The Marvel movie Morbius already had the title of worst superhero movie of the year secured. Then came Black Adam. Which blockbuster is more terrible? Here you get the close but ultimate result.
Together, Marvel and DC have released 6 blockbusters this year. Plus a few series and shorter films like Werewolf by Night. You’d think the superhero genre would continue to be in a heyday in 2022. You might think that, were 2022 not also the year Morbius and Black Adam were released.
Black Adam and Morbius brought us cheap action, predictable storylines, miscast stars & awkward excuses
Morbius starring Jared Leto and Black Adam starring Dwayne Johnson undercut each other so expertly it was as if they were competing for the title of worst superhero movie of 2022. They felt like an artificial intelligence had been fed the most stale Marvel and DC clichés of recent years – with the aim of creating the dullest superhero blockbuster of all time. The question of which of the films was duller through the year is a difficult one to answer. We tried in this article – it took 4 rounds.
Morbius vs Black Adam Round 1: Which film is more formulaic?
Morbius followed its Sony Verse brother Venom, which found success in 2018 with a pared-down story, average effects and an overall impressive lack of ambition. The Morbius calculus: people out there want to see more uninteresting and underdeveloped superhero movies that were forgotten on a hard drive in 2007. The problem: Venom, starring Tom Hardy, developed an exciting trash tone. Morbius only had the pompous Jared Leto, who never seemed to know what kind of film he was in. Without the Tom Hardy vibe, Morbius was an anaemic carcass, a car without gas, just a complete miscalculation.
Black Adam: Dwayne Johnson’s cuddle and glow image is Black Adam’s biggest spoiler. Of course, the gloomy anti-hero can be purified into a tragic world saviour. Not even with his little toe does the character dare to enter troubling moral grey areas. The Rock star power rewrites each character identity all by itself. We predicted the plot three years before the film’s release. Still …
Morbius vs Black Adam round 2: Who has the worse action?
The final battle of Morbius versus “Matt Smith’s character” takes place at night in front of New York skyscrapers. Of course, no one could have guessed that the dark bodies would hardly be recognisable against the dark backdrop. That’s probably why it was decided in post-production that the two opponents would have to trail colourful streaks behind them so that you could at least rudimentarily perceive their movements. The result was a murky on-screen pool speckled with muddy confetti. This completely failed visual conception is actually hard to undercut.
Were it not for Black Adam pretending to have invented the playful bullet-time sequences we already saw 8 years ago with Quicksilver in the X-Men movies. And when Dwayne Johnson fights faceless henchmen in the rest of the movie, it has the kinetic impact of punching balloons.
