15 years Dwayne Johnson spent on Black Adam. The result has become a shockingly interchangeable film that can’t decide between Marvel and DC.
Black Adam will turn the hierarchy of the DC universe on its head. With this promise, Dwayne Johnson has been announcing the cinema release of the new DC blockbuster for months. In fact, the story goes back quite a bit further: the Hollywood star was already linked to the project in 2007. Over a decade would pass before Black Adam was given the green light.
In the meantime, Johnson has risen to mega-stardom in Hollywood. Via the Fast & Furious series, he transformed himself into an in-demand name that became an action brand in its own right. Where Johnson is on it, Johnson is in it. However, in his entry into the DC universe of all things, which he has been working towards for years, he doesn’t even know what he wants. Black Adam is a superhero film with an identity crisis.
Marvel vs. DC: Dwayne Johnson can’t make up his mind
It was a foregone conclusion that Johnson would play a superhero sooner or later. More exciting was the question in which of the two big universes he will position himself. Marvel or DC? Both dominate the blockbuster landscape with different approaches: While Marvel focuses on colourful characters and humour, DC is often about dark, almost apocalyptic epics.
Here you can watch the trailer for Black Adam:
This is a very rough picture, but in principle it is true. Despite various experiments, neither Marvel nor DC has completely reinvented itself. Listening to Johnson talk about Black Adam, DC seems like the perfect home for him. He wants to play an anti-hero who is born in anger, seeks revenge and is connected to a mythology that goes back 5,000 years into the past.
Aesthetically, the Jaume Collet-Serra-directed Black Adam also seamlessly follows the larger-than-life god epic that Zack Snyder created with his DC trilogy (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League). Cool colours, grim looks and bodies on display for us to study in slow motion with millimetre precision: The massive Snyder-verse is far from forgotten at DC.
Dwayne Johnson would love to be Dave Bautista in the MCU
These unmistakable images are only half the story of Black Adam, though. Because secretly, Johnson yearns far too much to be one of the shining Marvel heroes that fans love, nay, idolise. Fittingly, he surrounds himself with the DC counterparts of Falcon, Doctor Strange, Storm and Ant-Man – in this case, their names are Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone and Atom Smasher.
Ant-Man staged
Many Marvel and DC characters share traits and abilities. That’s nothing new and not a problem in itself. But Black Adam fails at redefinition, which is especially evident in the example of Atom Smasher. Noah Centineo’s nervously interpreted hero can grow and shrink, and comes across as a chopped-down version of Paul Rudd’s scheduled but lovable MCU hero.
Even more disappointing is only Johnson himself: To transform his angry Black Adam into a loving Terminator 2 uncle, he studied not only Arnold Schwarzenegger but, more importantly, Dave Bautista. As Drax the Destroyer, Bautista embodies a character in the MCU who is as much archaic warrior as Fish out of Water (i.e. someone who has to find his way in an environment that is alien to him) and is not even remotely capable of grasping the stylistic device of irony.
The Marvel films draw a lot of humour from this. Drax could slash an alien in front of our eyes, at the end of the day we still take him to our hearts because of his awkwardness in social interaction. Sarcasm instead of irony: Johnson models his Black Adam in vain on the Guardians model, but he never finds the rhythm that makes Bautista’s performance irresistible. As soon as Johnson wants to seem cool and casual, he stiffens up and any situational comedy dwindles.
Black Adam pretends to be a DC movie but squints at Marvel
At first glance, Black Adam appears to be in classic DC garb. The closer we look, however, the more obvious it becomes how Johnson stealthily pushes his hood aside and squints in the direction of Marvel. He can never and will never get involved with the dark and interesting DC film that is definitely slumbering in Black Adam. The abysmal anti-hero is nipped in the bud. Johnson manoeuvres the character out of moral grey areas more quickly before he can do anything evil.
Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam
Such a disinterested film can’t possibly turn the hierarchy of a DC universe on its head. Most likely, Black Adam crashes into the middle of the shambles that the franchise has become after the numerous behind-the-scenes restructurings. There is ego in every passion project. In this case, however, the entire project suffers from Johnson’s ambition to create the ultimate superhero film to prove to himself and the world that he is Hollywood’s biggest star.
After 15 years in production hell, this superhero movie feels like it stopped right there in 2007 – and not even in a charmingly nostalgic way that gives us a blockbuster from a bygone era of cinema. No, Black Adam has become precisely one of those completely interchangeable, formulaic films that discredited the superhero blockbuster in the first place.
