The release of Black Adam feels a bit like a last stand, this nine-year-old but still fledgling cinematic universe looking for safety in a Zack Snyder-lite style and the sheer power of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It’s a safety the film mostly finds, an uninspiring origin story that rarely goes above or below “acceptable.” Decent financial returns are all but guaranteed – “Dwayne Johnson Superhero Movie” is about a safe a pitch as is humanly possible in today’s Hollywood – but if this bombastic blandness is the keystone upon which the future of DC movies is to be built, then catching up with Marvel’s faltering but still dominant MCU is a long way off.
The titular character of Black Adam – an immortal Bronze Age antihero empowered by a vaguely Egyptian pantheon of ancient gods – is one that Johnson has been publicly attached to for years and years now, and this long development process makes itself known in the finished product. Rather like the Tom Hardy Venom films, though with a lot less of their silly charm, Black Adam feels like it’s been beamed in from a universe where it’s perpetually 2005, from its “edgy” hero to an irritating and poorly acted child sidekick to the jarring and nonsensical needle drops.
After a near 5000-year slumber after his rage gets him imprisoned by a council of wizards (stay with me),
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