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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 even the good entries in the genre. For its first third, it presents its title character—a champion who challenged a despotic king thousands of years earlier—as a frightening and unknowable force with a bottomless appetite for destruction. Known by his ancient moniker Teth-Adam, his reemergence from a desert tomb proves both a miracle and a curse for people who prayed for someone to defend them against corporate-mercenary thugs who have oppressed them for decades and strip-mined their land.

Throughout the rest of its running time, “Black Adam” leans into the inevitability of Adam’s evolution toward good-guy status, condensing the transformation of the title character in the first two “Terminator” films (there are even comic bits where people try to teach Adam sarcasm and the Geneva Conventions). "Black Adam" then stirs in dollops of a macho sentimentality that used to be common in old Hollywood dramas about loners who needed to get involved in a cause to reset their moral compasses or recognize their worth. But the sharp edge that the film brings to the early parts of its story never dulls.

Adam initially seems as much of a literal as well as a figurative force of nature as Godzilla and other beasts in Japanese kaiju films. It’s initially hard for the people in Adam’s path to tell if he’s good, evil, or merely indifferent to human concerns. One thing’s for sure: everyone wants Adam to help them prevent a crown forged in hell and infused with the energy of six demons from being placed atop the head of someone in Intergang, a global corporate/mercenary consortium whose interests are represented by a two-faced charmer ( Marwan Kenzari ).

Decades ago, Humphrey Bogart played a lot of cynical men who insisted they weren’t interested in causes, then changed their minds and took up arms against corruption or tyranny. Viewers still love that story, and Johnson has updated it many times during his career, most recently in “ Jungle Cruise ,” in which he played a character modeled on Bogart's riverboat captain in "The African Queen." He channels vintage primordial acting by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger but also poet-brute performances like Anthony Quinn's strongman in " La Strada ," and infuses the totality with his unique charisma. "Black Adam" confirms that he’s studied the classics and cherry-picked bits that seem to work for him. There are even tenderhearted moments of regret and recrimination that seem inspired by 1950s moral awakening pictures like “ On the Waterfront .”

The latter are usually triggered by three “civilian” characters who appeal to Adam’s presumed innate (though submerged) goodness. One is Adrianna Tomaz ( Sarah Shahi ), a university professor, resistance fighter, and widow of a resistance hero who was killed by the colonizers. Another is Adrianna’s cheerful and indomitable son Amon ( Bodhi Sabongui ), who zips around the bombed-out city on a skateboard that seems to have as many secondary uses as a Swiss Army Knife. And then there’s Adrianna’s brother Amir (comedian Mohammed Amer), who livens up a standard-issue earthy everyman role.

Somehow, though, the script by Adam Sztykiel , Rory Haines , and Sohrab Noshirvani resists the temptation to wallow in unearned sentiment. Nor does the movie insist, despite the evidence, that Adam and the superheroes brought into to confront him ( Aldis Hodge ’s Hawkman, Noah Centineo ’s Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell ’s wind-manipulating Cyclone, and Pierce Brosnan ’s dimension-hopping and clairvoyant Dr. Fate) are wonderful people who have pure motives and always mean well. In conversations about motivations and tactics, nobody is entirely right or wrong. The movie's edge comes from its determination to live in moral gray areas as long as it can.

It also comes from the violence, which is presented as the inevitable result of the characters’ personalities, ambitions, and duties, rather than being associated with any particular code or philosophy. That framing, plus the sprays of blood and images of people being impaled, shot, and crushed, pushes the movie's PG-13 rating to the breaking point like “ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ” and “ Gremlins ” did with the PG rating nearly 40 years earlier. There were several walkouts at the “Black Adam” screening this writer attended, and in every case, it was somebody who brought a child under 10.

In fairness, they may not have expected the movie to begin with a flashback that climaxes with a slave at a construction site getting gut-stabbed and thrown off a cliff, and a boy being threatened with beheading, or for the title character to obliterate an army with electrical bolts and his bare hands seconds after his first appearance. Nearly every other scene—including expository dialogue exchanges—is set against the backdrop of a chaotic city whose residents have been hardened not just by the occupation, but by the catastrophes that are unleashed whenever super-beings clash, which ties into recurring scenes and dialogue about what it means for a small country to be invaded and occupied by outsiders who set their own rules and are indifferent to daily life on the ground.

Film history buffs might note the studio that originated the project: the Warner Bros. subdivision New Line. It rose to prominence with horror films, grew by releasing auteur-driven, down-and-dirty genre pieces and dramas (including “ Menace II Society ” and “ Deep Cover ”), and got into blockbusters with the original “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. You can see that lineage reflected in many scenes and sequences of this film, which is PG-13 in fact but R in spirit. “Black Adam” immediately announces what sort of film it is by weaving in quotes from the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” (the melody of which is referenced in Lorne Balfe ’s score) and musical as well as visual snippets from “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”—key works from artists whose best work invites you to root for people who move through their worlds like threshers.

The film’s director honed his mayhem chops in horror movies, then in R-rated thrillers in which Liam Neeson brutally dispatches adversaries. Collet-Serra makes a PG-13 film feel like an R by cutting away or jumping back from the nastiest violence, but letting us hear it (or imagine it when people watch from a great distance). He also does it by insisting, through actions as well as dialogue, that individuals, even superhuman ones, do things for multiple, often contradictory reasons. (A boy’s bedroom is filled with superhero posters and comics, and when a “good guy” and Adam fight in there, they burn and tear through DC’s most recognizable icons in a way that rhymes with scenes of the city's historic monuments being toppled or pulverized.)

Fidelity to basic film storytelling keeps "Black Adam" centered even when it's doing ten things at once. The film is packed with foreshadowings, setups, payoffs, twists, and surprises, and is filled with well-defined lead and supporting characters. One standout is Brosnan, who delivers a moving portrait of an immortal who is tired of seeing the future and thinking back on his past. Dr. Fate looks at those who can live in the present with a mixture of melancholy, wisdom, and envy.

Another is Johnson, who has real acting chops but in recent years has often seemed to be constrained (maybe intimidated?) by his lucrative image as the people’s colossus. He’s as minimalist as one could be when playing a god. He takes a lot of his cues from the screen star that the film quotes most often, Clint Eastwood , but he also seems to have learned from action-hero performances by stars like Neeson, Toshiro Mifune , Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Charles Bronson , who understood that the camera can detect and amplify faint tremors of emotion as long as you act with the film—not just in it, and never against it. The peak is a fleeting moment when Johnson lets us know that something deep inside Adam has changed by glancing in a different direction and softening his features. It's maybe half a second. It’s not the kind of acting that wins prizes because if it’s done well—as it is here—you feel as if it happened in your mind rather than on the screen.

The politics and spirituality of the movie are just as committed and consistent. Even when the story flirts with Orientalism or incorporates simplistic Western heaven-and-hell imagery, “Black Adam” never loses track of what Adam represents in our world: autonomy, liberation, the possibility of redemption and renewal, and a refusal to be defined by however things have always been done.

The result sometimes plays like the DC answer to the pop culture quake that was “ Black Panther ,” serving up a Middle Eastern-inflected version of the Marvel film’s Afro-Futurist sensibility, and letting its setting stand in for any place that was colonized. But its politics are more clearly defined and less compromised. “Black Adam” is staunchly anti-imperialist to its marrow, even equating the Avengers-like crew sent to capture and imprison Black Adam to a United Nations “intervention” force that the people of the region don’t want because it only makes things worse. The movie is anti-royalist, too, which is even more of a surprise considering that the backstory hinges on kings and lineage.

"Black Adam" is a superlative and clever example of this sort of movie, coloring within the lines while drawing fascinating doodles on the margins. In its brash, relentless, overscaled way, Collet-Serra's film respects its audience and wants to be respected by it. "Black Adam" gives the audience everything they wanted, along with things they never expected.

Only in theaters today.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Black Adam (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language.

125 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Teth Adam / Black Adam

Aldis Hodge as Carter Hall / Hawkman

Pierce Brosnan as Kent Nelson / Doctor Fate

Noah Centineo as Al Rothstein / Atom Smasher

Sarah Shahi as Adrianna Tomaz / Isis

Marwan Kenzari as Ishmael Gregor / Sabbac

Quintessa Swindell as Maxine Hunkel / Cyclone

Bodhi Sabongui as Amon Tomaz

Viola Davis as Amanda Waller

Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt

Mo Amer as Karim

Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer (based on the characters created by)

Bill Parker
Adam Sztykiel
Rory Haines
Sohrab Noshirvani

Cinematographer

Lawrence Sher
Michael L. Sale
Lorne Balfe

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‘Black Adam’ Review: Heroism, but Paint It Black

Dwayne Johnson stars in this overstuffed superhero film about an ancient figure granted god powers.

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By Maya Phillips

Behold: the proselytizing superhero film! Listen as it cautions against moral absolutism! It is not the hero movie we need but, thanks to what’s now a tradition of beloved comic book stories shazam-ed into empty Hollywood schlock, it is the hero movie we deserve.

Which brings us to “Black Adam,” a dull, listless superhero movie that hits all the expected touchstones of the genre under the guise of a transgressive new antihero story.

We begin with a briskly delivered tragic back story involving a magical demon crown, a gaggle of wizards and a people’s rebellion in an ancient land called Kahndaq. We then skip forward 5,000 years to modern-day Kahndaq, a poor yet futuristic country that, for generations, has been under siege by various mercenary groups. Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), an Indiana Jones-esque Kahndaqi professor turned artifact hunter, is searching for the aforementioned diadem of doom, with help from her bumbling brother, Karim (Mohammed Amer), and hero-obsessed son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui).

Adrianna summons Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson), the champion of ancient Kahndaq who was granted god powers by the same sorcerer who — surprise! — transformed the teenage Billy Batson into the red-spandex-wearing capester Shazam (Zachary Levi) in that 2019 DC action-comedy .

But Black Adam has some rage issues and an inconvenient habit of zapping baddies to death with his lightning powers, so of course, according to the rules of superhero franchises, a superteam must unite to confront him: Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), a meek genius in colorful threads who can manipulate the wind; Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), a rookie hero who’s just trying his best; Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), a Doctor Strange type in a knight helmet; and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), the leader of this so-called Justice Society of America (not to be confused with the Justice League of America).

