Black Adam arrived in 2022 with a tagline that promised a reckoning: “The world needed a hero. It got Black Adam.” What the world actually got was a 125-minute action film that spends most of its runtime explaining why its central figure is too dangerous to be a hero, then hands him a city to protect anyway. Jaume Collet-Serra directs from a screenplay by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani. Dwayne Johnson plays Teth-Adam, a slave from Kahndaq given the powers of six Egyptian gods and buried for nearly 5,000 years.
Trailer, via DC.
A Slave From Kahndaq Wakes Up Angry
The film opens in 2600 BC. King Ahk-Ton enslaves his people to mine Eternium, the metal he forges into the Crown of Sabbac. A young slave boy is chosen by the Council of Wizards and transformed into an adult superhero. He kills Ahk-Ton and ends the reign. That is the legend. The truth, as the film eventually tells it, is messier.
In the present day, archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz, played by Sarah Shahi, hunts the crown with her brother Karim, Samir and Ishmael. Intergang troops kill Samir inside the tomb. Adrianna reads an incantation as a last resort and wakes Teth-Adam.
What follows is the film’s best stretch. Adam slaughters the Intergang troops without hesitation. Amanda Waller, the US government official, deems him a threat and calls in the Justice Society. Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone and Atom Smasher arrive to stop the killing.
The Justice Society Shows Up to Lecture Him
Aldis Hodge plays Hawkman, the Society’s leader, armed with Nth metal weapons from another planet. Pierce Brosnan is Doctor Fate. Noah Centineo is Atom Smasher, a young member who can manipulate his molecular structure to change size and strength. Quintessa Swindell is Cyclone.
The Society explains to Adrianna that Adam was not a savior but an imprisoned killer. The film wants this to land as a revelation. It plays as a scheduling conflict. The Society exists to fight Adam, then to fight alongside him, and the switch happens because the plot requires it, not because anyone changes their mind.
Marwan Kenzari plays Ishmael, who reveals himself as the leader of Intergang’s Kahndaq division and the last descendant of Ahk-Ton. He kidnaps Adrianna’s son Amon, who has hidden the crown. The group finds the crown and hands it over to save the boy. Ishmael tries to shoot Amon. Adam loses control, kills Ishmael and wounds Amon.
A Son Named Hurut and a Crown Nobody Earns
Guilt-ridden, Adam flees. He tells Hawkman the truth: Kahndaq’s champion was his son Hurut, killed by Ahk-Ton’s assassins after they murdered his mother. Adam was given Hurut’s powers to save his life. Blinded by grief, he murdered Ahk-Ton and destroyed the palace. The Council of Wizards deemed him unworthy.
This is the film’s one genuinely interesting idea, and it arrives with roughly twenty minutes left. Black Adam is not a hero who fell. He is a father who was handed his son’s power and used it for revenge. That is a real character. The movie around him is not sure what to do with it.
By the Numbers
- Release: 2022
- Runtime: 125 minutes
- Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
- Screenplay: Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani
- Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Quintessa Swindell, Marwan Kenzari, Pierce Brosnan
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
- Score: 4.1/10
What the Film Gets Wrong
The film is the eleventh film in the DC Extended Universe and a spin-off from Shazam! (2019). Johnson was attached to Shazam! early in development and confirmed to portray the villain Black Adam in September 2014. The producers, at Johnson’s urging, later decided to give the character his own film. Sztykiel was hired in October 2017, Collet-Serra joined in June 2019 with a December 2021 release planned, and the pandemic pushed that. Principal photography took place from April to August 2021 at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, and also in Los Angeles.
The gap between the 2014 confirmation and the 2022 release shows. Black Adam carries the weight of a franchise launch and the anxiety of one. It introduces four Justice Society members, Ishmael, who is bestowed with the powers of six demons, a fictional nation, a magic crown and a nearly 5,000-year backstory. In this paper’s view, none of it gets room to breathe.
The action reads as competent and weightless. Adam moves through Intergang soldiers the way a spreadsheet moves through numbers. The film raises the question of whether this man should be allowed to kill, but it never really answers it. The ending is not a moral position. It is a scheduling decision.
Where This Leaves Teth-Adam
Black Adam is not a disaster. It is a film that mistakes volume for stakes. Johnson has the physical presence for the role, and the flashback to Hurut is, to this paper’s eye, the sequence with the most feeling in it. Everything else is setup for a franchise that never arrived.
The film premiered in Mexico City on October 3, 2022. It wanted to be the start of something. It plays like the middle of something that was never begun.
4.1 of 10.
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