Black Adam is one of the sloppiest, clumsiest, most incompetent superhero films ever made. It's fitting that the man who produced it, Walter Hamada, left the studio and his position as head of DC Films the week it was released. Rarely do we get justice in Hollywood for the many creative disasters they put out, but justice was served here. This is the worst film to come out under the DC Comics banner in the last ten years.
This movie thinks that superheroes are about costumes, powers, action and special effects, not about plot, character, dialogue, relationships or meaningful themes. Black Adam lays the visual spectacle on so thick that, after a while, the viewer becomes numb to it and the screen looks like so much gobbledygook. The movie, already way over-budgeted at $195 million for such an obscure comic book character, seems to have caked on so much CGI that they ran out of money before the end. The film concludes with an embarrassing, clunky action climax that looks like a stiff, poorly programmed video game scene.
Black Adam becomes a lost cause much sooner than that though. The film gets off on the wrong foot and never regains its footing. To explain who the Black Adam character is, the movie gives us yet another one of those long-winded introduction scenes where a narrator tells us "the story so far." This isn't what cinema is designed to do. We're supposed to be able to observe a story through scenes acted out by characters, not by an invisible narrator giving us an historical lecture. There is nothing in this introduction that couldn't have been explained by actual characters actually talking in the movie.
The introduction doesn't play fair with the audience either. Near the end of the movie, we get yet another cheap storytelling gimmick, the "everything you thought you knew was wrong" scene. We are told that what the narrator told us in the beginning was all a lie, or something. The gimmick is executed in such a hamfisted way that I have no real idea what they were trying to say, other than that they seem to have faked us out on some minor details in the introduction. This is a cheap screenplay trick that is way past its sell-by date. There is no reason to bamboozle the audience by purposely telling a story in an obtuse fashion. A filmmaker's job is to explain things efficiently and with clarity, not to put up artificial roadblocks to us simply understanding what's going on. A fantasy movie is complex enough as it is. They should not make it any more complicated for us.
At least they try to give Black Adam some kind of origin story. That's more than they do for the four other superheroes fighting each other for screen time in this movie. Superhero origin movies exist for a reason, and that is so we don't have to learn everything about where these people come from and why they do what they do via one awkward dialogue exchange. Most of the audience has never heard of Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Cyclone or Atom Smasher, and almost none of the audience has any idea what their origins are. I was almost sure Hawkman came from another planet before this movie, but here he simply seems to have borrowed Falcon's mechanical wings from over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Atom Smasher also seems to have taken his origin story and powers on loan from Marvel's Ant-Man. Cyclone supposedly harnesses the power of the wind, like X-Men's Storm, but all she seems to do here is momentarily turn into a blurry special effect. The performances of these three actors do absolutely nothing to flesh out the depth that the screenplay fails to provide. They are one-note, with no emotional range whatsoever. Pierce Brosnan brings a bit more texture to Dr. Fate, who we learn has a helmet of alien origin that lets him do a bunch of random, unexplained things. Brosnan gives us one of cinema's rare gray-haired superheroes, and brings a wistful weariness to the character that is endearing. But there are too many characters in this movie. Cyclone and Atom Smasher in particular serve no purpose and could've easily been written out.
Black Adam himself, played by Dwayne Johnson, shows some signs of star power peeking through the impenetrable morass of CGI carnage on display here. He underplays his delivery, which is the right choice for a character who is already overwhelming the senses with repetitive, mind-numbing violence. He gets some chuckles with the old "stranger in a strange land" routine, as a character who is brought into an unfamiliar world. The most effective relationship in the movie is between Black Adam and a child, the son of a freedom fighter who is trying to sway Black Adam to join her revolution. The child has studied superhero comic books, which in the DC film universe appear to be non-fiction, and tries to train Black Adam on how to be a superhero. These scenes give us one sign of recognizable human behavior in the film, but they are scarce.
The rest of the movie is filled with plot points that are undeveloped and just don't work. Hawkman and Dr. Fate talk about having a long history of working together, but that doesn't do us any good when we've never been given the chance to see how their relationship developed before the events of this movie. Their words have no weight behind them. Hawkman preaches a message of anti-violence in between brutally beating other characters and knocking down buildings. This begs a question I saw someone pose recently, how noble is a no-killing policy if it doesn't preclude you from maiming, crippling and giving people traumatic brain injuries? The freedom-fighting woman is so singularly focused on launching her revolution that her crusade becomes exhausting and irritating to watch. Doesn't she have any other interests or hobbies? As if the movie doesn't have enough going on, we get the old Braveheart scene where the townspeople are inspired to take their freedom back. This only adds more confusion as to what the movie is actually trying to be about. The villain is astonishingly underwritten. Again the movie thinks that a few lines of expository dialogue are a substitute for actually fleshing out a character through genuine dramatic scenes. The leader of the Suicide Squad makes an appearance, but now she seems to be controlling Hawkman, who isn't a criminal at all. How? The movie doesn't explain. Hawkman is opposed to killing, but seems to become more open to it in the end. It's hard to tell if that's the lesson the movie wishes to impart or not. The attitude of the other characters to Black Adam seems to change by the end, but it's not clear why.
Black Adam represents an extreme low point in the canon of DC films. This is a movie that has no respect for its genre or for its audience. It has no sense of the basic storytelling structure that goes into making an engaging, involving, memorable film. The superhero genre has no future if this is the kind of empty, mindless, meaningless slugfest that becomes its standard bearer. Black Adam ends with a brief epilogue that reminds us of earlier, much better films in the genre that still had heart and meaning. The glimmer of hope this memory provides feels hollow, though, after suffering through two hours of a hopeless, artless, mindless gesture.
