Thursday, August 24, 2023

Issue:

Mackay and Whitsunday Life

Movie Review: Black Adam

It’s funny to think that, in the latter days of the superhero genre, where audiences are becoming more and more fatigued after greater than a decade’s worth of Marvel and DC Comics films, a Black Adam movie has finally made it to screen.

For those not in the know, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has been attached to a Black Adam-type project since 2005, with the movie stuck in this will-they-wont-they, development hell. Amongst a large contingent of the movie media – press and commentators, mostly – it became a running joke. The film was never going to be made.

When an actor is attached to a role for the better part of a decade and a half, the project is almost always destined to fall apart. Yet, somehow, Black Adam managed to stay together and Johnson has his day in the sun as the DC Comics anti-hero.

It's been a strange ride, considering at the time of casting, Johnson was better known as The Rock – one of the world’s biggest wrestlers – and now he’s quite literally the world’s biggest movie star.

Johnson is Black Adam, a character who’s been bestowed with almighty powers of the gods before being imprisoned for 5,000 years and is brought back into the modern day, finding himself as a violent anti-hero fighting for justice.

Seemingly born to be a superhero with his imposing bulk, Johnson has stepped in front of the greenscreen as Black Adam, decked out in Spandex that reminds us of his WWE wrestling ring days. The character he portrays has had an enduring history at DC, and there’s not too much of that here; instead, Black Adam’s imposing, draconian personality is replaced by the Rock’s movie-star charisma – potentially to the detriment of the fuller DC Universe.

In an age of the anti-hero for comic-book movies, Black Adam is a serviceable showing that has a major draw: The Rock and smashing things.

Black Adam (M) is showing at the Bowen Summergarden Cinema now.

Dwayne Johnson is Black Adam

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