In all honesty, for a month leading up to this movie, I was shitposting irl about how bad it was going to be. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? In a DC movie? “I bow to no one,”- really? Then my buddy got his feelings hurt so I had to change my tune and promise to give the film an honest effort. So I did. I watched Black Adam completely sober, and chose to only latch onto the good parts. Here goes.
Discount Billy Batson and Co
The film makes all the efforts that it knows how in order to humanize its characters and help the audience to connect to the protagonists. Further, the filmmakers and writers have, to the best of their ability, done what they could to present us with the plight of an oppressed people and give us some sort of satisfactory, self-motivated resolution to their troubles. Despite Black Adam being a grim, mean character, and Johnson’s inability to break from his ego and his blocky, one-tone acting is used as best as possible by providing him with sarcastic comedy, and by crowding him with charming and amusing characters in the Justice Society and the mom/son/uncle trio.
Further, the CGI is neither good nor bad. The soundtrack, by Lorne Balfe, is bombastic, heroic and fitting, but the sound mixing was atrocious. The script is a dark tunnel, echoing with the tropes and cliches of yesteryear, alit with maybe one or two flickers of originality or wit. Shit, sorry, I was supposed to talk about the good stuff. Dwayne Johnson is visually a perfect casting choice- by choice or by force- for Adam. His acting skills require an amount to be desired, but again, I’ve promised not to rag on the film. The Justice Society is introduced in this film, as a ragtag team of traditional heroes, chosen individually for the mission by necessity or utility is not explained. The heroes Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher and Cyclone, are a colorful, unique set of heroes with a menagerie of actors who weren’t given enough time or space to grow and be defined. Each individual had just enough time for a token tinkle of charm, and a hit of greater potential. The effort is there.
It’s like… really deep, man 🍃
There is a political-esque message in the film akin to some form of commentary on colonialism, selective intervention, self-serving international relations, and marginalization of a people whose liberation does not benefit the powers that be. Like, one big reason why people don’t just assassinate all of North Korean leadership in one go is because the ensuing fallout of dealing with an entire nation and helping them regain their footing is not really worth the time for everyone else. Or, in the case of Afghanistan, liberating the people from the Taliban would not necessarily equate to more meaningful impact of the liberators. Or attempting to deal with Somali pirates is not a problem large enough that large nations would wage war. That kind of thing. But also, that issue is so complex that they chose to resolve it midfilm with a poorly-edited, on-the-nose speech by the uppity female protagonist as she out-karened the Justice Society.
Shit. Sorry, I flamed Black Adam again.
Look. There is a structure of a better film at the very, very deep core of this movie. It exists in the first or maybe third draft, or perhaps in the drawing room- at some point before the VFX artists were given instructions, or before Dwayne Johnson’s input began making an impact. The very core of the film is that a man is awakened after thousands of years, and is taken as a hero by the people of an oppressed country. The outside world sees the man as an ancient threat, imprisoned for killing a dictator with angry absolution. The modern heroes intervene preemptively and unilaterally, forced into combat due to inept leadership and an unyielding protagonist. There is a macguffin that could lead to some sort of doom, and the two opposing forces of Black Adam and the Justice Society must come to an impasse in order to defeat the macguffin.
The issue, however, is… literally everything following that. Like I mentioned, in order to humanize and realize the common people of Khandaq, the film introduces a mother and a son who act as Black Adam’s guides to the new world. They believe in his heroism, despite the fact that he is not the chosen hero of legend. They allow us some insight into the plight of the common man of this oppressed country. The finale involves the people coming together to find a zombie horde in a skirmish in a reused backlot set, which is an effort to give the people a chance at their own liberation, independent of reliance on a superpowered being. Except… the Justice Society helps them stamp out the dozen or so zombie-ex-machinas, and when Black Adam defeats the macguffin, the zombies die too. The kid and mom duo are shoehorned in without a second draft, and end up being an incredibly annoying, stupid, flat and intrusive damsel in distress device over and over again. Between the mother and the son, these two have had to be saved by Black Adam or the Justice Society nearly half a dozen fucking times.
