Having been attached to star as the character for more than a decade, Dwayne Johnson finally brings DC’s villain and sometimes antihero Black Adam to the screen in the midst of ongoing uncertainty over the future of the DC Extended Universe. In an unlikely twist, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Black Adam is perhaps the first indication that the DCEU could belatedly start to play Marvel’s game of using a B-tier figure in the comics universe with a mostly standalone story. But the film nonetheless hints at a larger world of connected action and consequence than anything Warner Bros. has been able to do with their properties to date.
As he did in The Jungle Cruise, Collet-Serra approaches the obligations of modern world-building and background lore with admirable impatience, loading most of the story’s expository setup in a barreling introduction that lays out a history of power struggles and magical objects in the ancient North African kingdom of Kahndaq (Egypt in all but name). With much of the population enslaved to mine for magical elements by a corrupt king, one such servant becomes imbued with the powers of gods and transforms into Teth-Adam (Johnson), a legendary hero who vanishes as quickly as he appears and lives on in the present as a symbol to the still-oppressed people of the region, who now suffer under the weight of foreign occupation.
After a bit more setup that introduces the MacGuffin of a long-lost magic crown and a modern-day resistance fighter, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), and her young son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), Black Adam is awakened by an armed group from his 5,000-year slumber. The mercenaries instantly rue their decision, as Adam promptly lays waste to the group, causing as much carnage as one can while retaining a PG-13 rating. Firing lightning bolts from his hands in between punching people so hard that their bodies burst like water balloons, Adam sends severed limbs and scorched ashes of disintegrated flesh flying across the screen.
These killing sprees are proof of Collet-Serra’s gifts, as he brings his years of experience making taut thrillers to bear in a way that keeps the action consistently moving. Many set pieces have a ludicrous element to them, with Adam throwing around tanks and helicopters like toys or flying at supersonic speeds solely to grab unlucky grunts and hoist them into the stratosphere. But at all times there’s a coherent movement to Adam’s rampages, with exaggerated, if pointedly bloodless, gore consistently used as a macabre grounding element.
There was fear, given some of his recent performances, that Johnson would tap anew into his pro-wrestling persona, leaning into the catchphrases, smirkiness, and brawler moves that have rendered his characters interchangeable. Here, though, he exudes genuine menace as Adam moves through the world, regarding each new person he encounters with an appraising look, as if he were trying to decide whether to kill them right there with all the effort of squashing a bug. Nowhere in sight is that jaunty cock of the eyebrow and playful bicep-flexing pose that made Johnson famous. There’s only the stone-faced stare of a god who looks profoundly annoyed at being saddled with the hopes of mere mortals looking to him for liberation.
The film comes into focus when Adam’s violence attracts the attention of the Justice Society of America, a group of superheroes heretofore unseen in the DCEU and led by Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and the reality-bending magician Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan). No sooner do they arrive on the scene than they begin protesting Adam’s killing, insisting upon the same thin sliver of moral justification that’s long been the foundation of superhero ethics. Intriguingly, though, the film doesn’t let this batch of heroes pontificate without pushback. Adrianna is quick to point out the hypocrisy of these foreigners, who claim to be protectors, having never before come to Kahndaq despite its long history of occupation and subjugation, only to finally travel to the country to attack the hero who’s finally stood up for the country’s people.
Left unsaid, possibly due to the dubiously canonical status of Zach Snyder’s DC films, is that this tut-tutting over murder looks even more ridiculous after seeing both Batman and Superman casually brutalizing villains over the preceding decade. Whereas Marvel films like Black Panther have pulled their punches at the last minute, otherwise validating the more radical tactics of their villains or morally compromised heroes, Black Adam has the courage of its convictions, suggesting that violence on behalf of an oppressed people isn’t only justifiable but even moral.
Sadly, that compelling thematic undercurrent takes a backseat in the final-act showdown between Adam and the Justice Society against Ishmael Gregor, a.k.a. Sabbac (Marwan Kenzari), a descendant of the ancient tyrant whom Adam slew. This skirmish quickly devolves into the usual superhero-movie showcase of energy beams fired willy-nilly between the good and bad guys. This climax also suffers from repetitious depictions of Adam’s brutality and a last-minute attempt to ascribe some kind of emotional hook to a film that otherwise never hinted at one.
Still, Black Adam’s willingness to confront the assumed moral grounding of superhero movies without shying away from their implications, as well as the knock-on effects of Adam’s re-emergence on the world at large, makes this film an unlikely bedrock for yet another DCEU makeover. For the first time since the ugly fallout of Snyder’s departure from Warner Bros., the studio might have some idea of where to take one of their most lucrative holdings.
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