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Black Adam Reviews

One of the most notable issues with Johnson as an actor is his constant mugging for the camera.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 5, 2023

Dwayne Johnson saves the day, despite some hiccups.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Black Adam is clearly a major passion project for the Rock, and he clearly wanted to go for something of a more dramatic role, but it doesn't always feel like the film is making the best use of his talents.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2023

The cast’s chemistry and running jokes help rescue an otherwise formulaic action film. Brosnan’s elegant performance stands out, and the post-credits scene will leave moviegoers begging for a sequel.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 16, 2023

Tiresomely heavy exposition, story with little to no creativity, and inconsistent humor make it impossible for the DCEU to take "the next step" in a truly impactful manner.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

A misunderstood epic kick off to the next era of the DC UNIVERSE. Visceral & Intense action scenes create such a kinetic time that I loved. @TheRock completely became Black Adam & added much needed mythology to the word SHAZAM.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Black Adam is an action-driven film that knows it is in service of the fans, which means plenty of spectacle and a focus on entertainment with a capital E, for better and worse.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Black Adam compensates for the copious amounts of expository dialogue with copious amounts of action and spectacle. Dwayne Johnson’s entry as the titular character is fantastic. There’s visual comedy. It is quite barbaric.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2023

Sabbac's late-stage introduction in Black Adam does not justify the ill timing of his arrival. It only strains an already-thin plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Feb 23, 2023

It is NOT all doom and gloom, thankfully. It has a tongue placed firmly in its cheek and a sly sense of humor, never allowing the movie to get too light or dark; just the right amount of entertainment and humor. The Rock gets to let loose.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 19, 2023

I thought it was enjoyable and a different take on the superhero genre. But given everything happening in DC with James Gunn, this story is pretty much irrelevant.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 29, 2023

This is my least favorite superhero movie in recent memory. I'm hoping "The Rock" will choose projects that truly challenge him as an actor and that go beyond cliche action set pieces and poor character development.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 29, 2023

Maybe there was a coherent film being developed at some point, but those days are long gone.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 20, 2023

While DC might have produced the best superhero saga of 2022 with The Batman (take that, Marvel!), it was also responsible for the worst with Black Adam (take that, DC!).

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 14, 2023

Big, loud, and full of energy. Absolutely nothing that you're going to remember after a couple of days, but it does go down easy and is very watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2023

To do both characters of Shazam and Black Adam justice, they needed their own separate films with separate tones. We finally have that Black Adam movie, which is just as brutal and action packed as the Rock has always promised. ... I had a blast.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2023

It is obvious why Johnson was cast in the title role. He is a HUGE box office draw, can portray an extremely menacing character, and would be believable as an ancient superhero.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 2, 2023

With its uninspired narrative, paper-thin characters, and an uncharacteristically uncharismatic Dwayne Johnson, Black Adam merely presents yet another DC dud that fails to excite, entertain, or even remotely engage.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2023

... it’s so intent on creating literal blockbusting action sequences that all of the good stuff gets lost in the rubble.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 2, 2023

It’s a slog to sit through, a painfully dull, and lackluster superhero movie that can never decide if its titular character is a superhero or a villain in the making...

Full Review | Dec 29, 2022

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‘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 reframes a fan-favorite 'Shazam!' baddie as an antihero, though his greatest battles are still to come.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains mild spoilers for “ Black Adam .”

Reviewed at Dolby screening room, Burbank, Oct. 17, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema presentation of a Seven Bucks, Flynn Picture Co. production. Producers: Beau Flynn, Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia. Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Dave Neustadter, Chris Pan, Walter Hamada, Adam Schlagman, Geoff Johns, Eric McLeod, Scott Sheldon
Crew: Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay: Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani, based on characters from DC created by Bill Parker, C.C. Beck. Camera: Lawrence Sher. Editors: Mike Sale, John Lee.
With: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Mohammed Amer, Bodhi Sabongui, Pierce Brosnan.

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Black Adam Review

Black adam strikes out. .

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.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as a powerhouse from ancient times who explodes into the present day with a bad attitude and lots of flashy lightning effects, but unfortunately he’s not the only thing from the distant past. The whole movie feels like it was made a few decades ago, before the golden age of superhero movies, and carries none of the wisdom Hollywood has learned from the likes of The Dark Knight and Iron Man. It’s made clunky by too much exposition, the villain is one-dimensional, and there’s an over-reliance on spectacle over character and story. There are some flashes of brilliance here and there, largely thanks to the members of the Justice Society, but overall Black Adam fizzles out.

Black Adam: Who's Who in the Cast

Here's a quick look at everyone cast in Black Adam so far.

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.

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.

On top of that, it’s hard to take Black Adam and Hawkman’s debate about whether it’s okay for heroes to kill evil-doers seriously when the film often makes jokes out of the outlandishly brutal way Black Adam murders them, not to mention the DCEU is a place where we've already seen premiere heroes Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman take lives.

Who do you most want to see Black Adam fight?

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.

With a bit too much going on, Black Adam feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped. It bites off more than it can chew when it comes to squeezing the origin of its main character, four members of the Justice Society, a trio of relatable human characters, and a villain for them to fight all in one movie. Most of these elements feel shortchanged, and it’s hard not to feel as though that’s because so much emphasis was put on the relentless barrage of action scenes.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with a superhero movie being driven by action, especially one featuring a Superman-level character. But when it’s the same kind of action on repeat, where we see Black Adam perform an endless string of PG-13 Mortal Kombat Fatalities against nameless goons, then it starts to get old. After about the fourth scene of him mowing down dozens of baddies who didn’t stand a chance, I started to wonder why a sort of “Black Adam Kryptonite'' was introduced in the first act but none of the bad guys thought to use it against him later on. It would have made things a little more interesting to have him face an enemy he couldn’t simply snap in half, at least.

The DC Movies in (Chronological) Order

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 manages to find its spark.

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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 brosnan, lots of action, and the hint of something new in the dceu powers it forward..

TAGGED AS: dceu , First Reviews , movies

Almost 15 years after Dwayne Johnson first announced interest in playing the character, he finally makes his debut as Black Adam in the DCEU this week. But is the movie, eponymously titled Black Adam , worth the wait, the promise, and the anticipation? The first reviews of the superhero spectacle are mixed, but those that get what the movie is and who it’s for praise the positives enough to disregard any shortcomings.

Here’s what critics are saying about Black Adam :

Does it live up to expectations?

Johnson has been attached to the Black Adam role for nearly two decades… His love for the DC Universe shines through the film and his passion pays off well throughout. – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

Those who have been waiting for this adaptation long since Johnson first expressed interest back in 2007 will not walk away disappointed. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

If The Rock smashing more things than he usually can as human characters sounds like a good time, Black Adam delivers. – Fred Topel, United Press International

Given the number of years this project was in development, and how it was promoted to shift the balance of power in the DC Universe, it’s disappointing that the end result is so unremarkable. – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

How well does it fit into the DCEU?

Black Adam isn’t a full-on course correction for the DCEU, but it is an encouraging new installment in this larger universe. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Black Adam feels like the first project in years to take from multiple parts of this universe while also focusing on setting up something big for its future. – Gregg Katzman, CBR

Though we’ve prayed DC would move on, there are more than echoes of the Snyderverse here. – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

A strong entry into the DCEU. – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

As much as Black Adam is a darker take on Shazam, it also repeats the missteps of lesser DC movies. – Fred Topel, United Press International

It’s not awful, especially when compared to many of the other DCEU films, but it’s far from the game-changer it claims to be. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Does it feel like any other movies?

The film plays like 2018’s Venom in multiple ways, focusing on brutal action sequences and a mixed tone of dark moments and humor. – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

The movie is essentially Shane on steroids, set in the Middle East instead of the Old West. – Peter Debruge, Variety

One movie that’s clearly a model for Black Adam is Terminator 2: Judgment Day . – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

How is The Rock as Black Adam?

The Rock delivers one of his best performances. He put his heart and soul into this role. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

An absolutely terrific performance by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, [the movie allows] him to flex his trademark muscular showmanship and combine that with character-driven appeal. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

Johnson keeps up his enchanting screen presence as he lands old-fashioned one-liners and brutal action all with complete passion. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

Johnson also breathes just enough emotion and empathy into the character. – Gregg Katzman, CBR

Johnson is grandiose as Black Adam, leaving his charismatic movie star stamp in every scene. This is perfect casting from more than a physical standpoint. – Jeff Nelson, Showbiz Cheat Sheet

No matter what one might think about this Black Adam movie as a whole, The Rock grabs your attention and keeps it no matter what he’s doing. Johnson is the man. – Todd McCarthy, Deadline Hollywood Daily

His charisma and brooding stares can only take the film so far. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Black Adam is perfect for Johnson’s action-figure frame. He just deserves a better first superhero outing than this. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

The problem isn’t that Johnson can’t act — he definitely can! — the problem is that he doesn’t want to. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

What about the Justice Society?

The Justice Society of America nearly steal the movie right from underneath [Johnson] as the film gives them a satisfactory introduction, leaving us wanting more from all of them by the end. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan’s portrayals of Hawkman and Doctor Fate are both equally brilliant. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

Brosnan is a natural in the role of Fate and it’s a wonder how no one tapped on his talents sooner for a superhero role. Hodge is just as great in the film. – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

Pierce Brosnan [is] the standout, even if his character reads like a second-rate Doctor Strange. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Brosnan steals every scene he’s a part of, and the actor is brimming with charisma. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

On the whole, members of the JSA are dealt short shrift, leaving [them] severely underdeveloped. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell’s Atom Smasher and Cyclone feel like they stumbled in from another movie. – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher in Black Adam (2022)

(Photo by ©Warner Bros.)

How is the action?

Black Adam features a lot more action than most DC movies. – Peter Debruge, Variety

The visual spectacle just keeps coming at you for two hours, and the effects are all so stupendous that you could begin to take it for granted. – Todd McCarthy, Deadline Hollywood Daily

This movie is packed with action. When we say that, we mean it is pretty much non-stop action for the entire movie. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Every fight sequence packs a punch, and the film gets extra creative when utilizing Doctor Fate’s powers. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

Collet-Serra manages to make these action scenes exciting in everything from Adam wiping out large armies to a hand-on-hand fight through an apartment with Hawkman. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

There is no wit, no thrill, and no slickness to the action. – Witney Seibold, Slashfilm

Does the film have a worthy villain?

The villain doesn’t do much of anything except provide us with a pretty cool battle, so we will take it — reluctantly. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Unfortunately, there isn’t much depth to the big bad, and he’s ultimately there to offer a ton of action in the final act. – Gregg Katzman, CBR

It’s just a shame that the main villain isn’t stronger here because it does overshadow some of the bombastic action on display. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

The single most forgettable villain in comic book movie history. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam in Black Adam (2022)

How is the script?

