By Jonah Naplan

October 21, 2022

At first glance, “Black Adam” initially appears to be the newest star vehicle for The Rock. Except this time he gets to play a nearly indestructible superhero. Or rather, an anti-hero for that matter. For Johnson, this is a massive thing to check off on his flashy actor’s bucket list. To play a comic book character, hero, anti-hero, or villain, in the DCEU or MCU gives you a lot of “celebrity points.” But we’re talking about the DCEU specifically, and surprisingly enough, “Black Adam” is one of the best additions to its franchise. Thus is the result of many reasons—the biggest one being that “Black Adam” has no sense of shame, and a lacking of self-seriousness. It’s one of the most fun and purely entertaining movies I’ve seen all year, that—while it may not be the same film without Johnson in the lead—is able to move past a particular star’s fame and be submissive to dignity, if there even was any to begin with.

“Black Adam” opens several centuries in the past in ancient Kahndaq. We see the son of Teth Adam resist the dictatorship that rules over their almost Mesoamerican looking civilization, and act as what the citizens think is an irrefutable martyr. He gets ordered to an execution, and we see snippets of this scene play out through flashbacks sprinkled across the film’s runtime. But he ends up apparently not getting killed, and somehow along the way, Teth Adam gets powers, and goes to kill a king of some sort, and then gets imprisoned for some 5,000+ years.

“Black Adam” is not the best at exposition.

Either way, Adam finally gets freed after some extensive period of time, still just as powerful as ever, and is motivated by his vengeance and rage that can apparently destroy entire cities when it goes too far. But Amanda Waller (Viola Davis in a criminally small role) hops in and orders the Justice Society to stop him. Here’s where some fun new characters enter the picture. We have Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and of course the long awaited debut of Dr. Fate (a charismatic Pierce Brosnan). The interactions between Black Adam and these characters provide the film’s best moments and biggest laughs. Particularly the camaraderie between Adam and Hawkman. They banter back and forth frequently, and when the two fight, “Black Adam” is at its most entertaining.

There’s a very long, drawn-out sequence in Kahndaq in the second act of the movie that feels like one continuous scene. And a great one at that. It shows Black Adam taking down each member of the Justice Society one by one, and it seems like Adam has finally met his match. In an earlier scene, we saw Adam take down dozens of armed men in an ancient tomb, but then save “the good guys”—meaning Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) and Karim (Mohammad Amer). Clearly Adam has some sort of sense of good and bad, even though he’s entirely indifferent to everything else humanwise. He sometimes reminded me of the Terminator.

And “Black Adam” has aspects that are much like “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” It’s about a man who’s practically a machine; not just in his undefeatable power, but also in the two-dimensional way in which he views the world—without any sense of modern technology, and taking everything quite literally. Black Adam is this film’s Terminator, and he even has a John Connor by his side—the young and ambitious Amon Tomaz (Bodhi Sabongui). In his first modern-day Kahndaq scene, Adam wakes up in Amon’s Justice League themed bedroom and burns a gaping hole through Superman’s head on a poster, when he’s startled by one of those flashbacks I mentioned earlier.

Then Adam precedes to question everything in his path, and doesn’t hesitate to barge through and destroy several walls in the Tomaz abode. It’s a predictable fish-out-of-water tale, but it certainly doesn’t have any lacking of charm, regardless. What “Black Adam” does lack, however, is an interaction with an animal. I’m surprised the Tomazes didn’t have a cat or a dog for Adam to interact with. Or maybe that was a courtesy for the viewer. Black Adam may have picked the cat/dog up and thrown it out the window without hesitation.

It’s that tense strength, yet naive innocence that shapes the character of Black Adam. All he knows is violence, but nothing about the modern world—even when it’s the city he so humbly calls home. But modern-day Kahndaq is very different from the Kahndaq the film shows us at the beginning. I can’t say I blame Adam for being so puzzled.

I heard some people describe “Black Adam” as one of the most surprisingly gory things in the DCEU, and that it subliminally challenges the PG-13 rating. There is definitely some gore in the movie, and some cool kills at that, but most of “Black Adam”’s action remains PG-13 and sci-fi based. It’s also like a surrealistic version of The Fast and the Furious. Entirely different storylines, but same cartoonishly vibrant action sequences.

“Black Adam” probably has too much slo-mo, too. Sure, plenty of blockbusters have an abundance of slo-mo shots, but “Black Adam” has too many. Like we’re talking at least two every scene. Yeah, much of it is a clever excuse to allow Cyclone to whip her long hair around in battle, and see whatever the heck she’s doing, but the rest is seemingly unnecessary.

I thought the human characters that weren’t part of the Justice Society were pretty undeveloped and fairly uninteresting too. Even Amon had his moments of blandness. But there’s really only so much you can do with a superhero tale that takes place in one location 75% of the time. Yes, that part surprised me too. Even when “Black Adam” has what I would call a “final boss battle” in the third act, it still somewhat feels small-scale. Sometimes it even seems like little happened in its runtime. But that’s not a bad thing. It still stayed entertaining anyhow, and felt like the kind of movie that I wish was released more often this past summer. And in truth, “Black Adam” is a summer movie at heart that was released in October.

There’s a pretty predictable death that occurs near the climax of “Black Adam,” and it reminded me of how easily this film could have spiraled out of control. Luckily for the viewers, Jaume Collet-Serra’s film disregards all logic or continuity issues—mentally acknowledging that those things are still important—but decides to make its main priority being a popcorn flick, without any worry about what the film means for the legacy of the DCEU. If that was the studio’s mission, I’m all for it. And if DCEU movies will now start to head in this more “fun” direction, it’s a win-win for everyone in the audience. Your move, Marvel.

Now playing in theaters.