Writers like Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway would take his single appearance and build on it to include a deeper history in the region, a long-lost family, and a position as Captain Marvel’s Shazam’s archfoe.

Along the way, he also became a great anti-hero. In the pages of the late 1990s/early 2000s JSA comic book, his methods would be constantly questioned, but his goals proved to be noble. And for a time, he also lead the nation of Kahndaq; granted, that rule would also be questioned by other nations and superheroes alike.

We mention all of this history as the film will convert a lot of it into a unified tale, charting Teth-Adam’s journey thousands of years ago and his emergence in the modern age. It will also feature a Justice Society of America both ready to oppose his actions and, oddly enough, listen to his message. At the same time, as Dr. Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ) tells him in the trailer, he will be presented with a choice to save the world or destroy it. But when an anger spread across thousands of years is combined with the power of Shazam, can it be quelled enough to be heroic once again?

That is the internal struggle Teth-Adam faces, of course, and it appears he will do just that even as he tussles with insurgents, well-armed militaries, and superheroes. Interestingly enough, the question of heroes killing to save the day is even present in the trailer.

Also, the Intergang crime syndicate will reportedly appear in the film. If true, it is an interesting choice, as  they have strong ties to Darkseid, the alpha-predator glimpsed on the other side of the Boom Tube in Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the principle foe in Ava DuVernay’s cancelled New Gods adaptation.

Where In The Multiverse Does It Take Place?

For the moment, we’re assuming it takes place on the same Earth as previous DC films like  Shazam! , The Suicide Squad , and Justice League (either version). Of course, with DC-inspired movies, film-to-film continuity is always up for debate. The Batman , for instance, does not occur in the same reality as Justice League or Shazam! Nevertheless, we’re willing to believe  Black Adam was made with the intention of continuing the reality first outlined in Man of Steel – indeed, Johnson’s own comments across both DC FanDome events suggest a showdown with Superman is something he wants to do. And considering he has the powers of Shazam, Black Adam would be a genuinely formidable adversary in such a contest. At the same time, though, the trailer revealed a different looking world from the previous DC film entries.

Presuming the film is in the more constant DC movie reality, the introduction of the Justice Society further builds out the world and its history. Debuting in 1941, the first superhero team comprised DC heroes like Green Lantern, The Flash, Dr. Fate, Hawkman, the Atom and more as they united to curb the Nazi threat in the U.S. and, eventually, take part in the European Theater. As a consequence, the JSA always has its roots in World War II and we doubt that will be different here. Although, as the team is also comprised of legacy character in subsequent iterations, we imagine this version of the team will reveal almost a century’s worth of legacy, if even just in passing. Also, we imagine there will be a good reason why they are dealing with Black Adam instead of the Justice League.

From the trailer, it is easy to assume the modern day sections will take place primarily in Kahndaq — or, perhaps, an unnamed Middle Eastern country with ties to Egypt. Sadly, it appears the region is utterly destabilized.

The People Of Black Adam

As mentioned before, Dwayne Johnson stars as Teth-Adam – aka, Black Adam. We presume much of his DC Comics origin will remain, although Johnson said during the 2020 DC FanDome presentation that Adam’s journey will take him from slave to the throne, a point reiterated in the trailer. Also, it is worth noting the Wizard’s ( Djimon Honsou ) own mention of Teth-Adam’s failure in Shazam! when he first encounters Billy ( Asher Angel ). We imagine Black Adam will expand on those fleeting moments. Curiously, though, Honsou appears to be completely absent from this movie.

In the modern part of the film, Black Adam will face Justice Society members Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ), Dr. Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), Atom Smasher ( Noah Centineo ), and Cyclone ( Quintessa Swindell ). The latter two are more recent members of the team who can claim original JSAers The Atom and The Red Tornado as relatives. Hawkman and Dr. Fate, meanwhile, appear to be their Golden Age selves. Whether or not this means they were active during the DC films’ WWII is yet to be determined. One thing we can be pretty sure of: Atom Smasher will be receptive to Black Adam’s words and ideas. Back in the comics, he made a similar choice when Teth-Adam offered him a chance to make a difference in the world.