Schrodinger’s Black Adam and the improper usage of big words
Then there’s the little character issue of Adam knowing he is not the chosen one, and only possesses the powers, akin to someone simply having the sword of Arthur, but not having pulled it from the stone. He has to find some way to be a hero, despite knowing that he’s only used his powers for self-serving reasons so far. He has to find a balance between serving his own ambitions and serving some greater good.
When this pivotal character change occurs in the movie, it is visually and cinematically brilliant (if you ignore everything else, like logic). It’s mix of an inspiring Pierce Brosnan voice over and slow motion fighting in the rain and a heroic (but stupid) sacrifice only for the hero to overcome (stupid and immediate) odds to find a way to become who he is meant to be. The idea that a character’s journey ends not with a heroic redemption, but in a grey middle ground of anti-heroism is an arc that is not aligned with traditional hero’s journey 3 act structure. Finding a way to deliver a meaningful, impactful arc for Adam to reconcile who he is cannot be found in the MCU formula or in some generic director, or a script that was written with input from a man who’s larger than his ego.
Black Adam’s character arc is found in a film like The Batman, where Bruce Wayne sheds his persona of dark vengeance and realizes his duty as a protector of the people in a way that no one else can do- because no one else is Batman. Black Adam’s absolution is found in a film like Joker, where the protagonist stops trying to be a good person and succumbs to his innate desire for chaos and violence in order to find a place to belong among the oppressed, violent and unhinged mask-wearing weirdos of Gotham’s underbelly. You’re never going to believe it if Black Adam finds the meaning to his life when he defeats an alien-human hybrid monster made of spikes that kills one of the most powerful DC heroes.
Therein lies the problem in Black Adam and its effort to be both a blockbuster the size of Dwayne Johnson, but as nuanced as the complexity of an antihero. Simply killing CGI people does not make you an antihero, because they’re just cartoons, no different than a video game. People have time and again proven with their wallets and their whining that they’re ready for a deeper, more impactful story from our mythos. We’re no longer as easily enticed by cartoons starring humans like Dr. Strange, we want more flawed, broken angsty bois like Robert Pattinson’s Batman.
But if you retrace all those steps and you go into this movie like I did, with the mind and standards of hoping to see a popcorn schlockfest full of punching and guns and explosions, then this film delivers in spades. Dwayne Johnson is and always has been an entertainer. He’s not an actor, he’s a persona. When you’re disappointed when a film like this doesn’t have a complete character arc, or multiple layers of metaphors, or a unique cinematography, or a script with nuances, then the flaw is not in the film, the flaw is in you.
Black Adam was cool, and you’re dumb if you don’t agree
I am vehemently defending Black Adam not because I bullied my friend about his choice of movie or because I was talking shit about a movie I hadn’t seen yet, I’m defending the movie because if you want to stop thinking and just be entertained, then this movie is absolutely an entertainer. It stitches together a barely-coherent plot that gives the most minor of justifications for you to watch Dwayne Johnson fly around and smash things for hours and hours. If you wanted an Oscar-worthy performance, then you’re in the wrong fucking Peirce Brosnan movie, you fucking idiot.
As an aside, Black Adam suffers the same issue that many of the previous DC movies have faced, an issue that I’ve whined about since the first days of the DCEU and the MCU. An issue that I have dubbed- The Superman Problem. I wanted to talk about the complete meltdown that I suffer whenever we have yet another film with a character who’s power as at the same level as Superman, and how it always leads to a cartoon punching match with barely-coherent screen movement, but I couldn’t find the right space to do so in this movie- but best believe, I have a real fucking doozy in the chamber where I completely flame Superman and how fucking idiot garbage shit stupid he is and why he should have stayed dead and buried, despite how good the casting is for Cavill as Superman, despite the fact that the guy helms the DC comic universe. Fuck Superman.
4/10.
Black Adam was just as good as, if not a shade better than, what I expected the film to be. Fuck off.
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