The long-awaited DCEU extravaganza from the self-proclaimed franchise Viagra himself, Dwayne Johnson. It’s a description which is incredibly apt in this case, implying that the DCEU (and by extension Black Adam) is a withered over-the-hill phallus whose only chance of some action lies in a method of last resort. And like the little blue pill, the effect is neither guaranteed nor satisfactory.
Black Adam or, as I prefer to call it, Conan the Barbarically Boring, is a far cry from the much-needed franchise boost. And let’s be clear, The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker have already seen to this from a creative perspective. Beginning with a laboriously long and convoluted exposition dump, the film quickly descends into a caffeine-laced cocktail of naff early-noughties superhero tropes. The CGI is often noticeably subpar, but the film constantly hurls it in your face with tiresome aggression. A great deal of the dialogue wouldn’t even be acceptable in a Saturday morning cartoon. Johnson mistakes woodenness for stoicism, and consequently his performance comes across as utterly disconnected. The Justice Society of America, despite being one of the earliest superhero teams, come across as nothing more than paper-thin copies of better-developed Marvel characters living out of what appears to be the X-Men’s mansion. Even the natural charm of Pierce Brosnan is lost in the chaos. Not one of the team members is given adequate time for us to feel any sort of connection, and this issue extends to their onscreen chemistry – of which there is extremely little.
Many moments are troublingly reminiscent of blockbuster monstrosities like Gods of Egypt and 2019’s Hellboy. The final third is basically just a shameless amalgamation of the aforementioned. What is perhaps most frustrating is the incredible lack of self-awareness, convinced about how devastatingly awesome it is, whilst having the audacity to showcase numerous skateboarding sequences – and Kanye West.
The only thing I’ll give Black Adam is that it’s relatively harmless. If I can be permitted to have a brief, nerdy rant now, let’s address the question which has needlessly been put out there by Johnson: here goes… *clears throat*… Black Adam cannot and should not beat Superman in a fight, not a bloody chance!
Black Adam is the cinematic equivalent of an intoxicated hook-up screaming: “It’s so big, isn’t it! You’ve never seen anything so big!” It’s exactly the kind of shambolic seen-it-before-but-worse heap of garbage the genre really doesn’t need any more of.
1.5/5
