Black Adam

Black Adam is everything anyone hoped it was really. Its a fun and thrilling action packed superhero movie.

Dwyane Jhonson plays a somewhat stoic antihero and is elevated by his cast mainly the actors for Hawkman and Dr Fate who are the standout in this movie. Though i would have liked to seen more of Atom Smasher and Cyclone because theyre barely in the movie. The mythos of Black Adam is something most people will find interestig as well. And the film does a good job of introducing new characters and places and overall expanding the DCEU.

So did the heiracrchy in DC universe change? Well kinda. This film may be fun and pretty violent at times. And I can see it doing really well in the box office. The critics are most probably not gonna like this movie as it is a bit messy at times and the stoic performance by the ROCK may not be the cup of tea for everyone. But for an average joe who doesnt keep up with their daily cup of critical pretentiousness, and just wants to spend some time watching badass superheroes being badass. This is the film for you.

Its no 'Batman Begins' but it never wants to be. Fun but flawed is the best description i can give it. I really enjoyed it. And most people will certainly do aswell.

And also, stay for the post credits. You wont be disappointed.

I hoped "Black Adam" would be a decent entry in DC's recent output as its linked with "Shazam" which might be their best recent movie. But nope. Its another CGI filled dud.

On the plus side there is an effort put into the story and Dwayne Johnson and his rediculusly strong shoulders buldging from his costume are 100 percent real amongst all the boring CGI. But all the team building with rubbish characters no one cares about has already been DC's downfall with the justice league, Suicide squad and even that Harley Quinn movie. And it's takes up too much time here too.

There's not enough time dedicated to making us care about any of these minor characters and their random powers. Just action, action, action that doesn't matter when you don't care about anyone in the movie.

There's some decent gags in the movie I suppose. But overall its just alot of green screen and feels like your watching a computer game instead of a movie. It's more "Aquaman" than "Shazam." So if you liked that one you'll probably like this.

Black Adam certainly has its problems, from it's generic third act (are we really still doing sky beams), terrible villain and very hit and miss humour, however it's still a really fun superhero film thanks to some solid explorations of morality, brief deeper meaning and some ridiculously entertaining superhero fights.

Dwayne Johnson gives a great lead performance, restraining his trademark charisma to give a more sombre performance that works. Quintessa Swindell and Noah Centineo have charming chemistry and are both likeable which makes up for their characters lack of depth or development.

However, it's Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate who is definitely the standout with superb dry wit and suave screen presence as well as a surprisingly earnest bond with Aldis Hodge's Hawkman whose stoic and commanding performance makes him inspired casting.

Juame Collet-Serra's direction is really good, it lacks an overall voice but makes up for it with plenty of stylish slow motion, needle drops and dynamic camera work. The CG is mostly solid with a fair few weak spots and the music by Lorne Balfe is also really good, extremely epic and operatic in the ways that make everything way more enjoyable.

While Dr Fate may have been introduced first in print, for those of us who aren't followers of the comics, Dr Strange is the sorcerer that we identify more with, simply because we got to see him first and certainly with more depth. Everything about Black Adam felt like a low budget remake of Marvel characters. Hawkman even looked similar to Anthony Mackey. Atom Smasher was far too much like Ant Man. Hawkman's compound might as well been Dr Xavier's home for the X Men, complete with the aircraft rising from the front lawn.

Like so many others have reviewed, the Justice Society was simply thrown at us as if we were to already understand who they were. There was no character building whatsoever, other than a one or two sentence dialog that tried to briefly explain how they came to be superheroes. It was extremely rushed.

As for Black Adam...I usually like Dwayne Johnson's films, but in this one, he was stiff and wooden. The other characters...of course Dr Fate was a standout, but it was as if the writers purposefully wanted us to hate Hawkman. His attitude and cockiness were unbearable, knowing that he would be easily defeated by the likes of Black Adam. Perhaps in my mind, I was comparing him to Marvel's Falcon and his much more personable and likable demeanor. Either way, I just wanted to see him get his ass kicked.

All things considered, I was simply underwhelmed. 2022 was not a good year for the superhero genre.

In the superhero movie genre I would rank this somewhere in the middle, which of course also means that this is a fantastic movie from a DC-perspective. DC have really been digging below the bottom of the barrel, and with only one exception every other single movie have been horrible.

This is not horrible. Actually this is kinda entertaining, it is fun, and the movie flies by in a very brisk pace. The more or less constant fighting is pretty great, and they even manage to get a few one-liners in there. Even the CGi is good (mostly), which can only mean that DC finally got rid of their awful special effects team.

But this is not really great either. This is a very single-minded kind of movie. Evil bla bla bla curse lots of slow-mo accompanied by superhero bombastic music and lots of crashing buildings, lots of disposable henchmen. Sure there is a underlaying theme of "who is really a hero?" and a few tiny tidbits of story, but mainly this is like a huge wrestling match with pretty unpretentious smashing. Since everything move so quickly we also have no time to breath or get to know these characters. I wish there was 20min more with some background stories, but nah, smash more, blow up more stuff, woosh, blam, slam.

If you have no intention of seeing anything but a big long slugfest with a lot of CGi and you do not care about story or character development, then you are likely going to love this. From that perspective, and from a DC perspective, this movie is pretty good, almost great. But if you weigh in actual movie value such as script, characters, and storytelling well... then not so much.

I give this a 7/10 just because I was entertained and since I am happy to see a DC film that do not suck like a boring black hole. But to be honest that score is too generous. Worth the ticket price though; so I recommend!