Riot’s Reviews: Black Adam
The DCEU has a live-action problem and depending on who you ask, it’s questionable on whether or not they can recover. I tend to lean on the negative side of this debate, so of course that meant I went into a showing of Black Adam with lowered expectations. Lately, the rival MCU hasn’t come to the table with quality content, so it’s certainly worth giving director Jaume Collet-Serra a chance to bring a new character to life, headed by the larger-than-life Dwayne Johnson (the dude turns almost everything he touches to gold). I mean, how could you go wrong with one of the few humans in the world that already physically looks like a superhero? As it turns out, they found a way, but I was definitely expecting much, much worse.
Before I move onto the things I enjoyed most about the DCEU’s most recent installment, it’s important to make exceptional note of one thing: the DCEU makes some killer costumes. Black Adam set a whole new standard in this. The five mainline “heroes” (quotes since Adam certainly is not one) look f***ing amazing! Specifically, I was aching to see a bigger reveal of Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan) and it did not disappoint. Each subsequent hero (Black Adam, Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell)) looked as if they were ripped straight from the comic book pages. The costume designers didn’t shy away from the bright colors that are typical to graphic novels and they didn’t try to muddle/mute them down by making them look “modern” in any away (this is something studios tend to do with villain costumes more than anything). My one and only complaint was the odd choice of making Hawkman’s mace have a spinning, light up top. This seemed like something they could have saved money on in the special effects department.
Speaking of CGI, this was undoubtedly the biggest expense for Black Adam and from what I’ve seen across review sites online, this might be the most polarizing aspect of the film. In this, I am actually torn. Like I mentioned in my LOTR ranking post, there is such a thing as too much CGI. This of course poses a major problem for superhero films: they are supposed to do impossible feats, ones that are only accomplished through special effects. Black Adam fell victim to a similar problem that Man of Steel and the other recent Superman films did; it started off okay and then went off the rails. Adam’s entrance into the film (a long sequence of straight up murders set to the soundtrack of The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black), was exciting and haunting at the same time. Truly, it’s hard to believe what passes as PG-13 these days. But there is something about human helplessness in the face of overwhelming power that I think will always be fascinating to people (I think of more realistic situations like Leonardo DiCaprio’s mauling scene as well). Watching dudes get rag-dolled by Adam was an incredibly intense experience. As the film progresses and we are treated to some gnarly fight scenes between Adam and the JSA heroes, I was still hanging in there, suspending believability and doing my best to ignore the abundance of plot holes. But once the big villain reveal happens, it was clear that the movie was going to have the same issues as Superman’s final battle with Zod and the Kryptonian machines.
If overblown CGI was the film’s only problem, I think a lot could be forgiven for the sake of a higher rating. But inevitably, weak writing has claimed yet another victim. Particularly, there is an endless amount of problems with the fictional world of Kahndaq. Design-wise, the creators actually kind of nailed it, but unlike what the MCU did with the nation of Wakanda, Kahndaq’s existence in the “real” world is unnecessarily complicated. So much so that the characters’ [Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), Karim (Mohammed Amer), and Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari)] dialogue essentially mock not only the film’s plot structure, but even the presence of the JSA heroes entirely. Also, regarding the JSA, the writers fell victim to another mistake: introducing too many characters that have little to no character development. This is a blunder that has become all too common these days and creates the massive problem of having dramatic events befalling characters that no one actually cares about. Finally, Black Adam does itself another disservice by making its lead too damn powerful. This is actually one of the main reasons I never liked Superman as a comic character in the first place; what can’t he do?!? Seriously, this was such a problem that the old authors had to write an entire storyline just to prove he could actually die! Indestructible characters aren’t any fun and future superhero film writers would do themselves a favor by remembering this. There has to be risk for the reward to be meaningful.
Wrap up: I thought the performances in the film were all-around pretty good. Though predictable beyond words, I didn’t hate the overall story. Visually, the movie was pretty stunning and the choreographers for the fight scenes should be commended. I was legitimately involved and enjoying it until the last half hour or so. If you can handle the “heroes” of the story making predictably stupid decisions and are willing to suspend belief in the midst of an overabundance of CGI, Black Adam is worth checking out. There even is a number of decently comedic moments interspersed throughout, but I wish the writers had come up with something unique instead of relying on derivatives of Terminator 2. The best I could say, I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.
Riot’s Rating: 7.1/10: P.S. Probably should leave the kids at home for this one.
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