Black Adam (2022)
2/4
I have no qualms with comic-book movies. Over the past 20-plus years, this genre has provided us with some of the most successful films of all time, and, for the most part, they’ve been very good. But there are also the overblown, nonsensical CGI fests that turn out to be a total waste of everybody’s time and money. Unfortunately, DC’s Black Adam falls into that category thanks to a confusing script, bad CGI, and lame villain.
Let’s start with the good news, which there isn’t much of outside of Dwayne Johnson’s performance. He is awesome as Black Adam. You can tell he treated this as the role of his career, and he really draws the viewer into the movie whenever he’s on screen. It’s too bad that nearly everything else in the movie sinks it down to the depths of the worst of comic-book movies.
Let’s start of with the villain, Sabbac. Nothing about him males a lick of sense. His motives are unclear, his CGI look is so horrendous it will makes your eyes bleed, and the only reason he’s even in the movie is to give Black Adam someone to fight. These are not the traits of a great villain; clearly, he needed a little more depth to him.
Also, for a movie that’s called Black Adam there isn’t really a lot of Black Adam. He doesn’t show up for a good 20 minutes into the movie and then the filmmakers decided to take him out of action for at least half of the third act.
What they do instead of focusing on the film’s title character is focus on Amon Tomaz, a skateboarder kid who is a huge fan of Black Adam, and that’s it. They do nothing interesting with him whatsoever, and every time he comes on screen the movie just grinds to a halt.
The interesting thing about Black Adam is the duality of the character. He believes in justice for all and wants to see evil people punished, but he wants to do it his way. This aspect of the character is talked about for five minutes and then is completely glossed over. That really annoyed me.
Also, are you tired of superhero movies climaxing in bad, boring, shaky-cam CGI fight scenes that show little to no regard for people’s lives? Well, then you really are going to hate this movie.
Black Adam may be setting up a bunch of new adventures in the DC universe but it’s still an appallingly handled misfire that audiences will soon forget.