Black Adam will turn the DC Universe hierarchy upside down. With this promise, Dwayne Johnson has been announcing the theatrical release of the new DC blockbuster for months. In fact, the story is enough quite a bit further back: The Hollywood star was already associated with the project in 2007. It would be over a decade before Black Adam got the green light.
In the meantime, Johnson has risen to mega-stardom in Hollywood. Through the Fast & Furious series, he turned into a sought-after name, which own action brand became. Where Johnson says it all, Johnson is in it. However, when he enters the DC universe, which he has been working towards for years, he has no idea what he wants. Black Adam is a superhero film with an identity crisis.
Marvel vs. DC: Dwayne Johnson can’t decide
It was foreseeable that Johnson would sooner or later play a superhero. The question of which of the two large universes he will position himself in turned out to be more exciting. Marvel or DC? Both dominate the blockbuster landscape with different approaches: while Marvel focuses on colorful characters and humor, DC is often about dark, almost apocalyptic epics.
You can watch the trailer for Black Adam here:
Black Adam – Trailer (German) HD
That’s a very rough picture, but it’s basically true. Despite various experiments, neither Marvel nor DC have completely reinvented themselves. If you listen 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 5000 years.
Black Adam, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, also seamlessly follows the larger-than-life epic of the gods that Zack Snyder created with his DC trilogy (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League). Cool colors, fierce looks and flared bodies we study in slow motion to the nearest millimeter can: The massive Snyder-Verse is far from forgotten at DC.
Dwayne Johnson would like to be Dave Bautista in the MCU
These iconic images, however, are only half the story of Black Adam. Because secretly, Johnson yearns far too much to be one of the shining Marvel heroes to be loved, yes, adored by fans. Appropriately, 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.
© Warner Bros.
Atom Smasher is staged just like Marvel’s Ant-Man
Many Marvel and DC characters share their traits and abilities. This is nothing new and not a problem in itself. But Black Adam fails to redefine, which becomes particularly clear with the example of Atom Smasher. Noah Centineo’s jitterily interpreted hero can grow and shrink, coming across as a tracing-away version of Paul Rudd’s planned-yet-lovable MCU hero.
Johnson himself is even more disappointing: In order to turn his angry Black Adam into a loving Terminator 2 uncle, he not only studied Arnold Schwarzenegger, but above all Dave Bautista. as Drax the Destroyer In the MCU, Bautista embodies a character who is as archaic a warrior as Fish out of Water (i.e. someone who has to find his way in an environment that is foreign to him) and is not even remotely able to grasp the stylistic device of irony.
The Marvel movies draw a lot of humor from it. Drax could slash an alien in front of our eyes, at the end of the day we still grew to love him for his social awkwardness. Sarcasm instead of irony: Johnson models his Black Adam in vain after the Guardians model, but he never finds the rhythm that makes Bautista’s performance irresistible. As soon as Johnson wants to appear cool and casual, he stiffens and any situational comedy disappears.
Black Adam poses as a DC movie, but squints at Marvel
At first glance, Black Adam appears in classic DC garb. However, the closer we look, the more obvious it becomes how Johnson furtively pushes his hood aside and Squinting towards Marvel. He can’t and doesn’t want to get involved in the dark and interesting DC film, which is definitely dormant in Black Adam. The abysmal antihero is nipped in the bud. Johnson is quicker to maneuver the character out of moral gray areas before she can do anything bad.
© Warner Bros.
No ambivalent superhero: Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam
There’s no way such a disinterested movie can upend the hierarchy of a DC Universe. most likely Black Adam crashes into the shards, which the franchise has become after the numerous behind-the-scenes reorganizations. There is ego in every passion project. In this case, however, the entire project suffers from Johnson’s aspiration 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 as if he had stopped directly in 2007
– and not even in a charming, nostalgic way that gives us a blockbuster from a bygone cinema era. No, Black Adam has become exactly one of those totally replaceable, formulaic films that put the superhero blockbuster in disrepute in the first place.
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How did you like Black Adam?