The 250 Million Dollar Black Adam Movie Has a LOT of Problems, Like Being a 250 Million Dollar Movie About Black Adam
Welcome to the latest entry in The Great Catch-Up, a new feature where I go back and write about the many fascinating, important, great and wonderfully terrible films that have come out since this site was launched back in 2017 that I somehow never got around to writing about. YOU can help determine what I write about for this column by voting in polls at this site’s Patreon page at or by becoming a paid Subscriber for my Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas here.
I'm tempted to write a My World of Flops piece not on a specific superhero flop like The Marvels or Blue Beetle but rather on the superhero genre as a whole.
Since the game-changing release of 2008’s Iron Man we have been force-fed a steady diet of superhero movies from Marvel as well as its Distinguished Competition over at D.C.
Superhero fatigue kicked in hard not too long ago. We’re exhausted. Studios thought that our appetite for superheroes was bottomless and insatiable but after a decade and a half even the most mindlessly enthusiastic comic book fan has gotten their fill and then some.
It’s easy to see why what worked before isn’t working anymore. We’ve gotten too many reboots, sequels, spin-offs and team-up movies involving A-list superheroes like Bat-man, Superman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. The market is wildly oversaturated and the audience for niche figures like Blue Beetle, Black Adam and Monica Rambeau is too small to support massive budgets.
If you want to know why the 250 million dollar Black Adam movie failed the answer is simple: it’s a 250 million dollar movie about Black Adam. The existence of Black Adam and Blue Beetle movies makes me feel like we’re running out of superheroes to make movies about, and will soon resort to making up half-assed superheroes like Walrus Guy (a guy with walrus powers) and The Optimist (his power is that he always sees the glass as half full!)
I suspect that Black Adam would have gotten a warmer reception if it had did not spent an eternity in development hell. D.C started making plans to bring the character to the big screen before the release of Iron Man.
In 2006 My Fellow Americans director Peter Segal was attached to a big-screen adaptation of Shazam! Johnson contemplated playing Shazam before deciding that the role of Shazam’s nemesis Black Adam suited him better.
At one point Black Adam was going to square off against Shazam in Shazam’s first movie but Johnson convinced DC that the glowering, obscure, defiantly non-fun villain deserved a movie of his own. Why spend 200 million dollars on a blockbuster about a semi-obscure character when you can spend 450 million dollars on two separate movies about semi-obscure characters?
Johnson was at one point supposed to appear in Suicide Squad but that did not happen. Johnson had all sorts of big plans for Black Adam in terms of sequels and crossovers.
It’s easy to see why Johnson would want to get into the superhero business while business was booming. He’s the rare actor who wouldn’t need to lift weights or change his appearance to play a meta-human with the body of a God and fists of steel.
Johnson is already pretty much a real life superhero known and loved for his commitment to truth, justice, the American Way, profit participation and exploiting ancillary markets to the fullest. What could be more American than capitalism?
Black Adam wastes no time wasting our time with an exposition heavy prologue in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq that inspires dread rather than excitement over what’s to come.
Oh boy, Hawkman! He’s not incredibly lame at all!
When I’m inundated with information like that I start to get sweaty and worry that I will be tested on it.
We begin in 2600 B.C when the evil Ahk-Ton will stop at nothing to mine Eternium in order to create the Crown of Sabbac, a magical piece of headwear that will grant him power, immortality and, I assume, a cut of the gross if Black Adam really cleans up at the box-office. How could Black Adam not be a huge hit? It’s about Black Adam, after all.
Oh, and incidentally the words “Black Adam” are never uttered within the film itself, only in the requisite mid-credit sequence. Instead Johnson’s character is referred to as Teth-Adam throughout. Boy, that just rolls off the tongue. Superman. Batman. Spider-Man. Teth-Adam.
From a branding standpoint that makes no sense but Johnson figured that Black Adam would have plenty of time to say his name in the six or seven sequels that were sure to follow once Black Adam started shattering box-office records.
Johnson’s character was once a lowly slave in Kahndaq until his son receives the powers of Shazam by a Council of Wizards. Incidentally, if you’re anything like me you can’t help but read the words “powers of Shazam by a Council of Wizards” in Conan O’Brien’s comic book nerd voice. Unfortunately you’d have to be a hardcore comic book nerd to care about any of this hogwash.
To save his life, Teth-Adam’s son gives him his fantastical magical powers, which he then uses to kill Ahk-Ton and end his evil reign.
