Black Adam (2022) Review

The cast is good, Fate (Brosnan sounding tired with everything and everyone), Hawkman (discount Kevin Hart), Cyclone (if you ordered Zendaya from Wish.com), and Atom Smasher (spare Ezra Miller) all have clear, distinct powers, and really fun execution of them and some decent interactions and conversation.

It's visually great. Kahndaq feels really 'real' with the ruins as landmarks and restorations amongst the more modern city. It's actually something we don't see a lot with US made productions as even their oldest cities are relatively new, seeing the scars of history is great.

The story is clunky and dull Adam has been changed to a slave and not the Prince of Egypt from the actual character's background.

To accommodate the Rock's ego, the story goes through a weird series of twists to make Adam the hero even though he's an unrepentant murderer from the moment he's on screen. It is disappointing as Teth-Adam is a villain in the vein of Magneto and Doom, evil, ruthless, but with just enough humanity you can understand him. There's perhaps one moment of him adjusting to the new world. Mirrors are a wondrous new thing to him but he has no issue with the concept of guns, helicopters, televisions or cars. Otherwise he's as modern as anyone else. And the cringe-inducing JSA announcement that 'we're here for Global Stability' may as well be saying 'we're here for the military-industrial complex, keep being subjugated peasants' in one of the points where they try and reframe the heroics.

An hour in and the stakes have never been lower. Literally, there are no stakes at this point in the film other than Adam's obnoxious sidekick kid who has a serious deathwish, Adam squishing regular people, (who are members of intergang but have no way to hurt him) more for something to do than any real motivation from the character.

The JSA are ineffectively wandering around occasionally fighting him or talking to him but mostly just bantering with each other. Adam also joins in with the bantering. This is tonally odd for an ex-slave from 5,000 years ago who became a rage-fueled demi-god. Then 20 seconds later he totally fails to understand humour. It's jarring. You can feel The Rock's manager pushing for \"more quips! Marvel made a movie in a CAVE WITH QUIPS!\" to try and reach their success rather than carve their own identity, and they could have, its a strong cast, even the Rock is a solid, if limited actor and the characters are niche enough to not get hate for not being comic accurate whilst being big enough they do fun things. It's a frustrating miss we can mostly lay at the Rock's contract's feet. He's (allegedly) not allowed to lose, but he's playing the bad guy, thought there is a \"worse guy\".

I realise I haven't actually mentioned the Antagonist. Call him Ishmael. (really) he plans his death by Adam in order to due holding a talisman. The government's specialists in dealing with Meta Humans, \"Task Force X\" of Suicide Squad fame just leave supervillains lying around the loading bay. Easily available for anyone to wander over to. The staff have no training or weaponry to defeat a regular person let alone a supervillain. Where is the ruthlessly efficient Waller we know and love?

We get a genre-blind moment of and \"this villain died clutching a mystical artifact specifically related to Death.\" \"ok, cool, let's shove him in a bodybag and ignore him and leave it with him.\" Shockingly Ishmael reincarnates as Sabbac (Shazam but for 6 demons)

The Bringing back Adam once he's contained because 'he's the only one who can defeat the bad guy' when Superman exists and is explicitly referenced and shows up later as a favor to Waller is insanely daft and poorly scripted. Adam really was not needed.

Because Adam beat up a demon, everyone likes him now, the JSA leave. Waller is not so convinced, so we get the moment of Cavill back in the Suit, standing against Adam in a more in character moment, before it is snatched away forever.

Shazam is the better Shazam movie and it's not even close.