‘Black Adam’ review: Dwayne Johnson’s star power squandered in another muddled DCEU drama

Watching an action movie shouldn’t feel like a chore, but Black Adam does. Amid a slew of publicly damned decisions, Warner Bros. has released a DC Extended Universe movie that is more exhausting than exciting, spooling out tedious exposition alongside ugly action for a muddled mess of a movie that squanders its big budget and the promising star power of Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, and Noah Centineo. So, Warner Bros. will serve this up in theaters, but won’t give us a streaming Batgirl? What gives? 

What is Black Adam about? 

If you’re unfamiliar with the comic book character Black Adam, fear not as his eponymous movie will spend an egregious amount of screen time — two hours and four minutes, in fact — doggedly laying out his backstory in stern sepia-hued flashbacks, somber voice-over narration, strident exposition dumps, and even more flashbacks. 

The opening sequence ushers audiences back to 2600 BCE to the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Kahndaq, where a power-hungry tyrant enslaved his people, forcing them to mine for a powerful element called “eternium.” With DC’s answer to vibranium, the evil king plans to forge a mighty crown possessed by demons. So, a band of good wizards choose a champion to bring him down. You know, sort of like 2019’s Shazam! except this time, the magically burly protagonist isn’t a plucky neighborhood superhero, happy to help. He’s dark. We know this because he wears black, is played by the Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson) in perpetual glower mode, and for good measure, other characters repeatedly insist that Black Adam is “dark” and “no hero.” 

Somehow the triad of screenwriters (Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani) thought audiences might have missed the wave of visual cues: an extended and joltingly violent first-act sequence in which Black Adam rises in the present, then immediately burns down wave after wave of paramilitary foes, wielding helicopters like a blunt weapon, turning mercenaries into screaming ash with his lightning touch, and placing a live hand grenade in between a man’s teeth. So, in case you — or the kids you might take to this PG-13 movie — missed it, the Justice Society pops up to repeatedly finger wag, insisting heroes don’t kill people.

Not the Justice League, mind you. The DCEU is bringing in a new squad of supes — and in a frustratingly slapdash fashion. 

Black Adam is bogged down by too much plot. 

5,000 years since he first Shazaamed, Black Adam rises to smash his enemies into lightning-charred bits. And the new-to-the-DCEU Justice Society flies all the way from America to intervene because by their standards, he’s superheroing all wrong. With this conflict, there’s almost a thought-provoking thread about the problems with American intervention in Middle East. But there’s no time for any real exploration of that when four new merchandising opportunities — I mean — heroes need to be introduced. 

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Orphan) shows little interest in world-building for the DCEU. He races through the setups of Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) so quickly that it’s actually comical. In their rush to “meet the team,” the screenwriters ramble out more hasty exposition that’s difficult to grasp amid the cross-cutting of so many introductions and quirky cameos (which I’ll admit are a thrill). Black Adam is in such a hurry to pitch this batch of C-list heroes into their battle with the protagonist, that your head might be spinning. But no matter, because there are also prophesies, more flashbacks, twists, a flimsy romance thread, a mother-son relationship, odd couple hijinks, and eventually a forgettable big bad to get to. 

Watching all these things snarl on screen, it seems as if Warner Bros. had no confidence in what might connect with audiences, so threw up a bit of everything to see what sticks. That could be bad news for 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods. But let’s digress…

Dwayne Johnson is wildly miscast, while Aldis Hodge and Noah Centineo are wasted. 

Remember when the Rock was fun?

He’d flash that mega-watt smile or strike that smolder, and oh how we’d laugh and be charmed by his booming charisma. It’s exactly that dazzling screen presence that inspired fan-casting him as Shazam, way back before that movie was announced. But here we are, and he’s Shazam’s moody foil, who never smiles and cracks jokes that land with the same thud of the baddies he chucks carelessly into the sky. OK, admittedly, the bad-guy-falls-to-his-death jokes work. But credit to the sound and editing teams is owed there. 

Built like a Samoan god, the Rock looks the part of a muscle-bound superhero. But Black Adam bleeds him of all his powers of panache. So in between CGI-dense, muddy, and visually confusing action scenes, he’s floating and frowning. 

Likewise wasted is Aldis Hodge, who had critics cheering in One Night in Miami… and The Invisible Man. As Hawkman, Hodge has the opportunity to strut in some flashy fashion and furrow his brow in intensity. But between wrangling his Justice Society newbies and the resurrected reckless demi-god, most of Hawkman’s scenes boil down to “don’t make me come back there” dad energy. Hodge nails this. But we’ve seen he’s capable of much more. 

Hodge’s onscreen teammates are likewise given thinly written characters. To his credit, Pierce Brosnan doesn’t let the lack of exposition on his Doctor Fate weigh him down. There’s a resigned ridiculousness to his performance as the posh and all-powerful wizard, which fits a past-his-prime superhero who has seen enough and is happy to take nonsense as it comes. Plus, Brosnan brings an easy swagger and levity, which proves a pleasant foil to Hawkman’s severity. 

Bedecked in alt-girl fashion, Quintessa Swindell is a light amid the darkness of Black Adam‘s resolute brooding. Whether chipperly explaining nanobot tech, swiftly unfurling her character’s tragic backstory, or flirting with her hunky teammate “Smasher,” she’s a delight. Shame she’s barely in the movie.

The same goes for Noah Centineo, who rose to stardom as the romantic interest in To All The Boys I Loved Before. Here, he works from the same mold, playing the eager but clumsy Atom Smasher as if Peter Kavinsky and his charmingly crooked grin wandered off the football field into world-saving shenanigans. Where the Rock fumbles his punchlines, Centineo has the himbo humor beat down, and he plays it perfectly…for the bits of the movie he’s actually in. 

Black Adam flirts with purpose. 

With all of this plot dissection, I haven’t even gotten to the non-superpowered humans at the heart of Black Adam. A rebel widow (a regal Sarah Shahi), her comic-relief side/kick/brother (an authentically goofy uncle, Mohammed Amer), and her precocious son (a high-energy Bodhi Sabongui) are Black Adam’s first friendly contacts in the human world. The boy and the demigod follow a similar trajectory to the Shazam! arc, where a comic books-obsessed kid coaches his superpowered buddy on how to live up to the mantel of the likes of Superman. And in bursts, this is fun! But bogged down by brooding, too much plot, and barely formed heroes and villains, Black Adam becomes a bore.

It’s not that as a whole it’s a slog. But weighed down by so much requisite franchise world-building, Collet-Serra can gain no momentum. Sure, Black Adam has plenty of bang ’em-up action sequences. But buried in the blur of whiz-bang and CGI rubbery figures, these scenes have the thrill and emotional resonance of watching a child smash their superhero action figures together. In the end, even the bright spots are dulled by the dogged darkness of the DCEU’s relentless need to be gritty, leaving me with a bunch of baffled questions.

Why when Shazam! brought welcomed levity back into this superhero realm, did Black Adam come along to be its grimacing, joyless cousin? Why smother the potential thrills of fresh faces with a deluge of exposition that’s as tedious as it is unnecessary? Why cast the Rock to make him play stone-faced? Why bother pouring all this money, talent, and effort into making a movie that feels less like a film and more nakedly like a ploy to set up a flurry of half-hearted spinoffs? And finally, watching Black Adam, I couldn’t help but wonder if WB thinks this is what worthwhile cinematic action looks like, can we trust that they made the right call on killing Batgirl?

Black Adam opens in theaters Oct. 21.