Movie Review: Black Adam

Black Adam (2022)

So yeah, I think we have reached that saturation in terms of superhero movies, and with the Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of floundering and just churning out obligatory movies, people are looking at the DC machine to do something. Unfortunately, DC's rather... eclectic movie release order hasn't really done its storytelling any favours, feeling less like a cohesive universe and more of a bunch of independent, standalone stories that sometimes feature a couple of shared actors and characters. It does solve the problem of heavy continuity that alienates a lot of people from jumping into the MCU, but it also means that... well, you really can skip large amounts of DC movies without missing anything too significant. 

That is to say, Black Adam is... it's a solid movie, in the same vein of the second Suicide Squad movie, or the Robert Pattinson The Batman movie. It's also a movie that isn't really 'necessary' watching since a lot of the tropes and story beats in this movie are ones already covered by so many other superhero movies out there -- and especially within the DCEU itself. In the comics, I've always found Black Adam to be fun because, as the movie's promotional material insists, Black Adam is an anti-hero that doesn't think twice about killing his enemies, unlike those squeaky-clean DC superheroes...

...except, y'know, the DCEU has (rather controversially) built itself on the brand that its flaghsip superheroes, Batman and Superman, do kill. Aquaman and both Suicide Squads both had rather violent heroes as well, making it a bit less of an innovation to have it be the core concept for the Black Adam movie. Black Adam's traditional foe, Captain Marvel (or 'Shazam', as we're supposed to call him now) would be a great counterpoint, except other than a brief cameo from the Wizard, there's scant little to tie Black Adam to his traditional nemesis. 

But anyway, I digress. The movie itself is a pretty great distillation and adaptation of Black Adam himself, and it's rather competently done -- most of the action scenes are neat, and the scripting is solid enough without being anything particularly spectacular. Dwayne Johnson is clearly enjoying himself as Black Adam, which I think is pretty important. There is a neat little plot twist that genuinely surprised me in the middle of the movie, while the Justice Society showing up as secondary characters is a fun touch -- though obviously the main bulk of the interesting characterization fall to Dr. Fate and Hawkman. 

I actually don't really care about the supporting civilian cast of Adrianna, Amon and Karim, even though I acknowledge their importance to having Black Adam some civilian mortals from Kahndaq to care about. It's just that their characters are rather flat and one-note and nowhere as funny as the movie thinks they are.

Speaking of which, I would add that while I do appreciate some of the jokes being told, not all of them are funny? I don't think it's quite as bad as the theatrical version of Justice League had, and Black Adam's constant confusion with catchphrases and modern-day sarcasm is neat, but I didn't really care for Amon and Karim's comedy bits. 

We start off in prehistoric times, in 2600 BC, where the tyrant-king Ahk-Ton brutalizes his people and force them to mine Eternium, our plot device items, in order to create the profane artifact known as the Crown of Sabbac, which would allow him to attain great power. We get to see a young boy end up inspiring rebellion and eventually being summoned by the Wizard and granted the power of the gods to be able to transform into a Champion by chanting the word 'Shazam'. 

We then smash-cut to present-day Kahndaq, and it's rather surprising to see it be a bit more... futuristic? The criminal organization Intergang has used its technology and soldiers to essentially oppress the entire nation of Kahndaq, and we follow the family of archaoelogist and rebel Adrianna Tomaz as she goes around looking for the Crown of Sabbac. Again, these characters aren't the most interesting ones, and I wasn't particularly engaged at this part of the movie. Adrianna has a skateboarding son Amon (who obviously befriends Adam later), his dorky brother Karim, the shifty Ishmael and a couple of others. Long story short, some of Adrianna's other friends get killed, Adrianna unleashes Black Adam by reading the incantation, and Black Adam is unleashed upon the soldiers. 

And it is a pretty fun moment as tanks and helicopters start to roll up and attack Black Adam, who seems more baffled than anything as he slaughters all these soldiers. It's a pretty neat action scene, even if I'm not the biggest fan of some of this movie's background music choices, which I think clash rather hard with the tone it's trying to convey. The action scenes are cool to watch, of course, and there's a very fun adrenaline-inducing moment as we see Black Adam use his super-speed, super-strength and lightning bolts to take out the faceless baddies. 

Black Adam is wounded from an Eternium missile and recovers with the Tomaz family, and generally acts all evasive about his history and how they insist that Black Adam needs to be Kahndaq's Champion. 

While Ishmael reveals himself to be alive and basically the leader of Intergang as far as this movie is concerned, we get the arrival of Amanda Waller from the USA, who sends the Justice Society -- comprised of veterans Hawkman and Dr. Fate, as well as two younger ones Atom Smasher and Cyclone -- to stop Black Adam before he destroys Kahndaq and the rest of the world. 