Sarah Shahi also appears in the film as Adriana Tomaz. Although the studio describes her as an archeologist, comic book fans will recognize her as the reincarnation of Teth-Adam’s long lost wife and, eventually, the superhero known as Isis. The comic book character has some rather twisty origins, though, which means older TV viewers will remember her as a different Isis ( Joanna Cameron ) from The Secrets of Isis Saturday morning television show – in which she occasionally encountered Shazam – while avid Legends of Tomorrow watchers will recall her connection to Zari Tarazi ( Tala Ashe ). We doubt those connections will come up in the film, but with a Multiverse just off-screen, anything is possible. Presumably, the film version of the character will also acquire powers. But will she be willing join Black Adam on his crusade?

Other actors set to appear include Marwan Kenzari , James Cusati-Moyer , Bodhi Sabongui , Mohammed Amer , and Uli Latukefu .

Behind The Lightning

(Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)

Since the film is something of a passion project for Johnson, he brought in some favorite collaborators to help him finally realize the film. Director Jaume Collet-Serra worked with the actor on the 2021 Jungle Cruise film. His filmography includes such films as the 2005 House of Wax remake, the Liam Neeson films Unknown and The Commuter , and the Blake Lively-starring The Shallows .

Adam Sztykiel is also a Johnson collaborator, having written the actor’s foray into video game films, 2018’s Rampage . His credits also include Due Date and Alvin and the Chimpmunks: The Road Chip . He was also slated to make his first foray into the DC Universe as a director with Wonder Twins – sadly, that project was cancelled last month.

Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani subsequently rewrote the script. The pair are new to Johnson’s troop and fairly new to features with only one film under their belts: 2021’s The Mauritanian .

Other crew include director of photography Lawrence Sher, editors John Lee and Michael L. Sale, and production designer Tom Meyer. Executive producers include Johnson, Danny Garcia, Hiram Garcia, and Beau Flynn.

A Long-Awaited Date

After ten or so years of talking about it in one form or another, Black Adam will finally come to theaters on October 21 . From there, though, we expect Teth-Adam will make his presence known around the ‘verse – perhaps first in a stinger scene at the end of December’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods . He has to make his presence known to Billy at some point, right?

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Black Adam Is Entertaining Rubbish

Black Adam opens with a burst of exposition and backstory so cumbersome that it might as well be self-parody. (“ Before Rome, before Babylon, before the pyramids … ”) Though totally different in tenor and style, it actually reminded me of the opening moments of Whit Stillman’s 2016 period comedy Love & Friendship , which delivered such a rapid-fire stream of character information that it liberated the viewer from feeling like they needed to pay attention to any of it; they could just sit back and enjoy the ride. That’s kind of what happens with Black Adam , too, though it’s probably not intentional. The film ultimately overloads us with so much amazing nonsense that we sort of give up and give in.

But amid the mumbo jumbo about dark magic and the crown of Sabbaq and the six demons of the underworld or whatever, there is a promising idea at the heart of Black Adam , at least initially. The film is set in the imaginary Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, an ancient and once-proud land currently occupied by a mercenary force called the Intergang. Not unlike Palestinians and Iraqis, the impoverished citizens have had their culture trampled and are bedeviled by checkpoints and soldiers having their way with the population. By the time Black Adam — known at first as Teth-Adam — emerges from his ancient slumber, a supernaturally powerful champion of Khandaq who’s been dormant for 5000 years, the film has convinced us in its own clunky way that this besieged land could use someone on its side.

Which makes Black Adam the movie’s greatest shortcoming that much more tragic. Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock, one of our most charming movie stars, plays the character as a humorless, unemotional slab. One can sort of see the inspiration here: The actor was often compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier in his career, and the film at times seems to be going for a Terminator 2: Judgment Day vibe; there’s even an excitable, skateboarding teen who tries to teach Adam catchphrases and how to act like a hero. But Johnson, while limited in range, was never an awkward actor in the way Schwarzenegger was. He’s always been a much more likable and expressive figure (even if his movies mostly pale in comparison to Schwarzenegger’s) and watching him do stone-faced feels like we’re being deprived of something precious. It’s only toward the end of the film that a glimmer of recognition flashes across our hero’s visage, as the grim inexpressiveness strays into something closer to deadpan. It’s welcome, but it’s too late.

