#MovieReview: Black Adam a corporately managed mishap

Black Adam is a near two-hour TikTok video, with any attempts at a plot cut into bite-sized, internet-shareable clips.

This is truly a movie for the next generation and will likely land with pre-teens who are excited by the quick editing, but for anyone else it is a difficult watch devoid of any real entertainment.

It is the newest entrant into the DC Comics extended cinematic universe, with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson playing the titular antihero.

Given the complete dominance that superhero movies currently have in popular culture, one can understand how a C-level comic book character gets his own movie.

With Johnson in the centre of the poster, it will almost definitely make buckets of money too.

But it is clear that Johnson is intent on maintaining his sanitised, family-friendly image, and Black Adam – the movie and the character – take no risks to ensure a PG-13 rating that excludes no audience member.

It also lifts wholesale portions of its script from the past 15 years of superhero outings.

From a bargain-bin Doctor Strange, to echoes of Tomb Raider, the X-Men movies and everything Marvel, this is a shell of a movie with no heart.

At some point, audiences are going to have to vote with their wallets or these movies are going to keep getting made until the last cent has been wrung from them.

Mild spoilers to follow

Black Adam takes place in Kahndaq, a fictional city somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East.

Once a powerful civilisation run by a tyrant in 2 600BC, the modern-day city is under siege by mysterious, faceless and soulless baddies, The Intergang.

The Intergang have taken up residence to loot ancient and powerful artefacts, but soon come up against Black Adam, a thousands-year-old slave who led a revolt before becoming entombed for being too powerful.

Black Adam half-heartedly tries to comment on imperialism and whitewashing, but has no problem casting the Polynesian-American heritaged Johnson as Middle-Eastern.

The film progresses through CGI-laden set pieces, where Black Adam is barely scratched, before waiting until its credits sequence to set up future capers with Superman.

If Black Adam makes good money, as it almost certainly will, then you can expect to see another ‘gang gets together’ DC movie soon.

2/5.

Rated PG-13.

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