Black Adam kills people. Willingly. Strategically. That’s an odd feature for a superhero. Imagine if Superman deliberately killed people. Doesn’t seem right, does it? That isn’t the problem I had with this film. Well … that isn’t the major problem I had with this film. A flawed hero is a human hero. The problem I had with this film is that I don’t know Black Adam from Black Eve; he’s a complete mystery to me. That makes this an origin film. And yet, this film is nothing of the sort. And Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) has already evolved well beyond human combat, so he has to be opposed by supers – all of whom were also new to me. Does anyone get an origin story here?
Black Adam already has the powers of Superman (flight, strength, speed, imperviousness) and knows how to use them (all but eliminating scenes of the hero trying to figure out his own skill set and limitations). For me, this complete-lack-of-growth-arc makes the story already no fun. And because Black Adam has no taboo against eliminating bad guys, the film gives its hero free reign to behave like a bad guy and ignore consequences. Half the plot of this film is Black Adam fighting members of the Justice Society – which sounds like a deliberately misleading RW think tank- who tell him to stop killing people 
or he’s gonna get it.
This is weak sauce. Like a combination of one part Ragu and two parts tap water.
The film starts in 2600 BC with the slave nation of Khandaq, somewhere in the Middle East. Evil king. Crown of power. Slave boy granted super powers by the Shazam! council. Hold up. This is a Shazam! story, too? Well, how does it relate to Shazam!? And who are these old dudes who just arbitrarily grant some kid Shazam! powers? Are there limitations to the power or how many may have it? And why don’t they ever grant powers before shit goes down, huh? How much slavery has to happen before you say, “Hmmm, there’s an imbalance of evil in this world?” The slavery wasn’t a tip-off by itself? It takes an evil crown, too?
FF to “present day” and the city of Kahndaq still sucks. It’s currently a police state, but those in the know have an idea about where to find the missing crown. Hot archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi, whose full name is 80% a, h, and s) reads the magical words under duress, then Black Adam comes to life and kills every bad guy in the room. I can’t help but reflect upon an SNL sketch entitled Uberman which imagines if Superman grew up in Nazi Germany (“Uberman kills everyone in England”).
As I said above, I don’t have a problem with Black Adam killing human henchmen. At least, not immediately in the context of fiction. I do have two other big problems here. 1) We never 
get to see Black Adam grow with his powers and 2) Everyone else in the film is ridiculously impotent by comparison. Normal humans and their weapons are like insects to Black Adam and even the supers who show up: Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) are all hilariously ill-equipped to handle SuperAdam. The only way you contain him is if he contains himself.
While Black Adam is better than Eternals, I consider it simply the DC version of the same – bunch o’ new heroes show up. Some bullshit problems. Powers and personalities I immediately don’t care about. You DC dudes are as clueless as Marvel on this issue – all new heroes have to be introduced, nurtured, accepted by an audience. It doesn’t work otherwise. It’s like feeding birds. You don’t just show up, throw a loaf of stale bread in the air and make friends for life. Similarly, we can’t root for supers being powerful for the sake of being powerful because we’ve never seen them otherwise. Superheroics is the understanding that “with great power comes great responsibility.” That’s exactly the point. It is how you know a good super from a bad super. Hence, it’s much harder to know what kind of hero you have when you never see how a figure develops both with and without power. Black Adam feels like you’ve cosplayed as characters I know nothing about like a Halloween party in a strange neighborhood. That’s fine when the target is humor. It’s only fine when the target is humor.
There once was a hero named Adam
Who fought evil in the realm of Saddam
He had skills to be awed
Yet panache much flawed
Saviorism: “wham, bam, thank you, Madam”
Rated PG-13, 124 Minutes
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Writer: Adam Sztykiel and Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani
Genre: More DC randos
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Dwayne Johnson fans
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Do we really need another superhero film?
So much to go over here. TL:DR – You aren’t the target audience.
Black Adam is the Lex Luther to Shazam’s Captain Marvel/Shazam, in comics. The film mostly kept to his origin story, but paints him as an anti-hero, a la MCU adjacent Sony’s Venom.
The Justice Society (in comics) was the predecessor to the Justice League, of which Dr. Fate and Hawkman we’re members.
The story arc WAS lergely flat, as was the character development of Black Adam, and the film ran a bit long. I’m still glad that Johnson championed making the movie, and that his clout has brought resolution to some behind the scenes studio drama.
The SNL sketch is a direct rip off of an Elseworlds story asking “what if” Superman’s ship landed in Soviet Russia – Red Son, complete with hammer and sickle on his chest.
This film did introduce several characters all a once. Hawkman was also very flat for me. I did like Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate, and was disappointed that this is his only outing. The other two felt like comedic relief for the hero team.
Black Adam was definitely better than The Eternals (shorter, more action, and fewer introductions), but falls well below the bar set by other DCEU films.
As a fan of the source material, I rolled with the intros and kept pace without trouble. For someone that goes in for an action flick without context and background… well, they’d probably walk out with some version of your expressed thoughts.
Thanks for all that. I *needed* it for better understanding of the material. Thing is, while I’m not the target audience, shouldn’t I be? I’m a great fan of the Marvel Universe. How is DC not similar? I’m also a great fan of Dwayne Johnson (who isn’t?), so why should I find this film so underwhelming?
Again, thank you, O. Your insight into the DC world is both keen and enlightening, as always.