Black Adam: D.C.'s New/Old Action Anti-Hero Brings Nothing New to a Noisy Party

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C-plus

Having squeezed their main franchises nearly dry, both Marvel (Disney) and D.C. (Warners) are motivated, maybe even desperate, to find new superheroes and anti-heroes to ride into the next wave.

Maybe it’s a hangover from the pandemic, maybe it’s super-hero fatigue, but the mainstream moviegoing public didn’t overwhelmingly embrace newer models like Marvel’s Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (of course, movie box office is down pretty much across the board).

For its part, with its noisy, talky, expensive and derivative wannabe franchise Black Adam, D.C. is resurrecting characters from so far in the past (the ‘40s), that they’re new to all but serious comic book fans.

Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam and Aldis Hodge as Hawkman

As likeable as star Dwayne Johnson is (and that’s actually part of the problem) Black Adam is less the change D.C. is looking for, than a patchwork quilt of things deemed to have worked before. There’s a fictional, proud ancient city Khandaq, home to a powerful element called Eternium (shades of Wakanda and Vibranium) that is coveted worldwide.

Oh, and as usual, there’s a MacGuffin, a crown of pure eternium that will give world-threatening demon powers to whoever wears it. Everybody wants it. They must be stopped!

And as the people become increasingly restless at the activities of an international paramilitary cartel (most of them seemingly Australian) that plunders their resources, Teth Adam (Johnson) a champion from 5,000 years in the past, arises.

But is he a good guy or a bad guy? Black Adam is a character who, in various incarnations, has been an antagonist of Superman (there are even a few inside jokes where the ancient hero accidentally destroys images of the Man of Steel).

The chief definition of his dark streak is that he kills bad guys instead of simply roughing them up (most frequently by flying them up to the sky and dropping them, or simply throwing them a few kilometres, though he incinerates some with lightning). Which is why he’s deemed a threat by the Justice Society (a group of superheroes that pre-dates D.C.’s better-known Justice League).

Enter a team of four Justice Society members, two of them classic JSA members, Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan, who evokes Doctor Strange at times) and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge). Two newcomers (with bloodlines to original members) are the wind-wielding Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and the giant Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) – super-hero names that might as well hail from American Gladiators.

That a hero who kills is the definition of a bad guy is an odd stance for a D.C. film to take. Henry Cavill’s Superman killed a villain, and he’s generally painted as a boy scout. Batman may not outright kill you, but he will scare you to death.

I mean, who looked at D.C.’s stable of characters and said, “We need to go darker!”

Which brings us to Johnson, who had no trouble “turning heel” in the WWE when he was The Rock. He cuts a fine figure as the mordant mirror image of Shazam (he was apparently given his powers by the same group of wizards). But at this point, there is an assumption of goodness about him. Even in this film, where he’s supposed to be scary, he is chiefly a protector of a young boy Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) who worships him, and Amon’s mother Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), a university professor who set Teth Adam free.

(The name Black Adam, by the way, is supposed to represent the character’s darkened soul, not his race. But it did remind me of a Harvey Birdman: Attorney-at-Law episode where the Super Friends’ Black Vulcan complains, “Black Vulcan was Aquaman's idea. I said, 'Well, maybe we should call you Whitefish.'”)

There’s so much explanatory narration going on in Black Adam, the movie sometimes seems like a tutorial. That is, when there isn’t a lot of smashing, punching and characters being thrown through brick walls, just to get up and start punching again.

For a movie that’s supposed to take D.C. in a new direction, Black Adam sure seems like something we’ve seen plenty of times before.

Black Adam. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Stars Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi. Opens in theatres Friday, October 21.