Noah Centineo

(On Cable TV, December 2022) There’s definitely some overlapping fatigue going on in taking in Black Adam—not necessarily about superheroes as much as the intensely specific way superhero movies are built, and also the Dwayne Johnson persona as it interacts with the Black Adam character presented here. While it feels wild to call a big-budget blockbuster film lazy, Black Adam feels like a very unambitious film—an origin story film structured along very familiar lines, almost incapable of original thought. Whatever could have been interesting—namely the character’s dubious moral alignment—is not really explored in any depth, except insofar as the character is apparently presented as a serious threat to Superman itself. Half of that seems to stem from Johnson’s ego, which seems to have blossomed and consumed everything in its event horizon as part of the film—with the result that neither Black Adam nor Johnson comes out of the film looking any better: they both feel as if they think far too highly of each other. Other issues abound—the nondescript Middle Eastern location, lacklustre special effects, some really wonky material about non-superheroic non-interventionism, and at least one late-movie “revelation” (no way, it was his son!) that’s so unnecessary and meaningless that its inclusion distracts more than entertains. The plot is intensely familiar yet annoying at once. The only ones who do well are the supporting characters: Pierce Brosnan is aging really well in general, but his turn here is more enjoyable than the lead actor himself. Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell are fine in supporting roles: no one will blame them for the mess. Veteran director Jaume Collet-Serra is adept at orchestrating the technical aspect of a special-effects heavy film, but the result bears virtually none of his usual signature—except for action scenes that usually work better than the rest of the film. Still, the Black Adam itself is mixed and unsatisfying—tortured between a family-friendly rating and a protagonist supposedly willing to go darker, stuck at a time when it has scarcely anything new to suggest to the genre, and when Johnson himself is overexposed to the point of becoming unbearable. One of the benefits of watching the film weeks later at home rather than opening-day in theatres is that I can talk about the fallout: Black Adam being merely a modest commercial success (i.e.: not enough by current standards), Johnson covering himself in ridicule (and outright lying) throughout the promotion of the film, the current DCU being completely rebooted and mooting everything planned along the way. So, yes, Black Adam feels even more useless now than upon release, being at the dead end of yet another dead DC cinematic universe. Johnson himself may be humbled by the experience, and that would be an achievement more superheroic than anything he was portrayed doing in the film itself.