Black Adam is the choleric of superheroes, even though he himself insists he’s not a superhero, he’s a god. As a comic book creature he saw the light of day shortly after the war, in 1945, but he has not yet achieved the stardom of a Superman, even though he comes from the same universe. Not ours, Superman’s, DC Comics.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson now plays him in the movie “Black Adam” and lives up to his nickname in every respect. Johnson has a lot of charisma and little facial expressions. The remains of a stone statue tower over the city of Kahndaq, which one never quite understands whether it is actually just the capital or already everything the country has to offer in the way of a city. Kahndaq, with its destroyed ancient old town and shabby silos, is not in our universe either, but it has a lot of relatives here: Baghdad, Beirut, Sanaa. A place in the Middle East that the West is primarily interested in from a raw materials perspective.
Kahndaq is under a kind of colonizer-style occupation, the populace is oppressed, the occupiers have them mine a magic metal and export it – and this has been going on for thousands of years, since Black Adam was human. At the beginning you see Adam and his people toiling on a mountain in ancient times. There he defeated a nasty occupying king with magical powers that were given to him when an uprising began – at least that’s what the legend says.
When the archaeologist Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), who organizes the resistance part-time in Kahndaq, gets into trouble while searching for a mysterious crown, she frees him from his grave in her distress. Code word: Shazam! After that he hangs around in his gold boots in the modern age, plucking attack helicopters and rockets from the sky and saying things like “Your magic is weak”. The thing about hanging is meant seriously: Black Adam is constantly hanging in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the sky, pondering, letting his gaze wander into the distance. Maybe just a habit.
Jaume Collet-Serra (“Unknown Identity”) directed “Black Adam,” and with several superhero families already competing in theaters in force, it would have been nice if he didn’t pretend to know all the characters. In distant America, where the crew of Kahndaq has nothing to do with the Justice Society, the Justice Society is set in motion: the visionary Kent aka Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Hawkman aka Carter Hall (Aldis Hodge) and two novices, a brilliant girl and a clumsy boy who grows very tall when needed, but is no less clumsy.
The Justice Society, with all due respect and in defiance of the wonderful Pierce Brosnan, comes across as a bit like the Avengers for the poor. But at least she has to deal with a mortal people who demand their freedom. Showdown follows Showdown, the backstory has only small guest appearances in between. The fight scenes, however, are paralyzingly uniform, and there’s actually no interaction at all in them – it just bangs so nicely. This is now the case in most superhero films, but it doesn’t get any more exciting as you get used to it.
Is the film the secret preparation for a presidential candidacy?
In the framework of superheroism, that’s average, no less, but no more. The story does have a kind of political reverberation, though, and that deserves special attention in this case. Because the rumor persists that Johnson – also the producer of “Black Adam” and one of the biggest stars in the USA – is flirting with a presidential candidacy, and polls in recent years have said that he has considerable chances of success.
Now “Black Adam” is certainly not a foreign policy commitment, but for superhero film standards, he makes it surprisingly difficult to classify into good and evil. One terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, that’s roughly the premise, and the character itself isn’t a shining hero either, she fights with her greatest weakness – one Anger management-Problem. Adam can’t control his outbursts of anger.
The Justice Society is tasked with restoring balance, but they have no idea what that means – and so they want Adam out of business so he can stop pulverizing the occupiers. Maintaining law and order in this case would mean keeping the people of Kahndaq at the mercy of oppression, and Adam and Adrianna are having a hard time getting Kent & Co to believe that. Adam, in turn, begins to doubt whether revenge is a valid motivation.
That’s it, we won’t dig any deeper here. What exactly does Adrianna’s resistance want, and what is the magic metal for when you’re not forging a new crown? Doesn’t matter. The Justice Society wants to save lives all the time, Adam only wants to save certain lives, the two positions remain the same. And what is behind the occupying power, something state or the outgrowth of a capitalism gone wild? Stay in the dark.
Black Adam, USA 2022 – Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay: Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani. Camera: Lawrence Sher. Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo. Warner, 124 minutes. Theatrical release: October 20, 2022.