The screenplay is so action-orientated that it almost completely leaves out the necessary room for characters to breathe. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

The script of Black Adam is arguably the weakest part of the film. Character arcs can feel paper-thin and predictable. – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

The character development is shallow. – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

The script does little to help non-DC-scholars here, briefly alluding to nanobots and relics and the Justice Society of America as if other movies had introduced them already. – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

Does the movie get political?

The picture’s overarching themes – dealing with colonialism and our desperate need for heroes to speak out against tyranny during bleak times – are affecting and effectively crafted. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

There’s enough complexity in the post-colonial politics of Kahndaq to engage adults. – Peter Debruge, Variety

It’s an interesting setup: American “heroes” coming to a foreign country to stop the local hero from protecting the citizens. But if you’re hoping Black Adam will get into the complexities of that, this is not that movie. – Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy

Moviegoers may have trouble finding escapist pleasure here, given the knotty global issues the movie raises but doesn’t fully process. – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

Will we leave feeling hopeful for the DCEU?

Black Adam will help DC fans restore their faith in the DCEU. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Black Adam might not change things single-handedly, but it certainly feels like the start of a new era of DC movies. – Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy

What it sets up for the future of the DCEU is exciting and not to be overlooked. – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

The film’s whole purpose is to give Black Adam a suitably grand introduction on the assumption that he’ll be pitted against a more deserving adversary soon enough. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Perhaps this is a new way forward for the DCEU, but do we really need them to do exactly what the MCU is doing? – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

Black Adam opens everywhere on October 21, 2022.

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Black Adam isn’t nearly as subversive as it’s meant to be

The overstuffed film has some fuzzy, unclear ideas about heroism

Dwayne Johnson strides toward the camera in a form-fitting black suit with a glowing lightning bolt on the chest as the title character in Black Adam

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Share All sharing options for: Black Adam isn’t nearly as subversive as it’s meant to be

One of Black Adam ’s many unnecessary brawls between Dwayne Johnson’s eponymous antihero and the more conventional superheroes of the Justice Society of America takes place in the room of a superhero-obsessed kid. The blows and blasts of the fight rip apart posters dedicated to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, in a visual representation that director Jaume Collet-Serra is trying to distance himself from Zack Snyder and his DC Snyderverse. But the film never makes a convincing argument for what should be built in its place.

Black Adam is overstuffed with underdeveloped concepts and characters that have been done better in other shows and films. Loosely combining plot elements from Black Adam’s arc in 52 and JSA , the film is mostly set in the generic Middle Eastern nation of Kahndaq, which was home to the earliest human civilization. Using the same fairy-tale structure as the intro to Black Panther , a lengthy exposition dump at the beginning of the film explains that Kahndaq was conquered nearly 5,000 years ago by a tyrant who enslaved his own people in order to craft a magical crown that would give him demonic powers.

When a young champion had the courage to stand against the king, a group of wizards gifted him with mighty powers — the same abilities that would eventually be given to Billy Batson in Shazam . Imbued with the literal power of the gods, Teth-Adam destroyed the king and his palace, but afterward, he was sealed away, along with the crown. Kahndaq has since become a resource-cursed country ruled by the criminal syndicate Intergang.

Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate and Aldis Hodge as Hawkman give each other a little fist-bump in a scene from Black Adam

Intergang reads as a substitute for private military companies like Blackwater or Wagner Group, but Black Adam ’s three-man writing team doesn’t have the courage to get political about such groups’ role in the world, even as they’re trying to write a superhero spin on the Arab Spring . Academic/tomb raider Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) leads a group with the brilliant plan of rooting the crown out of its 5,000-year hiding place in order to re-hide it elsewhere, all to keep it out of Intergang’s hands. That project goes about as well as efforts to protect a McGuffin always do. Adrianna winds up releasing Teth-Adam, who starts off by frying Adrianna’s captors like a living Ark of the Covenant, then solemnly annihilates an entire Intergang squad to the tune of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.”

All the killing Adam does is meant to be some combination of funny, because he’s so casual about his overwhelming power, and triumphant: He’s liberating his homeland from a group of goons with bad teeth and future-tech powered by Eternium, an obscure mineral in DC lore that acts like Kryptonite for heroes who rely on magic. Here, it’s also basically the DC equivalent of Black Panther ’s tech-enabling element vibranium, allowing Intergang to ride around on flying scooters that look like they were designed by the Green Goblin. For a while, the biggest problem Adam has is that he tends to kill people too quickly to properly deliver the heroic catchphrase Adrianna’s son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) insists he should have.

But Adam is too volatile to be left free, according to Task Force X leader Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising her role from Peacemaker and various Suicide Squads ). She deploys the Justice Society of America to take him captive. The JSA sternly insists that Adam isn’t a hero, because heroes don’t kill. At the same time, every time they go into action, they cause collateral damage on the scale of Team America: World Police . Refusing to negotiate with Adam or even try to understand his millennia-old perspective, they keep forcing new fights with him — until they inevitably all have to team up to fight the film’s thinly developed true villain, in a CGI-heavy sequence that shares all the problems of the conclusions of Wonder Woman , Shazam , and many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies before them.

Doctor Fate soars above a city in Black Adam

Watchmen and The Boys deliver much sharper commentary on superheroes as a version of American military intervention. The problem is that Black Adam still argues that superheroes are a net good for the world, and that they deserve their power, even though it continually shows them abusing that power and ignoring the will of the people they claim they’re representing. The writers basically just land on the idea that countries’ right to self-determination means they’re each entitled to have their own representative godlike avatar. The theme of heroes rising up against oppression would also probably have worked better if Johnson agreed to occasionally lose a fight .

Black Adam never develops its JSA members enough to let audiences care about them, which is a problem, since much of the film’s emotional payoff revolves around the bond between their leader, Hawkman, aka Carter Hall (Aldis Hodge), and the powerful wizard Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan). While Brosnan brings his usual charm to the role of an aging hero looking to pass the torch to the next generation, there’s never any explanation of what his time serving in the JSA has meant to him or Carter. There’s also a big missed opportunity to create common ground between Adam and Hawkman, who is typically a reincarnating hero from ancient Egypt. The film doesn’t even mention his backstory.

Instead, we get a bunch of time wasted on new JSA recruits Maxine Hunkel, aka Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Al Rothstein, aka Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). They mostly seem to be in the movie to add youth interest and a minimal romance plot, and to inject more colorful powers into all the battles, which feel cribbed from Captain America: Civil War . The colorful way Cyclone whirls is admittedly stunning, but Al is bumbling comic relief as a version of Ant-Man who can only go big. There’s huge overlap in the power sets of characters between DC and Marvel, and the MCU has a massive edge in that it’s beaten DC to the punch in putting many of those characters on screen, which leaves DC’s versions feeling derivative. But Black Adam is also packed with slo-mo high-def sequences that feel cribbed straight from Zack Snyder’s 300 , so Collet-Serra doesn’t seem overly concerned with visual originality.

Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone uses her wind powers in a swirl of blurred CGI color in Black Adam

Waller’s presence and a quick cameo from her lieutenant Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) are a reminder of better, more subversive comic book stories like Peacemaker , which provides a far deeper view on why heroes shouldn’t kill. The creators could have even stood to take some notes from Marvel’s irreverent and far more tightly written Venom movies . The writers keep inserting new facts about Kahndaq and the evil crown all the way through Black Adam ’s third act, whereas Venom: Let There Be Carnage largely boils its exposition down to the titular alien symbiote freaking out when he first sees the villain Carnage, because he’s a red symbiote , which is apparently all the audience needs to know.

The best criticism of Black Adam might have been made by Johnson himself, well before the movie came out, in the post-credits sequence for DC League of Super-Pets . As Black Adam’s canine companion Anubis, Johnson notes that being an antihero is “basically exactly like a regular hero, except way cooler. You make up your own rules and then you break them. Also, you can ignore most moral and ethical conventions because no one can stop you.” Black Adam ’s take on antiheroism never really contradicts that pointed takedown. The film is so focused on the idea of a black-clad mass murderer being cool that it doesn’t ever answer the questions it starts to raise about what code a hero should live by, or where the limits of redemption lie. In that regard, Black Adam is just like the many other mediocre superhero movies it plays at subverting: It’s more focused on spectacle than on critiquing the genre, or developing any of the deeper themes it feints at exploring.

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Black Adam Review

The DC Film universe has, for nearly a decade now, been pinballing between the lightness of Shazam! or Wonder Woman and the grim violence of Batman v Superman . With Black Adam , Dwayne Johnson and director Jaume Collet-Serra attempt to offer a grand unified theory of DC, mixing family-film tropes with a protagonist who straight-up murders people. The result is sometimes a mess, but it’s a generally entertaining one.

As is traditional, a complicated prologue set in 2600 BCE introduces a superpowered hero who then disappears. Cut to the present day, and the vaguely scholarly freedom fighter Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ) goes to visit an ancient tomb (as is also traditional). She reads out an inscription and whaddya know, lightning strikes to release Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) to battle the enemies who threaten her, and their shared homeland of Kahndaq. Adam is so powerful, however, that soon Viola Davis ’ Amanda Waller gets the Justice Society involved. They’re led by flying fighter Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ) and magic user Doctor Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), who bring newbies Atom Smasher ( Noah Centineo ) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) to stop this new threat.

There’s never much doubt where all this is going. Black Adam clearly isn’t that bad, given how he bonds with Adrianna (a largely undeveloped character) and her likeable son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui). And the Justice Society, while rightly accused of only caring about Kahndaq’s plight when a superpowered being arises there, are clearly well-meaning. There’s obviously going to be a greater threat to come. But first Collet-Sera stages some fun, destructive action scenes to allow Adam and the Justice Society to strut their stuff in. Brosnan’s a standout: his powers are extremely Doctor Strange-y, down to the glass-shattering of reality, but he has a fatalistic sense of the future and a lightness of touch that feels fresh. The film also wisely doesn’t pretend that Black Adam is ever in much danger: it’s only a question of how angry he gets, and who's hit in the crossfire.

The film’s greatest strength, which runs like a current through it, is the sense that superpowers can be terrifying.

Still, that weird contradiction remains: Johnson, Collet-Serra and their team want edge, but without alienating family audiences. So you get massive action scenes without any obvious civilian casualties, and godlike powers without consequence. It’s all nicely shot in low-lying sun and dusty vistas, but it suffers from the weightlessness that gives superhero movies their bad name: great power, no responsibility.

