Black Adam

 2022, d. Jaume Collet-Serra - in theatre

Had this movie come out 20 years ago, when the superhero genre in film was still finding its feet, I would have watched it over, and over, and over again, not believing my eyes that we have a film where Black Adam fights Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher and Cyclone. I'm a lifelong DC Comics fan, and I've long been dreaming of the deeper bench of characters making it to the big screen. That wow factor would have went a long way back then.

10 years ago, we got Green Lantern, and by then the bar on what I would consume on repeat was already pretty high, and it certainly didn't make the cut. Five years ago we got a Justice League movie, and I really wish we hadn't. Now we get Black Adam, with the Justice Society in tow, and while marginally more entertaining than Green Lantern or Justice League, we've also had Smallville, Stargirl, Titans and a decade's worth of Arrowverse shows playing with DC's deep bench roster in live action, so the wow factor of just seeing people in costume has pretty much been eaten up.

Of the "DCEU" movies, only Aquaman and James Gunn's The Suicide Squad impress me much. I like Wonder Woman and Shazam, but they don't "wow" me. Black Adam gave me little flutters watching the Justice Society quartet in action...they looked great, the costume design and effects were really nice, and the actors are all pretty solid...but there was no character development, no sense of their organization (why are they answering to Amanda Waller?), no meaningful sense of purpose within the world (maintaining world stability or some such) or to the story.... I get it, they're there to build out the DCEU and to provide some colourful flash and flutter to pit against Black Adam against, but it didn't have to be this clumsy or feel this tacked on.

And that's the stuff I liked about Black Adam.

What I didn't care for was most of what's left. It's not terrible, it's just nothing. It's not saying anything of real value, about the character, about its fictional middle eastern nation, about the world it all inhabits. Khandaq is a derivative of Wakanda with its special rare metal, but it's not a place or a people that is at all culturally defined. They watch Clint Eastwood westerns, listen to Player, read superhero comics and ride skateboards...so they're a bit stuck in the 1980s, except that they're living under a high-tech, non-descript foreign military state that Black Adam rightfully just decimates in an orgy of non-stop PG-13 murder.

As a character, Teth-Adam is here scripted to be an anti-hero with a tragic back story, which the film muddies by wading through 5000 years of muddled fables in the form of a tedious 5 (10 maybe?) minute opening sequence, a flashback or two, before a late-second act revision gives us the real poop on this guy and why he is actually so dangerous. It's all tedious circling that would have been better served straight forward and up front. It's not narrative intrigue, just mess. The Rock --still not middle eastern (despite having played the Scorpion King, twice)-- did grow on me in the role, but the script never keeps him consistent, but also doesn't really let him grow in any meaningful way. 

The human sidekicks served their purpose, and only annoyed me a little, which isn't too bad for that archetype.  I had hoped Sarah Shahi would be a superhero.  The film's villain is 80% maguffin, and 20% whatever.  A big nothing.  By the time Sabaac finally arrives, the film's purpose has been so obfuscated as to never actually feel, or even understand, the threat he poses. At one point he sits on a throne and a laser goes into the sky and apparently zombie skeletons arose from...not sure where exactly (if it had been all the dead Intergang guys Teth-Adam had killed that would have been more interesting) which aren't really much of a threat as the human characters pretty easily beat them down.

The music was, bluntly, overbearing and ever-present. A scene could never breathe, everything was punctuated all the time. More than anything, I found this audio assault to be the film's most challenging aspect to overcome. It's sweeping moments of triumph, especially early on, felt unearned, and often times the music felt incongruous to the scene. The closing credits composition, however, did feel quite epic (but again, unearned).

I wish this film had been properly titled "Black Adam vs. The Justice Society", as then there could have been more investment in the thinly wonderful Justice Society characters of the film. The title would have provided impetus for the film, to build up to their battle, and some time could have been spent building Intergang into some form of viable world threat with all their vibranium...I mean "eternium" mining.  But the film, as is, lacks such ambition.  It's a star-driven vehicle that requires the supporting cast to explain the character, their motivation and their backstory, because the star, as charismatic as he can be, is a bit too busy glowering and brooding and being all "extreme" like were back in the heyday of mid-90's comics.

Will I watch this again? Only if I can send it to myself 20 years in the past.