Movie Review--Black Adam

"Teth-Adam.  We know who you are and what you are capable of.  There's no place for you in the world of man.  You have two choices: kneel or die."

--Doctor Fate, Black Adam

"Heroes don't kill people."

--Hawkman, Black Adam

Fucking Warner Bros. has yet another incredibly mixed misfire on its hands.  Somehow, after having years and years of time to shape Black Adam, they only have a film that at best is aggressively mixed to show for it.  Attempting far too much in one approximately two hour movie to do everything justice, Black Adam is at its worst an assembly line of utterly stupid dialogue, characters who never should have been included at all (my god, the kid gives some of the worst acting in the whole film all singlehandedly), conflicting tones, idiotic comedy, and characters who all betray their own inaccurate or assumed philosophical stances while the movie treats them as if they are not.  Almost every character is a hypocrite, and not in minor ways.  Alongside this, almost none of the characters are developed beyond the bare minimum to put them onscreen.  

Wonder Woman, Zack Snyder's Justice League, The Suicide Squad, Man of Steel, the extended edition of Batman v Superman, and even Shazam! itself, which Black Adam is somewhat a spin-off of, are largely excellent in their own ways in spite of Warner Bros.  Black Adam takes elements from almost all of these movies without including the thoroughness and consistency that makes them superior films.  At its best, nevertheless, it manages to have a great visual style, some very promising secondary characters, and, finally, a soundtrack that is distinctive and once again showcases one area where the DCEU has regularly overshadowed Marvel.

Production Values

One of the only things that Black Adam consistently gets right is its aesthetic: not even the effects, but the aesthetic itself.  The almost Zack Snyder-esque appearance of the characters and setting is by far one of the better creative choices made despite the CGI not always matching it (more will be addressed on that below with certain characters).  Much moreso than the effects, the dialogue and characterization suffers intensely, as the film rushes between very serious but often stunted scenes to some of the most asinine comedy in any DCEU film thus far.  This humor is not as constant as it is in some MCU movies, but it is almost never fitting or earned.  The Suicide Squad, which is even more politically philosophical than Black Adam, had humor that was clever in the comedic handling of just how stupid the characters were being, and Black Adam does not even come close to achieving this.  Dwayne Johnson at least did not burden his character with a relentless string of jokes, having a mostly grave demeanor the whole time.  His Black Adam looks very much like a worthy opponent of Shazam even if Dwayne Johnson is idiotically unwilling to have his character fight him.

Lacking the same spotlight that Black Adam receives, very few of the secondary characters are not almost totally wasted.  Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge of The Invisible Man) are very well acted and have great costumes, even if the CGI in the suits is sometimes fairly apparent.  They are also somehow among the most developed of the characters besides Black Adam himself, and they still were not particularly developed.  A better movie would have focused more on them and perhaps completely omitted the likes of Cyclone, Atom Smasher, and Amon Tomaz--yes, this character, the son of Sarah Shahi's Adrianna Tomez, is an egregious cinematic abomination with almost no redeeming qualities at all.  His out of place skateboarding and totally inept narration and "rallying" speech were atrocious things to include!  A different sort of cinematic abomination, but still a terrible character for lack of genuine development, the villain Sabbac is almost entirely gratuitous, horribly animated, and once again an example of how the general DCEU squanders opportunities for better worldbuilding.  Sarah Shahi does alright with the script she is given, but there is nothing incredible about the character herself with or without her.  She remains the strongest presence besides Doctor Fate and Hawkman simply because of her performance.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Around 2600 BC/BCE, the Middle Eastern kingdom of Kahndaq is governed by an egoistic king who uses slave labor to unearth a material called eternium, which he hopes to use for a crown that will make its wearer a demonic champion.  The Council of Wizards gives a young boy the powers of Shazam as their champion of Kahndaq, and supposedly the hero was never seen after a battle with the king.  In the present era, a former professor searches for the crown with her brother so that it can be hidden from the organization called Intergang.  She says the name Shazam and awakens the warrior of Kahndaq out of desperation when she is taken captive in cavernous area, releasing the superhuman Teth-Adam, who finds that much about the city has changed since he last ventured about.  His casual brutality and killings quickly attract the attention of the Justice Society, operating under Amanda Waller of Suicide Squad leadership, whose members are unable to stop him.

Intellectual Content

As mentioned before, literally almost every character is a massive, irrationalistic hypocrite.  Is Adrianna fighting for Kahndaq because she thinks it is morally good to do so, or is she morally apathetic and only talks as if her cause is just when it is convenient?  Her words go back and forth.  The Justice Society is for some reason against killing people in almost all circumstances, but Doctor Fate's introductory message to Black Adam says he can kneel or die, meaning that if he is sincere, he was willing to do the very thing that he otherwise implies is evil in all situations.  Moreover, the Justice Society stands by when Adrianna later attacks two captured Intergang members for information, content to let her torture them with no indication as to what methods she would use.  Torture is objectively worse in many of its forms, no matter who it is inflicted on, than the mere casual, gleeful murder of anyone, for murder, and not all killing is murder no matter what Doctor Fate and Hawkman selectively claim at first, is in itself far less painful and cruel.

In fact, it is not inherently a sin of cruelty whatsoever, but one of arrogance, of thinking that one's whims make it so that whoever one wishes objectively deserves to die--or of not caring that one would be in the wrong for doing so.  Only cases of murder with prior abuse merit the most intense condemnations.  Most people are non-rationalists anyway, and it is not even logically possible for them to deserve to live in any ultimate sense.  It would only be immoral and thus irrational to kill them unless they have committed a specifically capital moral error.  Even Doctor Fate, though, eventually says that moral darkness can be good as long as it is pragmatically useful, articulating new contradictions in his worldview.  This is the same person who earlier states that he no longer believes in absolutes the way he once did, but he completely overlooks logical axioms and what follows from them, acting like the fact that future events are set up by prior events somehow means there are few or no absolute truths.  Logical truths are intrinsically true and could not have been any other way.  Only some future events are possible to begin with because anything that contradicts logical axioms is false by default.  This Doctor Fate is extraordinarily stupid for someone presented as philosophically perceptive!

Conclusion

Black Adam, like Suicide Squad, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman 1984 before it, is far from a good movie, but at least Aquaman and Wonder Woman 1984, as asinine as their blunders are, have positive aspects that are generally more focused than most of Black Adam.  It might reintroduce Henry Cavill's Superman into the DCEU, but Superman's second entrance from the Cavill is vastly outweighed by the incompetent, inconsistent filmmaking that Dwayne Johnson seems to be quite proud of.  If this is what the rest of the planned DCEU films would be like, then there is no point in continuing with this version of the DC cinematic universe/multiverse, for there is far less artistic brilliance left than its opposite.  For all of its faults, even the theatrical edition of Batman v Superman was deep, genuine, and very deliberately, carefully executed.  Black Adam is supposed to set up the titular character as an antagonist for Superman, when what it really does is take the spot of the second worst DCEU movie after the original Suicide Squad.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  For a PG-13 movie, there are some abnormally graphic or borderline graphic kills, including an early death where an Intergang soldier has his body reduced to bones onscreen by Black Adam's electrical powers.  There is still little to no blood or gore.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "bastards" or "shit" are sometimes used.