The film’s greatest strength, which runs like a current through it, is the sense that superpowers can be terrifying. Johnson, far stiller and more stony-faced than usual, shows a sort of bemused amorality, and his killing of bad guys seems as natural as breathing during his impressive introductory scenes. The idea of a superhuman who fights for his oppressed people is also a solid one, and an interesting challenge to the usual small-c conservative superheroes who just save a few individuals from baddies. Black Adam may not make his world better, not yet, but he shows the potential to shake up the DC Universe in ways that may yet succeed in uniting its disparate elements.

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Review: Style and great supporting players make ‘Black Adam’ forgettably entertaining

A scowling man with electrical currents around his outstretched arms in the movie "Black Adam."

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The newest entry in the DC Extended Universe, “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, has been hyped as a “new phase” and a “change in the hierarchy” for the embattled comic book franchise, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t also been cause for concern. The trailers looked ponderous and gray, and though the film is directed by the auteur of many lively Liam Neeson actioners , Jaume Collet-Serra, his prior outing with Johnson, “Jungle Cruise,” left his signature verve behind. But, it seems Collet-Serra has got his groove back for “Black Adam,” or perhaps he was saving it for this film, which is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

It helps that “Black Adam” has a distinct and dynamic visual style and tone that distinguishes itself against the Marvel “house style” we’ve become accustomed to over many, many phases of superhero flicks, which have devolved into a depressing digital sludge offset by an onslaught of cutesy, quippy dialogue. In “Black Adam,” the setting is a bustling Middle Eastern city, the cinematography and digital effects crisp and saturated, the action brutal and bruising enough to test that PG-13 rating and the quips judiciously metered out.

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Johnson plays an ancient champion from the kingdom of Kahndaq, who received his powers from the Council of Wizards (you might remember them from the DCEU movie “Shazam” ). Kahndaq is now a modern metropolis, overrun by an organized crime outfit known as Intergang. Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ), who has been searching for a cursed crown made of “eternium,” awakens Teth-Adam (Johnson) from a 5,000-year slumber while escaping an Intergang faction. The all-powerful champion is essentially a “Dark Superman” — he flies, he has super strength, lightning shoots out of his hands, etc. After a violent clash in the desert, this supercharged Encino Man becomes the protector of Adrianna and her plucky son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui, who steals the whole movie).

But in this universe, there need to be checks and balances on all-powerful beings, so the Justice Society is called up to rein in Teth-Adam (and also to introduce new characters for spin-off movies). Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) swoop in to “promote stability” in the world and battle it out with Teth-Adam in the streets of Kahndaq. They eventually decide to team up to take on Intergang, who have occupied the country for 27 years, mining eternium and searching for the cursed crown so that their leader, Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari), can ascend the throne as some kind of hell demon king.

Dwayne Johnson confronts a man in a mask and armor

Screenwriters Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani have to power through a lot of expository lore, character intros and various mumbo jumbo, so they take the tack of repeating the beats over and over again: Teth-Adam lost his son in the process of gaining his power, he’s reckoning with 5,000 years of trauma, he’s not a hero, but his damage makes him powerful. There’s also a refreshingly anticolonialist bent lurking in the story of Kahndaq overthrowing their occupiers, embodied by the rebellious Amon.

While massive global star Johnson is clearly the box office draw, dramatic roles aren’t his forte, and that’s especially clear here as he delivers a dour and dark dramatic performance that’s lacking his natural charisma. Surprisingly, he’s the weak link. Collet-Serra surrounds Johnson with a charm offensive of supporting actors, including Hodge and Brosnan, who are great, as well as Shahi, Sabongui and comedian Mohammed Amer as Adrianna’s brother Karim. The director does heroic work crafting a film around Johnson that is fast and entertaining, tossing needle drops and skateboard stunts and movie references and zombies and funny uncles and fire demons in the mix just to keep us somewhat distracted from the void that is Black Adam himself.

The whole proposition is all a bit silly, and everyone seems in on the joke except for Johnson. While the film feels cobbled together out of spare parts of other superhero movies, and it’s almost instantly forgettable, Collet-Serra manages to hold it all together out of sheer force of will and an inherent sense of style. If there’s any superhero to write about with “Black Adam,” it’s the director, and it’s a good thing to see he still has some lightning coming out of his fingers.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Black Adam’ Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 in general release

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Black Adam is Warner Bros.’ most brutal superhero letdown yet

Warner bros.’ long-awaited black adam movie starring dwayne ‘the rock’ johnson is a one-note spectacle for children about how cool murder is.

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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A tight shot of a bald man in a black superhero suit with lightning crawling up his left arm to shoot out of his right, which is reaching beyond the camera’s view.

Black Adam , Warner Bros.’ latest superhero movie based on DC’s comic books, has been in the works ever since the studio first came around on the genuinely inspired idea of casting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a terrifying Superman analogue best known for beefing with children . In Black Adam , you can plainly see how much hope and faith Warner Bros. has placed in the idea that a darker, more brutal antiheroic figure might be just what its beleaguered cinematic universe of cape films needs to pull itself out of what seems like a death spiral . What’s harder to see, though, is how anyone at Warner Bros. looked at the completed Black Adam and didn’t immediately recognize it as yet another sign of what a messy place the DCEU’s become.

Black Adam, from director Jaume Collet-Serra, tells the story of Teth-Adam (Johnson), an ancient, magically empowered demigod who first walked the Earth as a mortal man thousands of years ago in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq. Though the bulk of Black Adam is set in present-day Kahndaq and follows Teth-Adam as he confusedly tries to understand what became of his nation after he vanished one day in the past, the movie also repeatedly flashes back to his life as an ordinary man in order to make you understand what it is that drives him to be the way he is.

Before Teth-Adam became a hulking, invulnerable thunderstorm shaped like a professional wrestler, he was one of the countless enslaved Kahndaqi forced by their tyrannical king to mine their land for its Eternium, a glowing rare metal whose properties are never really spelled out. Brutal as life under their king was, no one ever dared to rise up against their oppressors for fear of death. But Black Adam ’s earliest scenes detail how that all changed one day thanks to Teth-Adam’s son Hurut (Jalon Christian) — a young boy whose act of defiance sparked a revolution and subsequently led to his death.

A muscular bald man wearing a humongous golden necklace and embracing his son, who is also bald and dying.

Though Black Adam’s backstory has always been an important part of understanding him as a character, the movie’s way of gradually teasing out what happened to his family while also playing coy about some rather obvious details is one of the first signs that Black Adam ’s script isn’t firing on all cylinders. It’s not hard to figure out the big secret Black Adam’s hiding in the present day after professor Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) wakes him from a centuries-long sleep by saying the word “shazam.” And to be fair, Black Adam doesn’t try all that hard to keep the secret hidden or make it intriguing because, once Teth-Adam’s up and operating in modern Kahndaq, the movie shifts gears dramatically to focus on giving its protagonist the flashiest, most murder-filled debut the DCEU’s had yet.

In the same way that Teth-Adam often beats his enemies with his fists, Black Adam beats you over the head with the idea that Kahndaq has been repeatedly besieged, occupied, and in desperate need of a Hero™ over the ages. Were it not for Tomaz’s cape-obsessed son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), it might take longer for Teth-Adam to understand how superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman are to the modern world what the Champion of Kahndaq once was to his own home country. But when Teth-Adam comes face-to-face with the first of the many groups of soldiers sent to neutralize him after he wakes up, Black Adam starts doing what pretty much every American superhero movie does: find a multitude of different ways to make murder look cool.

As many superheroes as there are in DC’s catalog of IP, there are only but so many imaginative ways that Hollywood’s developed to bring them and their powers to the big screen. Rather than placing Teth-Adam into imaginative situations designed to show off his power set, Black Adam instead features an overabundance of visceral 300 -style action sequences that slow down and speed up in order to accentuate how unbothered the demigod is as he’s zapping people with lightning or tossing them into the sky before their spines are crushed. But because the movie never really tries to establish what Black Adam’s worldview is or how he feels about… anything, its attempt at framing him as a solemn, self-assured arbiter of justice instead makes him come across like an uncharming sociopath à la Brightburn .

A man in a black body suit emblazoned with a glowing lightning bolt and accented by a black hooded cape. Behind the man is a wall of flames from an explosion he’s caused.

A big part of what makes Black Adam feel like such a weird misfire is how undeniably charismatic we all know Johnson is capable of being even when he’s portraying characters that you aren’t exactly meant to see as “good” people. You can see shades of that magnetism and how much more compelling it might make Teth-Adam as Black Adam introduces a curious new version of the Justice Society of America consisting of Carter Hall / Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Kent Nelson / Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Maxine Hunkel / Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Albert Rothstein / Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo).

It’s when the JSA shows up in Kahndaq to fight Teth-Adam that Black Adam remembers how fun and exciting superhero stories can be no matter how serious their main characters are. In sharp contrast to the uninspired way Black Adam shows off Teth-Adam’s strength, the movie’s action sequences featuring Cyclone’s sky-dancing aerokinesis and Doctor Fate’s theatrical parlor tricks are some of its most memorable. Hawkman’s never really needed the sort of rebranding that made everyone take the DCEU’s Aquaman more seriously , but Hodge’s Hall exudes a magnetism and worldliness that immediately makes you want to know more about him, his team, and what kind of presence they have outside of Black Adam .

A graying old man wearing a blue shirt and a tan vest bumps fists with a younger man wearing golden armor that’s vaguely bird-themed. In the foreground sits a shining golden helmet reflecting light from throughout the room.

But the JSA’s arrival in Kahndaq, and the way Black Adam pits them against Teth-Adam, has an unfortunate way of highlighting how hesitant the movie is to say what it really wants to say about our pop cultural obsession with mythic superhumans sworn to protect us. It would make all the sense in the world for Teth-Adam to have nothing but fury and thunderbolts for foreign vigilantes coming into his home. But Black Adam stops short of being that logical, both because Warner Bros. knows how irredeemable it might make the character seem in people’s eyes and because the studio has some rather obvious plans for him in the future.

For those who’ve been waiting for a big, bombastic celebration of how powerful Black Adam is that also strips away most of the narrative context that makes him work in DC’s comic, neither Black Adam nor its mid-credits scene will disappoint. But for anyone hoping that Black Adam might actually herald a new era of quality and substantive superhero features from Warner Bros., there’s always the chance that the next movie he pops up in might be a good one.

Black Adam also stars Marwan Kenzari, Mohammed Amer, and Uli Latukefu. The movie hits theaters on October 21st.

