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Black Adam was the second film DH and I attended during his week off. Honestly, I wasn't planning on seeing it until I found out Viola Davis, Aldis Hodge, and Pierce Brosnan were in it. Sorry, but Dwayne Johnson is not the end-all, be-all for me. Beyond GK's childhood favorites that Johnson appeared in, it's usually his co-stars who attract me to the movie.
Then there's the fact that DCEU is trying to remake Black Adam into an anti-hero. It's a little hard to wrap my head around. I had the same problem with Joaquin Phoenix's Joker (a movie I still haven't seen despite my love of the DC Universe).
*** SPOILERS ***
PROS
1) The introduction of the Justice Society of America!
2) Aldis Hodge was pitch-perfect as the Golden Age Carter Hall/Hawkman.
3) Same for Pierce Brosnan's Golden Age Kent Nelson/Doctor Fate.
4) Henry Winkler's cameo as the Golden Age Atom was hysterical!
5) The kids playing Cyclone and Atom Smasher were adorable. And the movie stuck with their Golden Age orgins, even though they made Atom Smasher the grandson of the Atom instead of his godson.
6) You can never go wrong with an appearance of Amanda Waller!
7) Don't miss a certain mid-credit cameo!
CONS
1) The convuluted backstory of how this version of Black Adam got his powers. Can we do an origin story where a man's wife and kid aren't fridged as motivation?
2) I wished there was more backstory of the JSA within the movie. Instead of being treated as an early vversion of the JLA, they were tools of Amanda Waller.
3) Dwayne Johnson smoldering is not acting.
Overall, I give Black Adam a solid 7 stars out of 10.
I'm looking forward to seeing this, but I was kind of anticipating that it'd be a cluttered sludge of story, what with having to introduce a bunch of characters most movie-goers have never heard of, a superhero team most movie-goers have never heard of, and a main hero (or antihero, whatever) most movie-goers have never heard of, plus whatever the actual plotline of the movie is. DC did this with the JLA movie, and apparently didn't learn the key lesson from that. [sigh]
ReplyDeleteStill want to see this movie, though, 'cause the cast looks good. And I do like Johnson. :)
Angie
I'm glad they didn't put Black Adam into a Shazam movie as they originally planned. Those have been established as more of family comedies.
DeleteWB/DC is relying on Johnson's bankablilty to pull them out of the financial whole the are in rather than put someone else in charge because Zack Snyder ain't cutting it.
Warner Bros. movie division in regard to DC IP has been a flustercuck from the beginning because everything is handled by committee with people who have no respect for the source material. When Henry Cavill is telling them they're screwing up Superman, it's bad.
And then the stumbled across this article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/james-gunn-proves-wb-finally-learned-a-big-snyder-cut-lesson/ar-AA14bzUJ?cvid=d10408b943d5486ab6a9e4d3273ad81c
ReplyDeleteYeah, I saw a mention of how Black Adam was part of the Shazam-verse and all, and I was, "Wait, WTF??" I loved the Shazam movie, it was wonderfully fun, and what's-his-name did a great job playing a teenager suddenly in an adult body. But the movie was clearly a light comedy, and the idea of trying to add Black Adam to that vibe is just crazy. :/
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article link. It's good to know someone sane is at the helm now. The DCEU people have so obviously suffered from a serious case of bitter, resentful envy of the Marvel franchise, but seemed to have not the first clue of how to do something similar with the DC properties. Which... serioulsy? Dudes, you own some of the most popular comic characters in the world! How do you mess up that badly, over and over? o_O Hopefully Gunn can set them straight.
Angie