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Oct 21, 2022 · Powered by JustWatch. 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 ...
38% Tomatometer 304 Reviews. 88% Audience Score 5,000+ Verified Ratings. What to know. Critics Consensus. Black Adam may end up pointing the way to an exciting future for DC films, but as a...
- (304)
- Jaume Collet-Serra
- PG-13
- Dwayne Johnson
Oct 18, 2022 · ‘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...
Top Critics. All Audience. Verified Audience. Wesley Lovell Cinema Sight. One of the most notable issues with Johnson as an actor is his constant mugging for the camera. Full Review | Original...
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- Black Adam: Who's Who in the Cast
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- The DC Movies in (Chronological) Order
- Verdict
By Joshua Yehl
Updated: Oct 29, 2022 3:23 am
Posted: Oct 18, 2022 9:30 pm
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.
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.
Johnson gets top marks for making his Black Adam just as steely and imposing as in the comics
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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.
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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.
Black Adam feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped.
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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 manag...
Oct 21, 2022 · With Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Pierce Brosnan, Noah Centineo. 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.
Oct 18, 2022 · Black Adam First Reviews: Action-Packed and Powered by a Charismatic Dwayne Johnson. Critics say the film suffers from a villain problem and a lackluster script, but a scene-stealing Pierce...