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“Black Adam,” Reviewed: Dwayne Johnson Emerges from a Tomb and Finds Nothing

By Richard Brody

There’s nothing so wrong with “Black Adam” that it should be avoided, but nothing—besides the appealing presence of Dwayne Johnson—that makes it worth rushing out to see. The movie’s many small flaws—and even its few small virtues—arise from its one big problem, namely, its positioning in the DC corporate-cinematic empire. It isn’t worse than many of the big-budget C.G.I. superhero spectacles that have more or less taken over studio filmmaking, but it accumulates the genre’s—and the business’s—bad habits into a single two-hour-plus package, and only hints at the format’s occasional pleasures. “Black Adam” feels like a place-filler for a movie that’s remaining to be made, but, in its bare and shrugged-off sufficiency, it does one positive thing that, if nothing else, at least accounts for its success: for all the churning action and elaborately jerry-rigged plot, there’s little to distract from the movie’s pedestal-like display of Johnson, its real-life superhero.

It begins with an immense backstory of mumbo-jumbo, set in 2600 B.C.E., in a fictitious Middle Eastern or North African land called Kahndaq, where a tyrant named Ahk-Ton (Marwan Kenzari) enslaves his subjects to dig for a mineral called Eternium with which he’ll forge a superpowered crown. One young subject, however, rebels and exhorts his countrymen to revolt; he is endowed with his own superheroic power that’s summoned with the word “shazam,” and, in the resulting melee, Akh-Ton is killed and his palace is blown to rubble. Flash forward to present-day Kahndaq: it’s occupied by a paramilitary crime ring called Intergang, and a trio of dissidents led by an archeologist named Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), and helped by her teen-age son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), are searching, among remote subterranean ruins, for the crown in the hope of its aiding their resistance. When Intergang follows and attacks them there, she summons (“Shazam!”) the hero of 2600 B.C.E., Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), from his four thousand-plus of years in an underground tomb. He emerges and lays waste to the assailants.

But this seemingly invulnerable liberator, who catches R.P.G.s and hurls blue thunderbolts, is viewed with suspicion by the American agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising this role from the two recent Suicide Squad movies). In order to stop him, she unites the so-called Justice Society—Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), who’s endowed with wings and a beak; Kent Nelson, a.k.a. Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), who, by means of his golden helmet, can see the future; Maxine Hunkel, a.k.a. Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), who swirls up devastating green windstorms; and Al Rothstein, a.k.a. Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), who can expand to the size of a city walkup, or taller. (Al’s uncle gets a seconds-long cameo, and it’s one of the movie’s few highlights: Henry Winkler.)

That’s where the movie’s philosophical dimension comes in. Teth-Adam is an angry man, still seething over what happened in ancient Kahndaq, and his mores are atavistic, with no compunctions about the use of violence, the practice of killing, the collateral damage of mass destruction. (He also sees a TV set for the first time—which, with primeval wisdom, he blasts to smithereens.) But the Justice Society protests: they believe, as Hawkman says, in “due process,” and they warn him to lay off the “extrajudicial killings.” Try as they might, they can’t rein the invulnerable fighter in by force, but, when he himself recognizes the danger posed by his rage, he allows himself to be reëntombed—and gagged—in order not to utter the magic word again. Then a brutal revenant from early Kahndaq seeks—with the aid of smoldering, ancient zombies—to restore Akh-Ton’s dynasty, and the Justice Society needs Teth-Adam back.

In contrast to the 2019 movie “ Shazam !,” which treats its premise with an apt silliness that yields an unusually amiable superhero comedy, “Black Adam,” sparked by its historical backstory and its enduring implications in current-day political conflict, has a thudding earnestness that its specifics belie. Thus, Davis and Hodge offer performances of grand severity (Davis’s diction alone could smash concrete) that belong to the Shakespearean movie in which neither has yet been cast. Brosnan coasts charmingly in a role that offers him nothing but elegant manners; Swindell and Centineo are part of a Y.A. romance that’s itself entombed in anticipation of a sequel. As for Johnson, he has the star power and the physical prowess to hold attention with minimal fuss, but the role itself, with its tragic implications and mighty gestures, is rote and empty. (I’m still waiting for Johnson to find his way into another movie that offers him as exuberant a showcase as did “ Pain and Gain ”; his talent is far greater than most of his vehicles, no pun intended.) Teth-Adam’s struggles with himself, the weight of his memories, the rise of self-awareness, even the simple fact of his encounters with a new world (trivialized in a single line of dialogue) turn the hero into a mere plaything of the rickety plot, which appears to add its byways as part of a just-so story crafted to yield a franchise.

If the wry details that glitter on the movie’s surface—such as Amon’s effort to teach Teth-Adam the proper use of a catchphrase, or Teth-Adam’s introduction to the concept of sarcasm—stand out in memory, it’s because the substance that it attaches to dries up and blows away like the ashes of half the universe at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.” What “Black Adam” lacks is the sense of a point of view; even the Russo brothers’ armchair-army bluster in Marvel epics suggests a greater sense of personality, of personal commitment and aesthetic attitude, than the synthetic enormity of “Black Adam.” Jaume Collet-Serra, the movie’s director, comes off as a skillful coördinator whose connection to the very essence of superheroes, their fantastic natures and outsized powers, seems merely technical, a problem to be solved rather than a realm of limitless possibilities.

Those limitless possibilities are part of the reason that superhero movies aptly wore out their critical welcomes very quickly. As ultra-high-budget tentpole productions meant for international consumption, these films have production demands that tend to dominate the imagination of direction, with only a few notable exceptions, such as “ Ant-Man ,” “ Black Panther ,” and “ Man of Steel ” (or, for that matter, brief exceptional interludes within unexceptional films, such as “ Doctor Strange ”). There’s something morally deadening and aesthetically depressing about the bottomless toy chest of C.G.I. being reduced to the toolbox of cinematic bureaucracy.

It’s no less numbing to find material meant for children retconned for adults—and, in the process, for most of the naïve delight to be leached out, and for any serious concerns to be shoehorned in and then waved away with dazzle and noise. With no discernible artistic perspective, “Black Adam” offers a moral realm that draws no lines, a personal one of simplistic stakes, a political one that suggests any interpretation, an audiovisual one that rehashes long-familiar tropes and repackages overused devices for a commercial experiment that might as well wear its import as its title. When I was in Paris in 1983, Jerry Lewis—yes, they really did love him there—had a new movie in theatres. In the U.S., it was originally titled “Smorgasbord” (and later reissued as “ Cracking Up ”); in France, they adored him so that they released it as “T’es fou Jerry”—“You’re Crazy, Jerry.” “Black Adam” could be retitled “You’re a Superhero, Dwayne”—it’s the marketing team’s PowerPoint presentation extended to feature length. ♦

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‘black adam’ review: dwayne johnson’s charisma carries a morally muddy superhero flick.

The star brings Shazam's maybe-nemesis to the screen in director Jaume Collet-Serra's DC debut, costarring Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan.

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In 'Black Adam,' a lightning-based champion can't hold a charge

Glen Weldon

Black Adam the character (Dwayne Johnson) tosses lightning, but Black Adam the movie is a Faraday cage. Warner Bros. hide caption

Black Adam the character (Dwayne Johnson) tosses lightning, but Black Adam the movie is a Faraday cage.

Black Adam is what happens when you build a movie from the outside in — when you start with the visuals and figure everything else will just fall into place.

More to the point: Black Adam doesn't work. To understand why, it helps to know where the character comes from.

In the early 2000s, writers Geoff Johns and David S. Goyer — with art by Stephen Sadowski and many others — introduced to the comics pages a new version of Black Adam. The character had been around since the 1940s as a supervillain who dogged the family of superheroes that, like him, had been given powers by the wizard Shazam. As such, he came factory-installed with the basic supervillain-threats package: I'll destroy you, I'll rule the world, etc.

Their new Black Adam, however, was a statesman in spandex, ruler of the fictional nation of Kandhaq. He was haughty, superior, imperious, humorless. They were careful never to depict him doing anything so prosaic as walking, or even standing. No — whenever you saw him, he hovered about a foot above the floor, peering down his aquiline nose at those (literally and figuratively!) beneath him. It was a power move, obviously — and it made for a great visual. Not for nothing.

When what the Rock is cooking is under-seasoned

From the moment he was first revamped in the comics, fan sites lit up with posts dreamcasting Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Black Adam. In their defense, there was a strong resemblance. And as this is superhero comics we're talking about, keep in mind that the essential appeal of any character is partly — let's be real, largely — visual. Particularly for readers of comics who start young, it's a hero or villain's look — their color palette, costume design, logo, and their sheer physicality as rendered across splash pages and bursting out of panel grids — that first pulls you in, and will likely retain its visceral power over you for the rest of your life.

So those fans posting their composite renderings of Black Adam's costume crudely (and sometimes not-so-crudely) Photoshopped over Johnson's superhero-ready physique were responding to something real — but that something was strictly visual. It ignored all of the dutiful work that comics writers and artists had devoted to defining the character's newly made-over vibe as a kind of diet Doctor Doom. (Doctor Vague Dread? Doctor Outlook Not So Good? Doctor Don't Count Your Chickens?)

Among the many fans of the comics' Black Adam who didn't get this particular memo, if we're to simply judge by the evidence available onscreen in Black Adam , is Dwayne Johnson himself.

Because while the actor played the heel back in his wrestling days, he's spent his retirement from the ring assiduously cultivating a charming, wisecracking, everyone's-older-brother persona, both on and off the screen. His is a charismatic presence that flatly, emphatically and very intentionally exists to dispel notions like "haughty," "imperious" and especially "humorless."

It's easy to imagine the big lug reading a comic depicting Black Adam as an all-powerful badass who slaughters hundreds of bad guys and thinking: That'd be cool to play. And then, after checking his socials, going even further than that: And people want to see me play it!

But his performance in director Jaume Collet-Serra's middling, muddled foray into the DCU keeps fighting against itself — and losing. The actor's dogged attempt to play aloof and imperious effectively quashes his natural, movie-star charisma — his ability to connect to audiences — and shuts him down completely. As a result, his Adam comes across as simply dour. Distant. Ponderous. Persnickety, even.

Hey Mr. Producer, I'm talking to you, sir

Perhaps he thinks he's serving Clint Eastwood's stoic Man With No Name? Certainly the film itself explicitly and repeatedly references that character. The difference, which turns out to be an all-important one, lies in the two actors' respective approaches to stardom.

Eastwood never particularly cared what we thought of him as a person. Johnson, however, has always displayed an innate yet carefully cultivated sense of what he believes his audience wants from him, and a baseline desire to move through the world as Four-Quadrant Appeal made flesh. You can feel that brand-awareness, that abiding cautiousness, leaking out of Johnson every moment he spends onscreen here.

