In the case of Black Adam, DC could stand for Deep Cut. It’s a whole movie built around Billy Batson’s third worst enemy (the top two are presumably busy in the Shazam sequel). It was most likely developed by looking through a stack of comics and asking ‘who could Dwayne Johnson play?’ In either a canny callback or an unwise reminder of humble beginnings, Teth-Adam – ancient slave martyr who gains the powers of Shazam – is a lot like the Scorpion King, as played by the Artist Formerly Known as The Rock in his earliest big screen outings.
After a grim origin and a big battle in the ancient Middle East, Teth-Adam is entombed under a mountain.A reel of minor intrigue establishes the modern-day country of Kahndaq – like Wakanda, conveniently fictional so no criticism of actual governments can be inferred in its depiction as occupied by evil interests – before the superbeing is revived as a destructive saviour.Teth-Adam keeps claiming not to be a hero and casually murders opponents, but Johnson’s family values image nevertheless has him form an attachment to a skateboard-riding kid and his archaeologist mom.
Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) from the Suicide Squad films sends in a team of rebooted second-string superfolk – winged Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), mystic Dr Fate (Pierce Brosnan), sprite Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and comedy lunk Atom-Smasher (Noah Centineo) – to put him in a cage. Cue much flying, bashing and zapping and stakes so high they don’t mean much.
This standard cape opera isn’t the disaster quite a few DC films have been. Brosnan’s world-weary Fate and Johnson’s deadpan delivery are infallibly engaging, but Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, The Shallows) doesn’t import the extra oomph his fellow small-scale horror professionals James Wan and David F. Sandberg brought to the demented Aquaman and the surprisingly sweet Shazam.
Black Adam will be released nationwide on 21st October 2022 by Warner Bros. Pictures.