My Review of "Black Adam"

Black Adam is DC's latest movie into the DCEU in 2022. We haven't really seen much from DC for quite a while with the exception of the spectacular The Suicide Squad and Zack Snyder's Justice League. Both movies came out early last year. I had high hopes for DC again, even though Zack Snyder's Justice League is not really part of the main storyline anymore.

When this movie was announced I was pretty excited. It looked to have all the makings of another great movie. They had the stars and a big franchise character. What could possibly go wrong? I'll get to that a little later.

The movie starts off in the past. It sets the tone for what seems to be a fictional ancient middle eastern location. I know why is Dwayne Johnson playing the main character then? Don't worry about that. This fictional city is being overrun by some dictator that is mining for a mythical element that will give him omnipotent powers.

Unfortunately for him there is a little bit of an uprising among the people. One of the kids sacrifices himself as a martyr. In his defiance he is bestowed godlike powers by some ancient gods to fight the dictator. There was a crazy fight and then I guess it became history.

That is until our present day. The city is still being overrun but this time by foreign outsiders. There's some geopolitical statements being expressed throughout the movie that has some merit. Here we have an archeologist of some sort by the name of Adrianna. She's after the ancient dictator's mythical crown so nobody will gain this power again.

Of course there are people after it. When Adrianna finally finds this crown all hell breaks loose. She doesn't have anything left to do but to read some scriptures in the ancient tomb and out pops Black Adam who is supposedly the kid who sacrificed himself to fight the ancient dictator back in the day.

There's just something different about this Black Adam because he seems to not really care about anything. He's just destroying everything in his path. Waking up after so many years away, he realizes he has no real purpose as his home really isn't his home anymore.

The tear of destruction gains international attention and this is when the Justice Society is called in to stop Black Adam. They're going to be in for a rude awakening when they realize how powerful Black Adam really is.

Meanwhile there are still henchmen after the crown that Adrianna had found. This will later reveal the real villain of the story. Then we try to see if Black Adam can work together with the Justice Society to stop this dreaded foe.

First off, I have to say this movie had all the makings of a great movie. I love the concept, the characters, the actors and the action scenes. The problem with this movie is that there are pacing issues and a lot of nonsensical things that happen throughout the movie.

The concept of the ancient crown and the reveal of the actual villain was great. Even the introduction of the Justice Society was great. At times I found that the Justice Society had overshadowed Black Adam in his own movie. There is something about this team that really did it for me and it felt like the spotlight should have been on them instead.

The story with Black Adam and his interactions with Adrianna's family is awkward and nonsensical at times. The dialogue felt a little contrived and very cheesy. They attempted to make this comical but it rarely worked. I can see how they tried to make Adrianna's son and Black Adam into a Terminator 2 dynamic. It was like seeing John, Sarah and the terminator altogether again. Even the interactions were similar with the son trying to get Black Adam to create catch phrases for himself.

Their storyline really drew out way too long and unfortunately made my mind wander off more than a few times. I did like Adrianna's brother in the movie as he was very charismatic but he didn't have much screen time. Also Dr. Fate stole the whole damn movie. He was great!

It's funny because this movie pulls away from a lot of pop culture references. I swear the whole Black Adam storyline had been ripped off of Kratos from God of War. When you get to that part of the movie you'll understand what I'm talking about. It was a lot of been there done that before. I think that if you're someone that hasn't seen as much pop culture as me, you'll probably like it because it'll be fresh and new in your head.

I'm not even going to mention the weirdness of Black Adam just reappearing on earth after thousands of years in waiting. He wakes up, there's new technology and he doesn't think much of it. How does he learn English so well and so freaking fast. Did he just lose his old language? They show that he has weaknesses but never really expose them! I know, I know it's a popcorn movie.. Stop thinking so much...

I do have to give them bonus points for having clear daytime action sequences. Here we're able to keep up with what's going on and understand who is getting hurt and who is doing the hurting. Movies nowadays have a tendency to do everything at night and you can't see exactly what's happening anymore.

Overall, this movie had so much potential as it had everything to become a really entertaining movie. Unfortunately for me it felt like there was a lot of downs with a few minor ups. I really wanted to love this one but it just didn't do it for me. That's why I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10. Hopefully they can still salvage the characters that they have in this movie for a better one in the future.