That the star is also a producer of Black Adam will be lost on no one, as it keeps manifesting in ways small and large.

Small first: In the comics, Black Adam sports a Dracula-esque widow's peak and pointy little elf-ears. Both of those attributes got nixed — in a very early production meeting, no doubt.

Again and again in the film, physical representations of other, much better-known DC Comics characters — posters, action figures, etc. — get crushed or shredded or pulverized into a fine dust. It feels playful at first — a shot across the bow! — but then, somewhere after the fifth occurrence, it becomes something else.

More centrally, we have Johnson's insistence that Black Adam's story merited its own film, and should not get shunted into a Shazam! sequel, as was originally planned. This despite the fact that the two characters share the same origin, power set and visual iconography. What are we to make of the fact that Zachary Levi's Shazam! character, a powerful flying guy with lightning powers, doesn't even rate a mention in a film whose central plot finds Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, again) scrambling to find heroes capable of going up against...a powerful flying guy with lightning powers?

If there's a difference between being a producer and convincing a major studio to bankroll your vanity project, Black Adam doesn't argue strongly for it.

Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) would like a word. (Pssst. It's "Shazam." "Shazam" is the word he would like.) Warner Bros. hide caption

Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) would like a word. (Pssst. It's "Shazam." "Shazam" is the word he would like.)

Going back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths

It seems both obvious and inevitable to note that, this many years into superhero cinema's ascendancy, novelty comes at a premium.

Even so, Black Adam seems perfectly content to pick over the wilted remains of the superhero-movie salad bar. Its wry, goateed wizard Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan) plays like warmed-over wry, goateed wizard Dr. Strange. Its gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Atom-Smasher (Noah Centineo) can't help but remind us of gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Ant-Man. Its magical element Eternium feels like something scribbled on the whiteboard at the naming session where they brainstormed Vibranium. And the nerdy kid who eagerly advises Black Adam about his powers and catchphrases (Bodhi Sabongui) owes so much to the nerdy kid who eagerly advised Zachary Levi's character about his powers and catchphrases that it's gotta be an intentional attempt at parallelism. Right?

What is arguably new — new-ish, anyway — about Black Adam is how matter-of-factly it positioning at its center an all-powerful anti-hero who kills without remorse.

But even this gets in the way of the film's storytelling. We kick off with the Kandhaqi freedom-fighter Arianna (Sarah Shahi) unwittingly awakening Black Adam from his millennia-long sleep and, equally unwittingly, leading many, many, many generic bad guys to his location. Black Adam unceremoniously proceeds to slaughter them in a set-piece marked by Zack Snyder-esque camera flourishes — but in the aftermath, as he hovers over a field strewn with dismembered corpses, you start wondering where the film can go from there. How does it escalate? How does it hope to increase the tension?

For a while, Black Adam simply opts not to bother. Instead, it just keeps throwing more generic bad guys into the po-faced, levitating sausage grinder that is Johnson's character. When the Justice Society arrives, with its more powerful opponents, it's reasonable to hope that they'd pose something of a challenge. But no, not really — he still kicks their asses in a series of hero-on-hero fight scenes. It just takes him a little longer.

You'd think, in a movie that featured so many of the kind of super-powered confrontations that most films like this shunt to the third act, we'd be mercifully spared the climactic clash in which the hero fights an evil version of themselves.

Don't hold your breath.

When CGI catches up to comics artists

But back to the Justice Society — there's Brosnan's Dr. Fate, Centineo's Atom-Smasher, plus Aldis Hodge's Hawkman and Quintessa Swindell's Cyclone. Don't worry, you haven't missed the movie that introduced any of them before — this isn't the MCU, after all, where characters get a trot around the track on their own before getting dragooned into a team. In DC, everyone hits the ground running at the same time.

Consequently, the film asks us to invest far more emotional weight in the Dr. Fate/Hawkman friendship than Brosnan and Hodge manage to generate in their scant minutes of screen time together.

But at least they look great, which is no small feat. Growing up reading Dr. Fate comics (yes, I was the one!) I've always loved the bold simplicity of his blue-and-gold outfit — whenever he dons the helm that obscures his face, he could pass for the mascot of University of Michigan's fencing team. And while Hawkman's costume always looks great on paper, there's a nagging goofiness that's crept into his few previous live-action forays.

Think about it: In the comics, you've got a guy hovering in the air with wings dramatically extended. Awesome! Iconic!

But in live-action, the only way that same guy stays airborne is by...flapping. And flapping. And flapping. It's much less striking. It's vaguely uncomfortable to look at, frankly.

This Hawkman works, though. So well that you hardly even notice the flapping.

The hero Cyclone isn't given much to do, but what little she does, she does colorfully. As she generates and controls the wind, she transforms into a multi-hued blur — until, that is, director Collet-Serra ramps down the camera speed, and we get a glamour shot that looks like a Sears Portrait Studio photographer instructed her to poke her head through a bed of rainbow cotton candy.

Keep it simple, for the shareholders

Early on, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Black Adam aims to engage with ideas that, historically, PG-13 studio superhero movies studiously avoid: the brutal legacy of imperialism and colonization, for example. The inadequacy of individual action – even superheroic action — within systems built to oppress. For a thrilling moment, even the most essential tenet of superheroism — the whole notion of putting one's faith in a single individual, any individual, instead of taking collective action — seems like it might be on the table. But in the end these ideas, and others, get only gestured toward, never seriously engaged with.

Most mystifying is the film's decision to depict Kandhaq as a country under the thumb of a white occupying force, only to then primly insist that the true enemy here is a homegrown would-be tyrant. It's a dodge, and it's put there intentionally to assuage, to reassure, to smooth any feathers that might get ruffled by the blandest suggestion of Western culpability in the oppression of even a fictional people.

It's just one more of this film's many frustrating aspects, but it's rooted, like all the rest of them, in the overcautious, risk-avoidant hollowness of its central performance.

'Black Adam' review: Dwayne Johnson's DC superhero movie rides the lightning, fizzles out

Finally, “The Rock” is starring in his own superhero movie: Dwayne Johnson carries “Black Adam” atop his mighty shoulders, but it proves too weighty a task.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( “Jungle Cruise” ), the newest DC film is full of swagger and intensity, yet it sadly lacks character – which is a problem considering “Black Adam” (★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters now) rolls out all sorts of new personalities. This is Johnson’s baby, a film spotlighting a complicated antihero he has championed for years. It wins some battles and packs plenty of punch, yet it just can’t get past familiar tropes and flaws.

Teth Adam (Johnson) is a former enslaved man with godlike abilities from ancient times who has been imprisoned for 5,000 years. After being released, he discovers that his home country of Kahndaq, a fictional country in the Middle East where he was once a champion, is now ruled by the mercenary organization Intergang and in desperate need of a revolutionary type of dude. None of it exactly pleases this dark figure with a hooded cape and a mean streak, so Adam starts taking out bad guys in violent fashion.

Enter the Justice Society of America, a group of heroes led by Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) – a mix of Bruce Wayne and Professor X running a superteam out of his extremely high-tech mansion – tasked with confronting this new global metahuman threat. The squad includes helmeted sorcerer Doctor Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), human tornado Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and fresh-faced, size-changing youngster Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). But even together they have trouble tussling with a wrecking machine who harnesses lightning and doesn’t dig people getting in his way.

While he sports a morally questionable attitude when it comes to killing people, Adam’s not the real big bad of his movie. An evil being connected to the title character’s tragic backstory emerges, and after they smack each other around for a bit, the JSA and Black Adam team up to take on the bigger problem.

Happy 50th birthday, The Rock!: Every Dwayne Johnson movie role, definitively ranked

Yes, it’s a lesson right out of Comic Book Movie 101. “Black Adam” also takes a step back from DC movies like “Shazam!” and “The Suicide Squad,” efforts that hinted at the larger DC world but had their own interesting vibe and were mostly self-contained narratives. The new movie stylistically harks back to earlier Zack Snyder superhero works, and in many ways is a two-hour buildup to a major scene at the end that foreshadows what’s to come. (It is pretty nifty.)

Like a lot of its ilk, “Black Adam” tosses out too many new characters without adequate development. Hodge and especially Brosnan are most effective at giving audiences rousing new heroes, even though we don't get a chance to know them well. Then there’s Black Adam himself, who at least earns somewhat of a character arc. While the film’s definitely going for a Man with No Name bent – a Clint Eastwood movie even plays on a TV before Johnson’s antihero blasts it – results are mixed.

'Black Adam': Why Pierce Brosnan wore his own wedding ring as Doctor Fate

To his credit, Johnson eagerly takes on a role that's much different from his popular work (for example, "Central Intelligence" and the "Fast and Furious" and "Jumanji" movies) and uses his physical presence and his natural magnetism. Black Adam is not a likable guy at the start, and Johnson works overtime to mold him into a cool, stoic and havoc-wreaking customer, first on a quest for vengeance and then an enlightening journey (although Adam reminding various folks every five minutes that “I’m not a hero” doesn’t help).

“Black Adam” is decent when it comes to world-building – Collet-Serra’s depiction of old Kahndaq is a standout, although he could have cut down on the many slow-motion action sequences throughout the film. And it intriguingly goes where other similar flicks haven’t by digging into themes of imperialism and what makes a champion in a modern world.

If the suit fits, wear it, and Black Adam is perfect for Johnson’s action-figure frame. He just deserves a better first superhero outing than this.

Black Adam (2022)

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They were competing against the vastly superior MCU
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Lots of bashing and smashing in disappointing DC movie.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie poses (but doesn't follow up on) interes

The superheroes are all brave and try to do what t

The setting of Kahndaq is a fictional place, but i

High body count, and lots of guns and shooting. Ch

Sporadic use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss,"

Several posters and toys for various DC characters

Positive Messages

The movie poses (but doesn't follow up on) interesting questions about good and evil, such as who decides what's good and what's evil, and is itOK to cross the line between the two if good comes out of it? Also: What if there's no such thing as absolutes?

Positive Role Models

The superheroes are all brave and try to do what they think is right, even though they sometimes make mistakes. And they all seem open to learning, even if things are sometimes ambiguous. Adrianna is central to the plot, both as a voice for moral inquiry about military occupation and political resistance and for family unity.

