As much as my growing disappointment with quite a few films that 2022 has had to offer may argue against this, I like to think of myself as the ‘last line of defence’ of film critics. Over the past eight years of writing on this blog, as well as my commissions for FilmInk, I have always tried to find the positives in whatever film I watch. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I genuinely think that I have yet to watch a film that has literally zero merit to it. If a new film has come out, and it has been either disregarded or just lambasted by other critics, chances are good that I have at least one good thing to say about it, if not several.
That goes double for superhero films. While I get the inherent problems with how much of a stranglehold the genre has on the industry nowadays, I personally can’t find it in myself to lambast the art as a result of that. I love superhero stories. When they’re done well, they can make for just the right kind of storytelling that tap into that part of me that holds onto the ideals of goodness within humanity like a life preserver. I may not want every film to be like that, and indeed not every film should, but I usually have a lot of nice words for the ones I come across.
To put it simply, in order for a superhero film to get on my bad side, it has to be a particularly crap example of the genre. I mean, I was able to unironically vibe with parts of Morbius, just to show how lenient I can be with this kind of fare. But then I come across stuff like this, which feel like they exist solely to validate every single criticism that has been levelled at the genre and its effect on the industry over the past decade and a half.
Let’s start with the title character, and indeed the actor that spearheaded this film into existence: Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam. Now, most of what I know about Black Adam is connected to his pivotal role in the 52 maxi-series, and quite a bit of that is included here (the Justice Society, Amanda Waller, Adrianna Tomaz, and Intergang are all part of the story in those books). But from what I’ve seen, he’s essentially the darker side of Captain Marvel AKA Shazam: Imbued with the power of literal gods, but willing to shed any blood necessary to protect himself and his land.
He would be an amazing pick for a villain in a Shazam sequel, but hey, he could still work in a solo film. And getting Dwayne Johnson to play him makes sense on paper. A lot of his filmography up to this point has involved him playing characters that are both charismatic and morally grey and/or dubious: Red Notice, Baywatch, Moana, Central Intelligence, Fast Five, Pain & Gain, Get Smart, Doom, going all the way back to his turn as the Scorpion King. Beyond him being a popular fan-cast, it’s a role that could feasibly work to his advantage.
However, that also leads into something of a recurring problem with his regular on-screen persona, especially in how it intersects with a character as Chaotic as Black Adam. While Dwayne may be a good fit for an anti-hero, he has also shown hesitance in playing anyone too anti-. The biggest signifier of this might be his portrayal of Hercules, which hinted at a much darker interpretation of the character (a lot more in-line with the original legend than film adaptations tend to get) but ultimately wussed out and removed him from any especially grim actions. He may be willing to play around with ambiguous characters, but not if it threatens to make him look anything less than lovable to the audience.
And it’s here where that mentality hits a brick wall. He just plain doesn’t work as this hardened and more jaded take on the Shazam formula, with the film constantly trying to insist that he’s not really a villain… while Johnson’s performance does nothing to argue against that assertion. No matter how many times we see him disintegrate mercenaries with lightning or try to tear the wings off of Hawkman, he always comes across like he’s a square peg that’s been sanded off to fit in the round hole that is DC’s more traditional approach to superheroes. It saps him of the gray areas that make his character on the printed page worth reading about.
And then there’s the Justice Society, which has its own set of issues. Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate does a lot to inject some pathos into the equation, and he’s easily the most interesting superpowered character here, but the team’s entire presence in this story falls apart on a number of different levels. For a start, they’re a brand-new team in the DC cinematic world, and yet we barely know a thing about them, nor do we get anything about them as personalities that makes the opportunity of spin-offs or prequels seem at all worthwhile. Aldis Hodge as Hawkman spends the bulk of the film being as Lawful Stupid as possible, while Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell as Atom Smasher and Cyclone respectively… exist, I guess. For as much as the Joss Whedon version of Justice League annoyed me, even that showed me more about the new faces than this ever manages to.
For another, they end up representing the need for anti-heroes in the DCU, but in the worst way possible. As embodied by Hawkman as the de-facto leader, they are ‘peacekeepers’ in the sense of maintaining order over anything resembling justice, acting more to maintain the status quo than to do any real good in the world. They are superheroes as defined by people who see the worst in superheroes; if Alan Moore took a head injury and decided to write superheroes again, or if Garth Ennis ever got handed the JSA proper, this is what they’d turn out. And for a film that has been hyped up as a ‘change in the hierarchy of power’ (whatever the hell that even means), it’s not exactly painting a hopeful future for this universe. I don’t care how much you miss Henry Cavill as Superman, a mid-credits scene overshadowing the two hours that preceded it like this is not a good sign.
And speaking of what this means for the future of the DCU, there’s easily my biggest problem with the JSA here, and it ties back to the sanding-off Black Adam as a character has gone through. Where films like James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, or even David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, went full-chested in their deconstruction and reconstruction of the idea of a superhero, this ends up being completely toothless. Like Dwayne himself, the script he’s working with is entirely uncomfortable with actually being subversive about its own story.
The film starts out with the introduction of Intergang, a mercenary group that is only the latest to forcefully take over Kahndaq. Considering their comic book origins, as an entry point for Darkseid and the New Gods of Apokolips on Earth, they could have made for a solid introduction for the demonic champion that is the film’s Big Bad (who is such a letdown, that’s literally all I’ll be saying about him). But instead, any impact they have on the story and its setting just gets boiled down to ‘henchmen of the villain’. The organisation that is mining the country hollow, harassing the populace, and generally being authoritative pricks, have all of their own world-building actions just swept under the rug.
And I have a decent guess as to why that is: Because if they were kept in focus for too long, then the film would actually have to give an answer as to why the Justice Society, a team on par with the League, haven’t done anything about Intergang’s presence in Kahndaq until Black Adam showed up. No real reason given as to why they’re trying to ‘um, actually’ a military dictatorship, just because it’s Black Adam who’s trying to fight them. When I said that they maintain the status quo, I mean that in the most imperialistic sense possible. No thanks.
Look, I’m not saying that there is nothing good about it. Sarah Shahi as Adrianna Tomaz gives this film a much-needed emotional edge, and in the midst of all the dick-waving about who has the right to save the world, she ends up looking like the real superhero in how much she cares for her son and her home. Hell, in regards to this rather direct take on the superhero as divine legend, the scenes where that heroic inspiration reaches the people makes for some appropriately soul-stirring moments.
But even though I’m an admitted sucker for those moments, there is nothing here that hasn’t been done better a thousand times over by films within just the last few years, let alone reaching back to the all-time greats. Probably because most of them didn’t have the dilution of a proper anti-hero into a more stereotypical superhero as part of the plot itself; you’d never catch James Gunn pulling shit like this.
What this film ultimately amounts to is a production that desperately wants to give the impression that it’s doing something different, and could be a sign of great change to come, but in reality is only reheating the same old shit and giving it a worse aftertaste as a result. If someone finally gave up on superhero films at large and pointed at this as the reason why, I’m not saying that I’d entirely agree with them… but I’d certainly understand where they’re coming from.
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