Have you ever had one of those afternoons with your friends where you randomly decide to see what’s playing in the cinema after a nice meal and some shopping? Well, I had never experienced it until a few weeks ago, when we did just that and, lo and behold, Black Adam was playing (meaning the trailers for other films just started, so we walked in, not interrupting anybody, and we caught the entire movie). I thought this should be fun to see in the cinema; I heard some rumours about an impactful post-credit scene that got me hyped, and… it’s gone (spoilers for the after-credit scene). As it’s almost tradition at this point, that the post-credit scene in DCEU no longer matters, but guys, trust DC, this time they REALLY have a plan! Pinky promise they won’t just cancel everything like they did several times!
Let’s put this mess some people call DCEU aside for now and focus on Black Adam. The film starts epically; we get a historical exposition followed by an action set piece. After that, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson finally makes his long-awaited appearance as the titular (anti)hero, and another action sequence happens. Everything is epic; everything feels epic. And this doesn’t stop for the remainder of the film. It felt like one prolonged action sequence with a bunch of Justice League rejects (I will get to those soon) and almost zero stakes because you just watch things go “boom” and Dwayne looking for his charisma. I hate to say this, but The Rock isn’t that great of an actor. Of course, he doesn’t have to be, because he is an action superstar and could literally brake me in half with just one hand, so… But I always forgive all action people that they aren’t the “best” actors as most of them have charisma, charm, something that makes us love them and forget that they can’t act and rely on that charm. Can you see where I am going with this? If Dwayne is forced to play this “tabula rasa” character with zero charm, he’s got not much going for him except his exceptional physique. It makes sense storywise why Teth Adam would be like this, but for him, this was mostly an exercise of walking with the same expression for the majority of this film.
Back to the action, sometimes it works to make your film about one place where it looks like almost one giant action set piece. The perfect example would be both The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014) – movies with very little story happening, but you don’t care because what you are watching is some kick-ass (literally) action set pieces, many shot with minimum cuts and in ways that make you say: “Hey, how the fuck did they do that?” So take those low-budget (estimated budget for the first film is just over one million dollars and for the second one 4.5 million dollars) movies and compare them to Black Adam, this Hollywood beast of a blockbuster whose budget is almost 200 million dollars. You will find many epic action scenes scored with a genuinely kick-ass soundtrack alongside a lot of CGI. That is understandable; not even The Rock can crash literal rocks, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried. But these are the same action scenes we’ve been seeing over the past almost 15 years now. There are some cool shots and sequences, but it’s hard to pick one, given how the film doesn’t give you any time to breathe. Everything is so “cool” and loud and CGI all the time; you remember less and less about it, and nothing sticks out. Well, the Justice Society does, but not in the way they were supposed to.
Have you ever thought about how the MCU would have looked had we gotten The Avengers (2012) as their first movie? No Iron Man (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) or Thor (2011). The story would make zero sense because those films built up towards The Avengers, and most importantly, we wouldn’t care if any of them died because we would have no history with these not-so-mainstream characters, right? Yep, that’s how I felt watching the Justice Society in this film. I understand at this point, DCEU is unwilling to take notes from the MCU purely out of spite, it seems (even though now under James Gunn, things might change?). And, of course, they had to have more characters to go up against Black Adam to provide us with those glorious CGI action sequences of people mostly punching each other, but… I didn’t care about any single one of them. The fact I didn’t care is kind of shit, given there is a sacrifice towards the end of the film made by one of them that was supposed to be impactful on the film and the group itself. But since we have only met them in this film, the emotional pay-off of that sacrifice is rendered effectively mute. Black Adam feels like DCEU’s The Avengers if the MCU did everything wrong and had to redo their timeline five times.
And just to be crystal clear, I am not blaming any of the actors. I loved to see Pierce Brosnan still being somewhat cool at his age, and for what it’s worth, I liked Cyclone and Quintessa Swindell. Was she just DCEU’s Storm from the X-Men movies? Yep. Was she also the only Justice Society character that intrigued me? Also, yes, the fact she is stunning is just a plus 😉 But neither Aldis Hodge nor Noah Centineo were bad at their roles; the problem with their characters was just the simple fact they felt like a derivative of many other comic book characters we got to know much better over the years. Nobody gave a lousy performance (at least I didn’t think so); they were all just playing characters nobody except comic book-reading fans recognised. So I (and it seems like many other fans) have had a problem distinguishing them from their other, more famous, and better-executed counterparts.
The one thing I have to compliment, and I honestly believe this made the movie enjoyable on another level, was the soundtrack. Forget about Dwayne; it was Lorne Balfe; who, for me, carried this film on the shoulders of his epic music. Because I noticed all these issues I am talking about while watching the movie in the cinema – Dwayne can’t display his charm, so he feels “off”, CGI that makes everything look the same, Justice Society and their members whose identities have been so secretive I literally didn’t know anyone. And yet, I could never say I was bored or bothered (well, at least at the time). Halfway through the film, I realised it was because of that epic soundtrack that kept me pumped, hyped, whatever you want to call it; I was “it”. So, bravo, Lorne. That was one hell of a job.
Overall, Black Adam felt like it was supposed to be something epic, the start of a possible new journey for the DCEU. Instead, we got an ok introduction to a character we might not see again, a team of brand-new superheroes I couldn’t care less about and a post-credit scene that genuinely intrigued me enough that I was willing to watch a sequel. But now, knowing that even if somehow there is a sequel to Black Adam, the post-credit thing will never happen (at least not as teased by this film), this makes me sad and retrospectively makes me want to deduct some “points” from my overall rating. I won’t because the film still works as this “big, dumb fun” movie that can thank Lorne Balfe for creating that OST. If you are looking for two hours of non-stop action with no stakes and brains, Black Adam will be your favourite movie of the year.
That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!
Until next time,
Luke