Black Adam (2022)

“Tell Them The Man In Black Sent You.”

Sometimes the world needs a big, loud movie that simply entertains. The plot remains simple and predictable. The action occurs often and with a ton of slow motion moves that highlight the strength, speed, and powers of the heroes and villains. Those elements, with a larger than life anti-hero thrown in for good measure, is exactly what you get with Black Adam (2022). It’s nothing special but it is very fun.

Spoilers follow…..you’ve been warned!

In the film we are given a brief origin story of the creation of Teth-Adam/Black Adam (or that’s what we are led to believe). From there we find ourselves in modern day Kahndaq, a Middle Eastern country being oppressed by a collective known as Intergang. A small group of resistance fighters are in search of the legendary crown of Sabbac, hoping that it can be used to fight Intergang. When they find the crown they are attacked by Intergang mercenaries. One of the resistance fighters, Adrianna, releases Teth-Adam from his grave and he destroys the Intergang squad. Teth-Adam then breaks out of his tomb to fight even more Intergang mercenaries. Eventually one of them hits him with a missile that subdues him but Adrianna and her brother, Karim, save Teth-Adam and bring him to Adrianna’s home to recover.

Teth-Adama awakens in the bedroom of Amon, Adrianna’s son. Amon tries to convince Teth-Adam that he is the champion of Kahndaq and that he must protect his people from Intergang. Teth-Adam goes into action when Amon gets in trouble with Intergang guards and immediately attracts the attention of Amanda Waller and the Justice Society. She calls on Hawkman/Carter Hall, to assemble a team to stop Teth-Adam. Hawkman gathers up Dr. Fate/Kent Nelson, Cyclone/Maxine Hunkel, and Atom Smasher/Albert Rothstein to help him and the group arrives in Kahndaq in the middle of one of Teth-Adam’s attacks.

The group slows Teth-Adam down but cannot stop him. After Ishmael, one the resistance fighters thought to be dead, reveals that he is the leader of Intergang and wants the crown of Sabbac in order for his family to rule Kahndaq once again, the Justice Society and Teth-Adam work together to defeat him and Teth-Adam agrees to be imprisoned for eternity…..until Ishmael manages to return from Hell with the powers of Sabbac. The Justice Society battle him with Dr. Fate managing to hold him off just long enough for Teth-Adam to return. Sabbac is destroyed and Teth-Adam takes on the new name of Black Adam, protector of Kahndaq.

I enjoyed this movie. It didn’t break any new ground in superhero films but that wasn’t expected in the first place. Despite a few nods, a “super” appearance in the mid-credits, and the presence of Amanda Waller in the film, it was free of all of the weight of the DCEU, managing to be a standalone film. The action did get weighed down a bit by all of the slow motion shots, but overall it was pretty good. The CGI was decent. Thankfully the film was rather dark so the limitations of the CGI were hidden fairly well. Sabbac was the weakest CGI creation in the bunch. He looked obviously fake. As much as I loved seeing Hawkman on the big screen, I wasn’t a fan of his suit design in the film. Dr. Fate was handled extremely well and Atom Smasher and Cyclone were pretty much window-dressing. They were in the movie but didn’t really add much to it.

The cast was surprisingly strong. Dwayne Johnson definitely looks like Black Adam in the film and he does a pretty decent job of acting as well. Pierce Brosnan was perfection as the all knowing, all seeing Doctor Fate. Sarah Shahi was fine as Adrianna. Mohammed Amer provided plenty of humor as Adrianna’s brother and Bodhi Sabongui did a great job as her son, Amon. Quintessa Swindell and Noah Centineo, Cyclone and Atom Smasher, did fine in their severely limited roles. Marwan Kenzari was sufficient as Ishmael/Sabbac. The real standout to me in this film was Aldis Hodge as Hawkman. He commanded every scene that he was in, even the ones that included Pierce Brosnan.

Black Adam, specifically the film’s apparent poor performance and the shakeup at Warner Bros. involving James Gunn, has been in the news a lot recently. As they say, bad news is still news, so I hope that more interest is generated in this film with all of the talk about Dwayne Johnson locking horns with Gunn and others over the future of Black Adam. It really is a solid action film and I hope that more people discover it. With Marvel losing steam, it’s the perfect time for DC to push their big heroes.

Thanks for checking out my post. I hope that you get to check out Black Adam if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s much better than the critics say and it’s a whole lot better than Marvel’s recent superhero offerings.