LOS ANGELES, Oct. 18 (UPI) — Black Adam , which hits theaters Friday, is every bit as loud and glitzy as you'd expect, as they elevate Dwayne Johnson's superhero persona. It's fun and never boring, but it's also smart to move quickly enough to distract the audience from the question at hand.
In 2600 BC Kandak, the Magic Council gave Shazam's powers to a slave. Tate Adam (Johnson) was buried for 5,000 years before Adriana (Sarah Shahi) found a dog crown in his grave.
Adriana summons Shazam to wake Adam up, finding that his power still defeats any modern weapon. But the Justice Society didn't want Kanda to become a superhero, not to be confused with the Justice League.
So Hawkeye (Aldis Hodge), Dr. Destiny (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centenio) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindle) try to stop Adam.
It's a little surprising that Warner Bros. didn't promote Black Adam as a Shazam movie since it deals with the same legend. Comic book fans already know where Adam comes from. And clear enough for any beginner.
Adam, and the film itself, emphasizes that he is no ordinary superhero, mainly because he kills people. But still no darker than any DC or Marvel.
Adam kills the bad guys, but they are all ordinary thugs from Intergang, the invading force of Kandak. The Fast and Fury criminals have redeemed themselves after killing many innocents , so Adam gets a pass if he doesn't try to save the bad guys while protecting the innocent.
Intergangs can easily be seen as a group of bad guys who have taken over modern Kanda and oppressed the people. The movie seems to agree that it shouldn't ask more about the Intergang or how Adam woke up to speak English fluently (a witch, perhaps?).
Black Adam shoves a grenade in a bad guy's face enough, but the movie still expands on that joke a bit. Adam's taciturn physique scares him even more if he starts talking too much in the opening scene.
The action scenes are big and loud, but they're all computer-generated. Man of Steel has been investigating collisions with flying humans and destroying buildings, and the additional damage they inflict on Superman is highly controversial. So Black Adam can play in that world.
A joke about Adam's unstoppable strength as he smashes through walls and pushes heavy furniture out of the way is hilarious. Adam's hatred for his defeated rival remains compelling as director Jaime Collet-Serrat finds a new way to frame the deaths of Intergang members.
The film only reflects the global morality of superheroes and is actually more interested in chaos. That's a good thing, because the world needs horror movies, too.
But when Adriana suddenly defies the Justice League and demands that a Middle Eastern country become its own superpower, it's a good time for the Justice League to not take responsibility.
It's also funny because Adriana is right: the superhero world ignores Kanda when they need to save themselves. But the DC movie universe has ignored the Middle East as a superhero except for a few random scenes where Superman saves Lois from terrorists.
Adriana does what the film should highlight: "You are not a hero and you are not a monster." The world and industry are more complicated than good and bad, but unfortunately everything is resolved in a lot of chaos.
Black Adam's competition, Marvel Films, tackled this problem in their films Captain America: Civil War and even Spider-Man: Never Goes Home . That way, you can have an exotic theme without sacrificing superhero action.
Adriana's son Amon (Bodie Sabogy) learns that Adam has woken up in a world with other superheroes. Aman will grab the audience's attention if his knowledge is limited to Batman and Superman.
Johnson jokingly revealed that Adam was annoyed by Amon but tried to learn his lines. It's a completely different joke than what Edward Furlong taught Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 , so it's even funnier.
Although Black Adam is a dark version of Shazam , it repeats the mistakes of small DC movies. The identities of the Justice Society characters are confusing, as is the identity of each member of the Suicide Squad.
So while The Rock is worse than usual and the human characters seem to be having fun, Black Adam delivers. He knows his audience, so the "WWE to 11" aesthetic feels good.
Fred Topple, who attended Ithaca College Film School, is a Los Angeles-based UPI entertainment writer. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more about his career in the entertainment section.
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