Many will see this as a negative that has caused them to have a mess on their hands, but the big draw to the DC Universe for some like me is the slightly unpredictable feeling that comes from the lack of overly rigid control of the upper hands. There is control, but mostly there is trust in directors to take the movies as far as possiblesomething that is not usually tolerated in the perfectly oiled machinery of Marvel Studios.
That is why there are not so many middle terms. Either they go completely to nonsense, or they get carried away by their high conception of it. Yes, it causes your irregularity, but there is no denying that they prove things. That is why it is strange that the film that has been tried to sell as the great change in DC’s hierarchy is one that seems from another era, playing it much more safe to end up in no man’s land. That is ‘Black Adam’.
painted black
Dwayne Johnson’s great leap into the world of superheroes is already streaming on HBO Max, giving a new window of exhibition to a film with not a small commercial performance but it does not stop raising questions about whether it has been positive or negative. Economic issues aside, Jaume Collet-Serra’s blockbuster tries to move the needle of the genre formula with a historic villain/antihero from comics.
If you have seen ‘Shazam’, you already have an idea of the particular world in which it takes place and gives powers to the character of The Rock. If you haven’t (you should, it’s great), you’ll be surprised to find ancient civilizations, strange magical ability entities that grant super strength, flight and other superpowers to certain chosen ones or “champions”. Black Adam is one of those, locked in a tomb for millennia until he has been awakened.
But does he come back as friend or foe? That is a mystery that cannot go unanswered and that is why the Justice Society of America is sent to the fictitious region of the Middle East in which it has awakened. A motley and interesting collection of heroes of lesser circulation that represents both the most entertaining moments of the film and some of its problems.
‘Black Adam’ is a movie quite appropriate in a universe that points to several tonal directions at the same time. He wants to have a crazy show, even tacky, that he wants to recover an uninhibited fantasy typical of the sequels to Christopher Reeve’s Superman. It also recovers some of Zack Snyder’s own cinematographic touches, with recharged pictorial images and a certain seriousness to touch on important issues that feel too self-imposed.
‘Black Adam’: This (no man’s) land is my land
Johnson clearly thinks highly of himself as a world star. That is why the film has to address issues such as slavery in the Middle East or foreign military intervention (especially from the United States), as well as trying to explore a morally dubious protagonist.
The problem is that a movie like ‘The Suicide Squad’ could already address some of those issues without giving up its badass personality, something that this one doesn’t do. The other problem is that its protagonist It is not as complex as you want to believe.
That lack of definition weighs heavily on a film that remains in no man’s land. There are no moments of fantastic grandeur to explain the fascination for the character (and therefore we can feel it), his development of political issues is too superficial to give him the benefit of the doubt and he doesn’t throw himself at all into the fun that at times he asks The most disappointing film by Collet-Serra, a craftsman who is used to making junk films that are better than they should be, and one of the low points of the DC Universe. Come on, the hierarchy has changed.