Perhaps more importantly, this annoying stoniness doesn’t allow Johnson to act much either. We know he can do it, and the occasionally evocative dialogue about the state of his land aches for some emotion. (“Just say ‘shazam’ and we all go home.” “I don’t have a home.” “We both know you’re not supposed to be here.” “ You’re not supposed to be here.”) Imagine lines like these delivered with even a hint of bitterness, or despair, or simmering rage, and you start to imagine the far better and even more pointed film Black Adam could have been. There is, it turns out, a narrative reason for the character’s refusal to feel things. But it’s a dopey reason, and it feels like a cop-out. Worse, it undercuts the movie: Johnson is so emotionless for so much of the film that if you told me he wasn’t actually there for the shoot and that they just used a still photo of his face to animate his scenes, I’d believe you.

That said, all is not lost. Director Jaume Collet-Serra — a journeyman who specialized in surprisingly gonzo thrillers before he did a full 180 into family far e — brings an enjoyable sense of exuberant splatter to his action scenes. We often complain about how the modern comic-book movie has been CGI’d into meaninglessness, how everything in these pictures feels cartoonish and weightless and bland. Black Adam won’t do anything to disprove that notion, but Collet-Serra’s perversity and propensity for gallows-humor slapstick keeps things lively. Limbs are yanked off. Smoking boots remain where once there were humans. Bodies are tossed into the sky with near-psychotic abandon. One dude swallows a grenade. Black Adam is PG-13, so there’s no real blood. But this is America, so there are plenty of amputations.

The nutty, schlocky frivolity of Black Adam might not go with its occasional pretensions toward greater meaning (or even its, gasp , political overtones), but it does feel of a piece with the fly-by-night nature of its story. Because after offering up all that fanciful ancient history about the origins of the character we will know as Black Adam, the movie then proceeds to casually introduce us to a whole bunch of superheroes as if we’ve somehow known them all along: Kent Nelson, a.k.a. Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan); Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman (Aldis Hodge); Albert Rothstein, a.k.a. Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo); Maxine Hunkel, a.k.a. Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell). Some of these characters date back to the 1940s — long before Marvel, in other words — but for those of us who didn’t encounter them in our comic-book reading days, it’s hard not to wonder who the hell they are. The film assumes a certain familiarity with them, which can sometimes make it feel like we’re watching a cut-rate imitation brand Asylum Entertainment version of an Avengers or X-Men movie. We haven’t had a Doctor Fate movie, or a Hawkman sequel, or an Atom Smasher series, or whatever. That makes these characters feel a bit like imitations, even if their original comic book iterations have been around forever.

But even here, Black Adam has something intriguing it starts doing, only to promptly give up on it. The Justice Society shows up to teach Black Adam and the angry citizens of Kahndaq that extrajudicial killings are wrong (a character literally says this), and someone points out that the Justice Society, for all the work it’s supposedly been doing around the world to battle oppression and bring justice, has never before come to the troubled land of Kahndaq. That would, of course, make these superheroes hypocrites and colonizers of a different sort. Okay! That’s interesting! Let’s do something with tha— but no, the film drops this idea almost as soon as it’s expressed, as if it realizes that to go any further in that direction would unearth attitudes and ideologies that might ultimately work against the bottom line.

The way Black Adam treats the Justice Society also seems symptomatic of Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ attempts to replicate Disney and Marvel’s success with their various superhero team-ups without doing any of the table-setting required to make us feel like we have something invested in these characters’ fates. Without giving away any spoilers, the film actually attempts a couple of ambitious moments during its finale that feel like they were meant to be big emotional climaxes for heroes we’ve been watching for years. These scenes don’t work the way the picture wants them to. Instead, they work in the other direction, which is to enhance the whole goofy, off-the-rack nature of this operation. The lack of cinematic mythology, the absence of a dozen other movies that we have to catch up with beforehand, unburdens us as viewers. It may undermine the film’s attempts at emotion, but it also allows us to sit back and enjoy it. Honestly, after more than a decade of overbaked cookie-cutter superhero flicks, I’ll take it. Just don’t ask me to care about anybody.

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