Black Adam
Year: 2022
Rating: PG-13
Length: 125 minutes / 2.08 hours
I find it somewhat bizarre that DC released a successful movie with Shazam! (2019) only to follow it up with this spinoff that didn’t seem to add anything to the DC Extended Universe other than to do a quick introduction of other characters. Other characters, mind you, who were much more interesting than the titular Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson). Instead of letting individual characters have room to build their own lore, this just felt rushed—a common trait of most DCEU movies, to be honest.
As far as the action goes, there are a few really well-done set pieces that are visually entertaining. It’s always fun to watch an overpowered superhero use the full extent of their powers. The real trick, though, is that you’d likely get a similar Marvel movie with The Falcon, Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange as the hero team sent to stop Captain Marvel. This is why DC really needs to focus on the characters themselves and not just their powers—there are too many similarities with their Marvel equivalents that have already proven to be successful. They’ve been trying this copy-and-paste method for years and it’s still not working out.
Overall, Black Adam (2022) is an average superhero film. As far as I can tell, nothing of significance happens that will affect other films in the DCEU. We’ll have to wait for the Shazam! sequel to determine if this movie was completely pointless. What this movie really highlighted is that Dwayne Johnson is not that great of an actor (which might come as a surprise for some). Alternatively, I also think this movie showed that a Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) film would have been significantly more interesting than what we got here.
Another average superhero film in the fumbling DCEU, I give Black Adam 3.0 stars out of 5.
