It was a stroke of luck that the Black Adam 4K review copy showed up at the door just as Dwayne Johnson announced that his interpretation of the character wouldn't be receiving a sequel any time soon, which can't have delighted Warner Bros. This came when his staff sent some fabricated data to Deadline in order to make the film appear to be a bigger success than it actually was by including product sales as grosses. Of course, after Johnson made a big issue out of using his fame to persuade Henry Cavill to reprise his role as Superman, James Gunn quickly wiped the slate clean with a new film that will recast Kal-El.
The former wrestler-turned-actor has been advertising the part of Black Adam for fifteen years. He asserted that it would alter the "ladder of power" in the DC cinematic world for at least two reasons, speculating that it would develop around Adam and the JSA characters in his film.
Today, Black Adam as a film feels less like a segue and more like a footnote. It doesn't seem to be a priority given the thinly veiled plot and distinctively Snyder-verse aesthetic. When it comes to how it ties into the DCEU, it functions mainly as a semi-sequel to Shazam!, featuring Djimon Hounsou as Shazam the wizard.. Even so... Johnson declined to star in a movie starring the superhero Shazam. Considering that no one is allowed to use the title "Captain Marvel" in movies, could we kindly give the latter a proper name? "Captain Sparklefingers" is silly, but it's something.
And therein lays the problem, which is abundantly illustrated on the Blu-ray special features. Despite Johnson's extensive, lifelong preoccupation with Black Adam, he appears utterly, wilfully unaware of the character's two defining traits. First, he is a bad guy. He belongs to the Shazam bad guys. Given that he transforms with the same word, it's difficult to miss that last one.
When Johnson claims on the extras that he related to Black Adam's strict moral code as a young reader of comic books, he is just outright lying. When Johnson was a child in the 1970s and 1980s, Black Adam was a comic book character published by DC that was purely evil. To avoid contradicting the star, a documentary about the character's past purposefully omits these facts, never openly stating that he had not previously been an antihero.
Frankly, if you want to appreciate the movie, it's best to disregard the extras. Johnson and director Jaume Collet-Sera make a laughably obvious and forced comparison to Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name. Hugh Jackman had put in the time and effort by the time Logan came up, whereas Johnson, who played this character in just one film, had not. Johnson can't even pull off the latter, as required by all comic portrayals, in an universe where Tenoch Huerta can easily pull off winged ankles and pointy ears.
Even still, the current Aquaman movie version doesn't exactly resemble the comics, and most fans are okay with that. The majority of us have come to terms with the fact that the DC universe as it is now shown on screen frequently changes.Black Adam is a mindless burst of big-guy brawling as a standalone film. It's like an Oreo Quadruple Stuf or a box of Cap'n Crunch Oops All Berries in a movie. If The Scorpion King and Black Adam were shown back-to-back to a film critic in the distant future, they might never guess that Dwayne Johnson had a moment as a critically acclaimed actor in the two decades between them, renowned for having more range and screen charisma than any prior wrestler-turned-movie-star.
The Scorpion King was entertaining, much like Black Adam. With a twist—in this case, superpowers—they're essentially both WWE Monday Night Raw. Only this time, Johnson has transformed into the Hollywood Hogan of the 2000s, a "cool heel" figure in black who, thanks to his contract, controls much too many shots behind the scenes instead of acting in the best interests of the narrative as a whole. Is it possible for anyone to envision a Marvel star refusing to make cameos in related films, as Johnson allegedly did with DC? (We can think of worse movies with any of the JSA from this film, but good luck finding them right now.)


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