Finally, a movie involving Cyclone!
Teth-Adam is murderously angry at the world. That’s what sets him apart, at least in the film’s eyes: he’s not just willing to kill, he’s seemingly eager to kill. The movie seems to think that’s fucking bad-ass and unprecedented and makes him just about the coolest motherfucker on the planet.
Black Adam seems to think it’s shocking and transgressive for the protagonist of a superhero movie to kill people but at this point pretty much everything has been done, and as Teth-Adam states over and over again, he’s not a hero; he’s an anti-hero. Who kills people.
Teth-Adam is punished for his bloodlust by the Council of Wizards by being put in a deep sleep for several thousand years.
Atom Smasher’s in this one! He’s a guy who smashes atoms!
In modern day Kahndaq archeologist Adrianna Tomaz, who has located Crown of Sabbac, says an incantation that brings Teth-Adam roaring back to life.
Teth-Adam kills a fuck-ton of anonymous gangsters. This brings him to the attention of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who sends the Justice Society to contain him.
I know what’s you’re probably thinking: it’s so cool that Bat-Man, Aqua-man, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Cyborg and the Flash are in the film. Sorry, you’re thinking about the Justice LEAGUE. The Justice Society is populated by superheroes you’ve never heard of, like Cyclone, Atom Smasher, Dr. Fate and Hawkman.
Atom Smasher and Cyclone may be obscure but they’re also so bland and forgettable that I’m having a hard time even remembering what they look like. Black Adam further establishes that Atom Smasher and Cyclone will be thoroughly underwhelming by positing them as beginners new to this whole “saving the world” thing.
The only good thing about Black Adam is Pierce Brosnan’s performance as Dr. Fate, a god-like being with a magical gold helmet and the ability to see the future. Black Adam may be stupid and tacky and mercenary but Brosnan lends real gravitas to a film that desperately needs it. He’s a melancholy figure haunted by the future as well as the past. He’s the only character in the movie I would actually want to see again, in any context.
I could not have been less impressed by Hawkman. Even by the very lenient standards of superhero movies he’s ridiculous, with an outlandish get-up and tacky gold color scheme.
He’s a tough guy alpha male who is constantly clashing with Teth-Adam and threatening Atom Smasher. Coming from a wrestling background, I can see where Johnson might dramatically over-estimate the appeal of two muscled-up tough guys threatening each other in a vaguely homoerotic fashion.
Johnson had a choice between playing Shazam or Teth-Adam. He did not choose wisely. As an actor and an icon Johnson is fun goofy, likable, charismatic and doesn’t take himself too seriously.
So it is a massive miscalculation to cast him as a character who isn’t fun, goofy, likable or charismatic and who takes himself very seriously.
Johnson might have taken the role because he thought it was more of a change and a greater acting challenge but it plays against his strengths in a way that keeps the film from being any goddamn fun at all.
I want the The Rock to The Rock, not a glowering, monosyllabic anti-hero with a lame suit.
Black Adam and the Justice Society eventually learn to put aside their difference to fight their common enemy Ishmael Gregor / Sabbac (Marwan Kenzari) he’s a descendant of Ahk-Ton who dies and goes to hell, at which point the devil gives him fantastical demon powers.
From that point forward he looks like a Sega CD version of a heavy metal demon. The special effects and CGI are as godawful as those in The Flash but be easy on the filmmakers: it’s not easy to make a halfway professional movie when you only have a budget of 250 million dollars.
Black Adam looks terrible. It’s an endless expanse of white with precious little in the way of visual variety. Like The Flash, Black Adam costs a fortune but looks cheap.
Like pretty much all superhero movies these days Black Adam has an end credit sequence teasing future adventures with a more famous superhero. Here that special guest star is Henry Cavill’s Superman, who is brought in by Amanda Waller to contain Teth-Adam and tells the muscle-bound brute “We need to talk.”
Johnson consequently wanted to make a My Dinner With Andre-like two-hander where Black Adam and Superman dine together and discuss the wonderful absurdity of life and the curious joke known as existence but DC nixed those plans when the movie flopped.
Johnson does not appear to be insane or completely out of touch with reality. But his conviction that audiences would suffer through 125 minutes of achingly dull superhero nonsense and be hungry for more is delusional.
The star of Black Adam is one of our biggest winners, both in terms of success and physical mass but his failed attempt at superhero immortality is a loser despite what Johnson might sweatily and unconvincingly insist.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Failure
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