Diverse Representations

The setting of Kahndaq is a fictional place, but it's populated by a diverse group of actors/characters, including star Dwayne Johnson, co-stars Aldis Hodge and Sarah Shahi, and many more. Women characters have power and agency, especially Adrianna, who is a strong, brave leader. The main group of superheroes does include two White men. But the movie's story puts decisions in the hands of local people, rather than White interlopers. A heavyset character is portrayed as lovably comic/ridiculous.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

High body count, and lots of guns and shooting. Characters get shot, and there are bloody wounds. Frequent fighting, punching, kicking, bashing against surfaces, hitting with blunt objects. Character grabbed by throat, electrocuted, turned into skeleton. Character sliced by blade. Child shot with arrow. Severed hand. Character stabbed and thrown over cliff, with blood trailing after him. A character thrown from a mountaintop lands with an icky thud. Cars and other vehicles crash. Zombies. Some symbology/imagery traditionally associated with satanism.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss," "damn," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

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Several posters and toys for various DC characters are seen in a boy's bedroom. FedEx sign shown.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Black Adam is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie, and a spin-off from Shazam! . Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it ultimately becomes a dull smash-and-bash-fest without much time for character development or anything else. Expect large-scale action violence, with explosions/destruction, guns and shooting, and lots of fighting. Many characters (including women and children) are killed, sometimes in gruesome -- though bloodless -- ways: electrocution, stabbing, etc. Language includes occasional use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss," "damn," and "hell." There's a bit of flirting, and several posters and toys depicting other DC characters are shown in a boy's room. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (28)
Kids say (35)

Based on 28 parent reviews

Have no part with the deeds of darkness.

Very good movie, what's the story.

BLACK ADAM begins 5,000 years ago, with the city of Kahndaq ruled by a tyrant who works to build a magical crown that will give him great powers. A boy sparks rebellion, and, just as the tyrant is about to don the special crown, the boy is given the powers of Shazam! to save the day. In the present day, the crown re-surfaces, and Teth-Adam ( Dwayne Johnson ) is summoned once again. But, rather than a hero, he appears to be a killer, dispatching everyone who tries to get in his way. The crown temporarily ends up in the hands of powerful resistance fighter Adrianna ( Sarah Shahi ), whose rebellious son, Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), believes that Teth-Adam can be the city's hero. Meanwhile, the Justice Society -- comprised of Hawkman ( Aldis Hodge ), Dr. Fate ( Pierce Brosnan ), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher ( Noah Centineo ) -- has been called in to deal with what they see as a threat. But something even worse is on the horizon.

Is It Any Good?

Occasionally exploring themes of what it means to be heroic or villainous, with shades of gray in between, this superhero movie collapses into a boring bash-fest with barely any time to breathe. Like many other villain-as-protagonist movies, ranging from Venom and Morbius to Maleficent and Cruella , Black Adam takes the opportunity to explore such questions as "Who decides who the 'good guy' is?" And "Is it OK to hurt people if some good comes out of it?" Unfortunately, once the movie asks those questions, it forgets all about them as the characters whiz around the screen, hammering away at one another, as well as any solid object that happens to be in the way. In this movie, bodies and debris soar far more frequently than viewers' spirits.

It's safe to say that the majority of Black Adam 's running time consists of fights, chases or battles, and sections of blocky exposition. Much is made of what's supposed to be a tender friendship between Hawkman and Dr. Fate, but we never feel this; it's only told to us through dialogue and goopy music in rare moments between punches. The same goes for a sweet friendship/romance between Cyclone and Atom Smasher; it's just too scarce and fragmented to amount to much. Even the human characters are cookie cutters, from the generic movie "kid" to the lovably comic uncle, rotund and ridiculous (though the actors playing both parts give them their all!). As far as Black Adam goes, those who enjoy The Rock's comedic chops and charismatic smirk may be surprised to encounter an antihero who's stoic in the face of loss and trauma. Unfortunately, though, viewers never really learn who he is or what he wants to be, and that question is ultimately less intriguing than it is uninteresting.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Black Adam 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What's interesting, useful, or entertaining about a movie centered on a character who's usually depicted as a villain?

In your opinion, what does define "good" and "evil"? Where does Black Adam fall into this scale? Do violent means justify peaceful ends?

How does the representation in the cast of this movie compare to other superhero films you've seen? Why is positive representation important in the media?

What's the appeal of superhero movies? Are superheroes automatically role models ? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 21, 2022
On DVD or streaming : December 5, 2022
Cast : Dwayne Johnson , Sarah Shahi , Aldis Hodge
Director : Jaume Collet-Serra
Inclusion Information : Black actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors, Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
Studio : New Line Cinema
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Superheroes
Run time : 124 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language
Last updated : April 20, 2024

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‘Black Adam’: Dwayne Johnson Enters the DCEU. You Run for the Exits

By David Fear

In the Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, circa 2500 B.C., a tyrannical king is desperate to mine a rare mineral known as “Eternium.” Slaves toil day and night in search of this magical resource, so that he may fashion a supernatural crown out of it that will grant him immeasurable power. Luckily, a boy is deemed worthy by a council of ancient wizards to be the defender of his people, and with one word (“Shazam!”), he is transformed into a mighty hero. He destroys the palace before this wretched regent becomes unstoppable and immortal, burying the crown and, unfortunately, himself along with it. He will slumber for some 5000 years before he’s awoken…and he will be angry….

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Boom! Enter Johnson. Bang! The soldiers open fire. Splat! Bodies are flung like rag dolls, as well as being ripped apart, crushed, and incinerated by lightning. Once the melee moves outside, fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and heavy weaponry, not to mention the men who operate all of these things, are casually, brutally destroyed to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.” They wanted a hero. Because this superhuman woke up on the wrong side of the tomb, they got a killing machine instead.

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Should you not have entire multicharacter histories at your beck and call, you may find yourself lost in the worldbuilding wilderness, wondering how so much of this fits together, who’s capable of doing what, why certain sacrifices matter, and why you should care about these peripheral, yet supposedly important characters that take up so much screen time. At least Hodge and Brosnan seem to know what movie they’re in, striking splash-page poses and saying the lines with the requisite end-of-the-universe solemnity. But there’s making a movie for the fans, and making a movie that only fans can decipher and appreciate. All of it could have been fixed, and easily. This is just lazy superhero storytelling.

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Black Adam Is Entertaining Rubbish

Black Adam opens with a burst of exposition and backstory so cumbersome that it might as well be self-parody. (“ Before Rome, before Babylon, before the pyramids … ”) Though totally different in tenor and style, it actually reminded me of the opening moments of Whit Stillman’s 2016 period comedy Love & Friendship , which delivered such a rapid-fire stream of character information that it liberated the viewer from feeling like they needed to pay attention to any of it; they could just sit back and enjoy the ride. That’s kind of what happens with Black Adam , too, though it’s probably not intentional. The film ultimately overloads us with so much amazing nonsense that we sort of give up and give in.

But amid the mumbo jumbo about dark magic and the crown of Sabbaq and the six demons of the underworld or whatever, there is a promising idea at the heart of Black Adam , at least initially. The film is set in the imaginary Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, an ancient and once-proud land currently occupied by a mercenary force called the Intergang. Not unlike Palestinians and Iraqis, the impoverished citizens have had their culture trampled and are bedeviled by checkpoints and soldiers having their way with the population. By the time Black Adam — known at first as Teth-Adam — emerges from his ancient slumber, a supernaturally powerful champion of Khandaq who’s been dormant for 5000 years, the film has convinced us in its own clunky way that this besieged land could use someone on its side.

Which makes Black Adam the movie’s greatest shortcoming that much more tragic. Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock, one of our most charming movie stars, plays the character as a humorless, unemotional slab. One can sort of see the inspiration here: The actor was often compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier in his career, and the film at times seems to be going for a Terminator 2: Judgment Day vibe; there’s even an excitable, skateboarding teen who tries to teach Adam catchphrases and how to act like a hero. But Johnson, while limited in range, was never an awkward actor in the way Schwarzenegger was. He’s always been a much more likable and expressive figure (even if his movies mostly pale in comparison to Schwarzenegger’s) and watching him do stone-faced feels like we’re being deprived of something precious. It’s only toward the end of the film that a glimmer of recognition flashes across our hero’s visage, as the grim inexpressiveness strays into something closer to deadpan. It’s welcome, but it’s too late.

Perhaps more importantly, this annoying stoniness doesn’t allow Johnson to act much either. We know he can do it, and the occasionally evocative dialogue about the state of his land aches for some emotion. (“Just say ‘shazam’ and we all go home.” “I don’t have a home.” “We both know you’re not supposed to be here.” “ You’re not supposed to be here.”) Imagine lines like these delivered with even a hint of bitterness, or despair, or simmering rage, and you start to imagine the far better and even more pointed film Black Adam could have been. There is, it turns out, a narrative reason for the character’s refusal to feel things. But it’s a dopey reason, and it feels like a cop-out. Worse, it undercuts the movie: Johnson is so emotionless for so much of the film that if you told me he wasn’t actually there for the shoot and that they just used a still photo of his face to animate his scenes, I’d believe you.

That said, all is not lost. Director Jaume Collet-Serra — a journeyman who specialized in surprisingly gonzo thrillers before he did a full 180 into family far e — brings an enjoyable sense of exuberant splatter to his action scenes. We often complain about how the modern comic-book movie has been CGI’d into meaninglessness, how everything in these pictures feels cartoonish and weightless and bland. Black Adam won’t do anything to disprove that notion, but Collet-Serra’s perversity and propensity for gallows-humor slapstick keeps things lively. Limbs are yanked off. Smoking boots remain where once there were humans. Bodies are tossed into the sky with near-psychotic abandon. One dude swallows a grenade. Black Adam is PG-13, so there’s no real blood. But this is America, so there are plenty of amputations.

The nutty, schlocky frivolity of Black Adam might not go with its occasional pretensions toward greater meaning (or even its, gasp , political overtones), but it does feel of a piece with the fly-by-night nature of its story. Because after offering up all that fanciful ancient history about the origins of the character we will know as Black Adam, the movie then proceeds to casually introduce us to a whole bunch of superheroes as if we’ve somehow known them all along: Kent Nelson, a.k.a. Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan); Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman (Aldis Hodge); Albert Rothstein, a.k.a. Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo); Maxine Hunkel, a.k.a. Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell). Some of these characters date back to the 1940s — long before Marvel, in other words — but for those of us who didn’t encounter them in our comic-book reading days, it’s hard not to wonder who the hell they are. The film assumes a certain familiarity with them, which can sometimes make it feel like we’re watching a cut-rate imitation brand Asylum Entertainment version of an Avengers or X-Men movie. We haven’t had a Doctor Fate movie, or a Hawkman sequel, or an Atom Smasher series, or whatever. That makes these characters feel a bit like imitations, even if their original comic book iterations have been around forever.

