Avengers director Joss Whedon has no involvement in this movie, but his brand of comedy is all over it and I blame him for starting this trend spawned from the popularity of Avengers (2012) which continues to plague so many movies trying to emulate its silly style. All the dialogue throughout Black Adam is overloaded with self-aware sarcasm meant to remind viewers that the movie realizes how silly it is and they just have to keep reminding you again and again. Whenever the movie starts to get a little serious you know some joke or gag is going to interrupt the scene and ruin the mood. Characters never seem never express much concern or fear, no matter what dire situation is going on, preferring instead to constantly trade silly one-liners back and forth, like they are self-aware that they are in a silly superhero movie.
The cost of so much focus on having fun is that the stakes are never high. There's almost no tension, no sense of danger throughout the film, the bad guys don't even feel like threats because you already know they're not going to succeed at hurting people. Even when an evil undead army rises, any potential for the scene to be frightening is immediately interrupted by silly comedy yet again, instantly deflating any potential for the audience to ever be afraid for the safety of anyone on screen. Why can't these new DC movies ever recreate anything remotely as terrifying as the Kryptonian invasion of Earth from Man of Steel (2013) back when the villains were actually allowed to be intimidating?
And Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam has the same facial expression throughout the entire movie.
All that said though, I didn't hate it. If there's something to be praised, it does get better towards the end when the joking-around starts to die down and the movie actually allows itself to get a bit more serious.
The cost of so much focus on having fun is that the stakes are never high. There's almost no tension, no sense of danger throughout the film, the bad guys don't even feel like threats because you already know they're not going to succeed at hurting people. Even when an evil undead army rises, any potential for the scene to be frightening is immediately interrupted by silly comedy yet again, instantly deflating any potential for the audience to ever be afraid for the safety of anyone on screen. Why can't these new DC movies ever recreate anything remotely as terrifying as the Kryptonian invasion of Earth from Man of Steel (2013) back when the villains were actually allowed to be intimidating?
And Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam has the same facial expression throughout the entire movie.
All that said though, I didn't hate it. If there's something to be praised, it does get better towards the end when the joking-around starts to die down and the movie actually allows itself to get a bit more serious.