Black Adam [2022]
We're here to negotiate your peaceful surrender.
– I'm not peaceful. Nor do I surrender.”
I highly recommend reading this rather than looking at the ratings, because I want you to hear my words, not get hung up on a number.
Black Adam is the newest DC attempt at living in the same world as their most hated foe: Competent Filmmaking… I mean, Marvel. Who’s nemesis… As it turns out is also: Competent Filmmaking.
So, does Dwane Adam succeed where his predecessors have almost universally failed as they’ve wandered around in their too-consistent-to-be-an-accident-at-this-point poorly lit and over contrasted universes?.. Yes actually!.. Well, “yes” in the same way a dog who’s too excited for their treat succeeds in sitting, by offering you a paw, rolling over, then doing cute little dancing feet. You're still going to give it to them, but did they sit? [Yes. Yes of course they sat, you monster. Look at those cute little feet.]
Black Adam does something its Marvel counters seem to have completely forgotten how to do: Be creative. Granted, most of Adam’s creativity feels completely haphazard and disjointed – almost like the film has three different writers… – BUT, it does still feel creative. Most of the action is genuinely fun to watch and is well shot. On top of that, the visual effects feel like they’re made in a completely different universe from anything Marvel puts out. The whole movie looks mostly great from a vfx standpoint, and it really makes for a much more enjoyable watch than nearly any of the other 2008 flash-game-quality stuff we’ve seen from Disney as of late.
Now, let’s not get TOO crazy. This movie is, well… Incredibly stupid. The plot is bad, characters are bad and mostly annoying, virtually none of the decision making has any logic to it, and there’s not really any stakes to speak of in the entire film. Some ramblings about taking back a throne over a 3,000 year blood feud [a blood feud who’s justification for even being remembered is either never explained or so thinly mentioned that I forgot it the second the scene changed]. The entire approach to the plot is absolute nonsense and every character seems like they’re TRYING to aggravate the situation and simply make things worse; It’s very, “making things happen for the sake of making things happen” at times. There’s lots of, “if you’d just do things like a regular, baseline intelligent person, this would be SO much easier.” But… It's a superhero movie, so here we are.
What’s particularly weird about the film is that it’s almost entirely carried by Pierce Brosnan, who plays what has to be the second stupidest named character in the entire super-cosmere, “Dr. Fate”. I’ll give you one guess as to his power… Apparently having one of the stupidest names also makes Dr. Fate one of the most interesting superheroes in basically any of these kinds of movies as well. Intriguingly, Fate predates his obvious counter, Doctor Strange, by about 20-years in debut amongst the comics. I know next to nothing about that whole situation, but it seems like DC pioneered something interesting, and then Macintosh… I mean, Marvel, just copied and marketed it better. How fun.
I could have watched an entire film just about this character… and that’s one of the key issues with Black Adam. The plot revolves around a city [country maybe?] that nobody has ever heard of [yes, I know it’s not a real place] that seems to be under the thumb of 15-total bad guys that [spoilers?] get dispatched almost instantly… And almost none of the people in the film matter even a little. There's nothing for you to come back to, nothing for you to remember, and nothing for you to actually care about. Adam is vaguely interesting, Dr. Fate is VERY interesting… And everyone else is either solidly annoying, super cringe, or so forgettable that you’d swear the cast was four people long.
So, all-in-all, Black Adam ended up being exactly what I expected it to be as an entire piece, but has several parts that were several times better than several other things out there right now. It’s certainly not good, but it is a good amount of fun.
“It's been a while since anyone's made the world this nervous. Black Adam, we should talk.”