But even here, Black Adam has something intriguing it starts doing, only to promptly give up on it. The Justice Society shows up to teach Black Adam and the angry citizens of Kahndaq that extrajudicial killings are wrong (a character literally says this), and someone points out that the Justice Society, for all the work it’s supposedly been doing around the world to battle oppression and bring justice, has never before come to the troubled land of Kahndaq. That would, of course, make these superheroes hypocrites and colonizers of a different sort. Okay! That’s interesting! Let’s do something with tha— but no, the film drops this idea almost as soon as it’s expressed, as if it realizes that to go any further in that direction would unearth attitudes and ideologies that might ultimately work against the bottom line.

The way Black Adam treats the Justice Society also seems symptomatic of Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ attempts to replicate Disney and Marvel’s success with their various superhero team-ups without doing any of the table-setting required to make us feel like we have something invested in these characters’ fates. Without giving away any spoilers, the film actually attempts a couple of ambitious moments during its finale that feel like they were meant to be big emotional climaxes for heroes we’ve been watching for years. These scenes don’t work the way the picture wants them to. Instead, they work in the other direction, which is to enhance the whole goofy, off-the-rack nature of this operation. The lack of cinematic mythology, the absence of a dozen other movies that we have to catch up with beforehand, unburdens us as viewers. It may undermine the film’s attempts at emotion, but it also allows us to sit back and enjoy it. Honestly, after more than a decade of overbaked cookie-cutter superhero flicks, I’ll take it. Just don’t ask me to care about anybody.

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Dwayne Johnson says axed Black Adam 2 got caught in 'vortex' of leadership: 'One of the biggest mysteries'

"It's like new ownership coming in, buying a new NFL team, and going, 'Alright, not my head coach, not my quarterback.'"

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at Entertainment Weekly with over five years of experience covering the latest in entertainment. A proud Kingston University alum, Emlyn has written about music, fandom, film, television, and awards for multiple outlets including MTV News, Teen Vogue , Bustle, BuzzFeed, Paper Magazine , Dazed, and NME. She joined EW in August 2022.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is opening up about why he thinks Warner Bros. and DC Studios ultimately decided not to move forward with Black Adam 2.

The actor, who spent 15 years fighting to make the original superhero film, says a second installment was axed due to a "vortex of new leadership."

"As we were creating Black Adam , developing it, shooting [it] — we got knocked down a little bit because of COVID and the shutdowns, got back up — there were so many changes in leadership," Johnson told Kevin Hart on a recent episode of Hart to Hart . "Any time you have a company, but especially that size and magnitude that's a publicly traded company, and you have all those changes in leadership, you have people coming in who creatively, fiscally, are gonna make decisions that you may not agree with philosophically."

He went on to explain that Black Adam became "one of those movies that got caught in that web of new leadership" as a result of company shakeups, which led Warner Bros. to completely shelve its Batgirl movie and DC Studios to hire James Gunn and Peter Safran as its new co-chairs in 2022.

However, Johnson told Hart that he wasn't the only one perplexed by the choice to press pause on Black Adam . "That will always be one of the biggest mysteries, I think, not only for me and us on our end, but also throughout our business," he said. "Because that's a Kevin question, but that was a question out of Wall Street. That was a question out of Hollywood."

Johnson also listed several of Black Adam 's achievements, including its impressive performance at the box office . "You're establishing a new superhero. You want to grow out the franchise. You bring back Superman and Henry Cavill . The world went crazy ," he said, referring to the film's end-credits scene , which featured Cavill's return as Clark Kent. "And you and I — you were texting me this on opening weekend — we created a diverse superhero portfolio where we had just men and women of color in Black Adam , too."

While Johnson acknowledged that it was important to "look at and respect the bottom line economically," he said things become more difficult when numbers are prioritized over audience excitement.

"When you think about opportunity and creating things that are fresh and delivering for the audience, which is our number-one boss — when that wasn't looked at through that lens, it makes things a little bit more challenging, I think," he said, especially "for guys like you and I, where you go, 'Are you sure you want to do this?'"

The former football player and professional wrestler equated the move to a change in leadership in sports. "It's like new ownership coming in, buying a new NFL team, and going, 'Alright, not my head coach, not my quarterback. Doesn't matter how many times you won a Super Bowl. Doesn't matter how many rings we got. I'm going with somebody else.'"

Johnson announced last December that he had met with Gunn and that Black Adam would " not be in their first chapter of storytelling " but that "DC and Seven Bucks have agreed to continue exploring the most valuable ways Black Adam can be utilized in future DC multiverse chapters."

"These decisions made by James and DC leadership represent their vision of DCU through their creative lens," he said in part. "After 15 years of relentless hard work to finally make Black Adam , I'm very proud of the film we delivered for fans worldwide. I will always look back on the fan reaction to Black Adam with tremendous gratitude, humility, and love."

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COMMENTS

Black Adam movie review & film summary (2022)
The movie is anti-royalist, too, which is even more of a surprise considering that the backstory hinges on kings and lineage. "Black Adam" is a superlative and clever example of this sort of movie, coloring within the lines while drawing fascinating doodles on the margins. In its brash, relentless, overscaled way, Collet-Serra's film respects ...
Black Adam
Oct 28, 2022 Full Review Trace Sauveur Austin Chronicle Black Adam is mostly a movie made up of strictly baseline ideas, or the regurgitation of already existing ones. Rated: 1.5 ...
'Black Adam' Review: Heroism, but Paint It Black
But Black Adam has some rage issues and an inconvenient habit of zapping baddies to death with his lightning powers, so of course, according to the rules of superhero franchises, a superteam must ...
Black Adam
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2023. Sarah Vincent Cambridge Day. The cast's chemistry and running jokes help rescue an otherwise formulaic action film. Brosnan's elegant ...
'Black Adam' Review: Dwayne Johnson Plays an All-Powerful ...
Dwayne Johnson. 'Black Adam' Review: Dwayne Johnson Plays an All-Powerful DC Villain Who Can Be Talked Into Heroism. Reviewed at Dolby screening room, Burbank, Oct. 17, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13 ...
Black Adam Review
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 ...
Black Adam First Reviews: Action-Packed and Powered by a Charismatic
Almost 15 years after Dwayne Johnson first announced interest in playing the character, he finally makes his debut as Black Adam in the DCEU this week. But is the movie, eponymously titled Black Adam, worth the wait, the promise, and the anticipation?The first reviews of the superhero spectacle are mixed, but those that get what the movie is and who it's for praise the positives enough to ...
Black Adam (2022)
Black Adam: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. 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.
Black Adam
Black Adam - Metacritic. 2022. PG-13. Warner Bros. 2 h 5 m. Summary Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the ancient gods—and imprisoned just as quickly—Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world. Action.
Black Adam review: Dwayne Johnson's take on DC's big ...
Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone, Atom Smasher, and yes, even Henry Cavill as Superman all cram their way into Black Adam, a movie with big superhero questions and no clear answers. Starring Dwayne ...
Black Adam Review
Black Adam Review. Nearly 5,000 years ago, in the Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, the superpowered Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) took on a tyrant king and then vanished. In present day, with ...
'Black Adam' review: Fun, despite a charisma-free Dwayne Johnson
Review: Style and great supporting players make 'Black Adam' forgettably entertaining. Dwayne Johnson in the movie "Black Adam.". The newest entry in the DC Extended Universe, "Black ...
Black Adam review: Warner Bros.' most brutal superhero letdown yet
Black Adam is Warner Bros.' most brutal superhero letdown yet. Warner Bros.' long-awaited Black Adam movie starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is a one-note spectacle for children about how ...
"Black Adam," Reviewed: Dwayne Johnson Emerges from a Tomb and Finds
In contrast to the 2019 movie "Shazam!," which treats its premise with an apt silliness that yields an unusually amiable superhero comedy, "Black Adam," sparked by its historical backstory ...
'Black Adam' Review: Dwayne Johnson's in Morally Muddy Superhero Flick
October 18, 2022 2:30pm. Dwayne Johnson in DC's 'Black Adam.'. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. A superhero movie in which a likely presidential candidate shows how satisfying it is to wield ...
Review: 'Black Adam' fizzles : NPR
Review In 'Black Adam,' a lightning-based champion can't hold a charge. October 21, 2022 5:01 ... (Dwayne Johnson) tosses lightning, but Black Adam the movie is a Faraday cage.
Black Adam review: New superheroes but the slog remains the same
Black Adam review: New superheroes and villains rise, but the slog remains the same. The DCEU expands with its B team, promoted to an underwhelming movie of its own. Being steeped in comics lore ...
'Black Adam' review: Dwayne Johnson deserves a better superhero movie
Finally, "The Rock" is starring in his own superhero movie: Dwayne Johnson carries "Black Adam" atop his mighty shoulders, but it proves too weighty a task. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ...
Black Adam (2022)
Filter by Rating: 5/10. Pretty Bad. pc95 18 December 2022. Large budgeted and badly disjointed, "Black Adam" belongs in the poor category with the likes of "Justice League" and "Superman vs Batman". The story is hackneyed, and the dialog is eye-rolling with terrible worn out humor. It feels like a bad imitation of better Marvel movies.
Black Adam Movie Review
Parents need to know that Black Adam is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie, and a spin-off from Shazam!. Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it ultimately becomes a dull smash-and-bash-fest without much time for character development or ...
'Black Adam' Review: Dwayne Johnson Enters the DCEU Superheroes World
October 18, 2022. Dwayne Johnson in 'Black Adam.'. Warner Bros. Pictures. In the Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, circa 2500 B.C., a tyrannical king is desperate to mine a rare mineral known as ...
Black Adam (film)
Black Adam is a 2022 American superhero film based on the DC character of the same name.Produced by New Line Cinema, DC Films, Seven Bucks Productions, and FlynnPictureCo. and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is a spin-off from Shazam! (2019) and the eleventh film in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra from a script by Adam Sztykiel and the writing team of ...
'Black Adam' Movie Review: The Rock's DC Debut Is Rubbish
Movie Review: In Black Adam, The Rock plays the DC superhero with such a stony face that we forget how charming this actor can be otherwise. Pierce Brosnan plays Dr. Fate, Aldis Hodge plays ...
Dwayne Johnson says axed 'Black Adam 2' got caught in DC vortex
Dwayne Johnson says axed Black Adam 2 got caught in 'vortex' of leadership: 'One of the biggest mysteries' "It's like new ownership coming in, buying a new NFL team, and going, 'Alright, not my ...
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