This movie thinks that superheroes are about costumes, powers, action and special effects, not about plot, character, dialogue, relationships or meaningful themes. Black Adam lays the visual spectacle on so thick that, after a while, the viewer becomes numb to it and the screen looks like so much gobbledygook. The movie, already way over-budgeted at $195 million for such an obscure comic book character, seems to have caked on so much CGI that they ran out of money before the end. The film concludes with an embarrassing, clunky action climax that looks like a stiff, poorly programmed video game scene.
Black Adam becomes a lost cause much sooner than that though. The film gets off on the wrong foot and never regains its footing. To explain who the Black Adam character is, the movie gives us yet another one of those long-winded introduction scenes where a narrator tells us "the story so far." This isn't what cinema is designed to do. We're supposed to be able to observe a story through scenes acted out by characters, not by an invisible narrator giving us an historical lecture. There is nothing in this introduction that couldn't have been explained by actual characters actually talking in the movie.
The introduction doesn't play fair with the audience either. Near the end of the movie, we get yet another cheap storytelling gimmick, the "everything you thought you knew was wrong" scene. We are told that what the narrator told us in the beginning was all a lie, or something. The gimmick is executed in such a hamfisted way that I have no real idea what they were trying to say, other than that they seem to have faked us out on some minor details in the introduction. This is a cheap screenplay trick that is way past its sell-by date. There is no reason to bamboozle the audience by purposely telling a story in an obtuse fashion. A filmmaker's job is to explain things efficiently and with clarity, not to put up artificial roadblocks to us simply understanding what's going on. A fantasy movie is complex enough as it is. They should not make it any more complicated for us.
At least they try to give Black Adam some kind of origin story. That's more than they do for the four other superheroes fighting each other for screen time in this movie. Superhero origin movies exist for a reason, and that is so we don't have to learn everything about where these people come from and why they do what they do via one awkward dialogue exchange. Most of the audience has never heard of Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Cyclone or Atom Smasher, and almost none of the audience has any idea what their origins are. I was almost sure Hawkman came from another planet before this movie, but here he simply seems to have borrowed Falcon's mechanical wings from over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Atom Smasher also seems to have taken his origin story and powers on loan from Marvel's Ant-Man. Cyclone supposedly harnesses the power of the wind, like X-Men's Storm, but all she seems to do here is momentarily turn into a blurry special effect. The performances of these three actors do absolutely nothing to flesh out the depth that the screenplay fails to provide. They are one-note, with no emotional range whatsoever. Pierce Brosnan brings a bit more texture to Dr. Fate, who we learn has a helmet of alien origin that lets him do a bunch of random, unexplained things. Brosnan gives us one of cinema's rare gray-haired superheroes, and brings a wistful weariness to the character that is endearing. But there are too many characters in this movie. Cyclone and Atom Smasher in particular serve no purpose and could've easily been written out.
Black Adam himself, played by Dwayne Johnson, shows some signs of star power peeking through the impenetrable morass of CGI carnage on display here. He underplays his delivery, which is the right choice for a character who is already overwhelming the senses with repetitive, mind-numbing violence. He gets some chuckles with the old "stranger in a strange land" routine, as a character who is brought into an unfamiliar world. The most effective relationship in the movie is between Black Adam and a child, the son of a freedom fighter who is trying to sway Black Adam to join her revolution. The child has studied superhero comic books, which in the DC film universe appear to be non-fiction, and tries to train Black Adam on how to be a superhero. These scenes give us one sign of recognizable human behavior in the film, but they are scarce.
The rest of the movie is filled with plot points that are undeveloped and just don't work. Hawkman and Dr. Fate talk about having a long history of working together, but that doesn't do us any good when we've never been given the chance to see how their relationship developed before the events of this movie. Their words have no weight behind them. Hawkman preaches a message of anti-violence in between brutally beating other characters and knocking down buildings. This begs a question I saw someone pose recently, how noble is a no-killing policy if it doesn't preclude you from maiming, crippling and giving people traumatic brain injuries? The freedom-fighting woman is so singularly focused on launching her revolution that her crusade becomes exhausting and irritating to watch. Doesn't she have any other interests or hobbies? As if the movie doesn't have enough going on, we get the old Braveheart scene where the townspeople are inspired to take their freedom back. This only adds more confusion as to what the movie is actually trying to be about. The villain is astonishingly underwritten. Again the movie thinks that a few lines of expository dialogue are a substitute for actually fleshing out a character through genuine dramatic scenes. The leader of the Suicide Squad makes an appearance, but now she seems to be controlling Hawkman, who isn't a criminal at all. How? The movie doesn't explain. Hawkman is opposed to killing, but seems to become more open to it in the end. It's hard to tell if that's the lesson the movie wishes to impart or not. The attitude of the other characters to Black Adam seems to change by the end, but it's not clear why.
Black Adam represents an extreme low point in the canon of DC films. This is a movie that has no respect for its genre or for its audience. It has no sense of the basic storytelling structure that goes into making an engaging, involving, memorable film. The superhero genre has no future if this is the kind of empty, mindless, meaningless slugfest that becomes its standard bearer. Black Adam ends with a brief epilogue that reminds us of earlier, much better films in the genre that still had heart and meaning. The glimmer of hope this memory provides feels hollow, though, after suffering through two hours of a hopeless, artless, mindless gesture.