And... the Justice Society members are rather basic. Cyclone doesn't really have a personality beyond being a peppy smart girl, Atom Smasher is the butt of a lot of the jokes because this is his first superhero outing and his gigantification kind of causes a fair bit of collateral damage. Hawkman is a bit more gung-ho at completing his mission, though later on we do get a fair bit of ideological debate between him and Black Adam. Dr. Fate channels all the charisma of Pierce Brosnan, clearly knowing certain ways of how this conflict is going to end, and trying to avoid the worst of it. The CGI for these guys are pretty competent, with Dr. Fate's sparkly, mirror-like magical effects being easily the most impressive.

And while the movie does have a segment where Adrianna calls out the Justice Society for only showing up when Black Adam is wreaking havoc and ignoring Kahndaq when it's being oppressed by Intergang, there... really isn't any huge reconciliation or deconstruction of the Justice Society's stance beyond that. They decide to work with Black Adam, and while there are a couple of fun little moments between Hawkman and Adam about killing enemies, interrogating soldiers and the like, it all takes a backseat when Amon gets kidnapped and everyone important decides to shrug, and decide to put saving the boy as the priority. 

Anyway, Ishmael is the descendant of King Ahk-Ton, which was kind of obvious if you were paying attention to the fact that the two of them were played by the same actor. Ishmael does some evil villain ranting, before we get an honestly rather ridiculously long slow-motion rescue sequence of Black Adam deflecting a bullet. Adam kills Ishmael and the Intergang goons, but wounds Amon in the process (non-fatally, they've got some Nth-Metal stuff on Hawkman's ship) and the guilt-ridden Black Adam flies off to the ruins of the throne of Kahndaq. 

Oh, and in the movie's best moment, Teth-Adam reveals to Adrianna and Hawkman that he wasn't the real Champion, and this was a moment that I thought was pretty cleverly done. The boy in the prologue that was turned into a champion was actually Teth-Adam's son Hurut, and the real Teth-Adam was Hurut's dad, who kept telling him to keep his head down. Hurut was the true, pure, heroic champion that the Wizard chose... and he ended up giving up his powers and giving them to Teth-Adam to save him from certain death at the hands of Ahk-Ton's assassins.

Not the most revolutionary plot twist, but one that really did feel clever, giving Black Adam's "I'm not a hero" insistence a good reason. 

This realization ends up causing Black Adam to give up his power, and the Justice Society takes the now-mortal Teth-Adam into a Task Force X black ops site where he's kept in stasis. However, Dr. Fate's premonitions about Hawkman's death doesn't disappear... and we see that Ishmael's spirit has arrived with the Crown of Sabbac to hell the Rock of Finality. The demons transform him into Sabbac, a muscular demonic being, who... doesn't look anywhere as impressive as any of the other special effects in this movie, I'm sorry. 

Sabbac unleashes some skeleton demons on Kahndaq, and the civilians get an obligatory 'rally a block of people to fight the faceless goons' scene. The Justice Society fighting Sabbac is a bit more fun. Again, the movie focuses mostly on the two adults, Hawkman and Dr. Fate, whose action scenes get a bit more focus. Ultimately, Dr. Fate creates a shield that locks out the other three JSA members and fights Sabbac one-on-one to prevent Hawkman's death, with a very cool speech about how he doesn't see the future anymore and it's liberating. As he uses clones and Nabu seals to knock Sabbac around, Dr. Fate uses his magic to remotely open Teth-Adam's cell, releasing him and giving him a motivational speech. Teth-Adam beats up some soldiers and somehow swims through the Antarctic ocean to reach the surface, before transforming into a full gold-plated Black Adam form. 

Black Adam arrives to fight Sabbac alongside some assistance from Hawkman, and ultimately Black Adam rips Sabbac right in half and stops the big demonic portal in the sky. The Justice Society leaves on good terms with Black Adam. We close the movie with Black Adam sitting on the throne of Kahndaq as the Tomaz family watch him... then decides that it feels wrong. He flies up, destroys the throne, and declares that Kahndaq needs a protector instead of a ruler, adopting the name Black Adam. 

The mid-credits scene show Superman (Henry Cavill's Superman, that is) arriving under Amanda Waller's orders to meet Black Adam, suggesting that they talk. 

And... that's it. It's a pretty okay movie for the first half, even with the rather one-note civilian cast. It's just such a shame that any ideological questions about interfering with another nation, or to keep the status quo, or killing enemies, end up being handwaved aside to 'oh shit, we've got bigger problems'. Sabbac is also a rather weak villain come the end of it, and while we do get a pretty neat action scene between him, Dr. Fate, Hawkman and Black Adam, Sabbac doesn't quite feel as engaging as an antagonist. The movie does a pretty good job at basically building up Black Adam and the basics of his mythos, and it's done rather competently. Not a bad action movie to watch, honestly.