Black Adam Movie
Feeling incapable of becoming a true hero, Adam surrenders and the Justice Society takes him to a secret underwater Task Force X black site in Antarctica, where Fate has a premonition of Hawkman's impending death. As the Justice Society returns to the city, they realize Ishmael intentionally provoked Adam to kill him while he wore the Crown just as Ishmael is reborn as Sabbac, the champion of the six eponymous demons and rises from the underworld to claim his throne.
Black Adam Movie
Adam Sztykiel was hired to write the screenplay for Black Adam in October 2017, with Johnson set to produce the film with Dany and Hiram Garcia of Seven Bucks Productions along with Beau Flynn of FlynnPictureCo.[48][49] At that time, there were plans for Johnson to first appear as Black Adam in the sequel to Suicide Squad (2016), which had Gavin O'Connor attached as writer and possible director. The intention was for the members of the Suicide Squad to be tracking a weapon of mass destruction which would be revealed as Black Adam in a small role for Johnson,[50] but these plans were abandoned when O'Connor left that film in 2018.[51] Sztykiel completed a draft of the script by April 2018, when Johnson said there was potential for filming to begin in 2019.[52] At the end of August, Sztykiel handed in another draft and further revisions were underway. Hiram Garcia said then that giving Shazam and Black Adam their own films was allowing the best movie for each character to be developed, and he added that their depiction of Black Adam was not going to be "softened up for audiences", explaining that he is "not the boy scout superhero, he's the guy that's like, okay, you cross him? Well, I rip your head off".[53] In December, Johnson said filming would not begin until the end of 2019 at the earliest due to his commitments to Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) and Red Notice (2021).[54]
Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani had written a new draft of the script by September,[11] when Aldis Hodge was cast as Hawkman.[11][12] Collet-Serra discussed his comparisons of the character of Dirty Harry with Johnson, saying "The systems were corrupt, so you had criminals taking advantage. You needed a cop that would cut through the bullshit and basically do what needed to be done. That's very much in line with Black Adam and his way of thinking. I think that's appealing to pretty much everybody. Everybody knows how the world sometimes is not fair, and you need people that break the rules to even out the playing field." Johnson remarked that "the Black in Black Adam refers to his soul", and described his worldview as "myopic", adding that for Adam, "There's no room or space for him being wrong. There's no room or space for anyone else's opinion. There's only room and space for him to justify anything that he does because of his pain. And he pushes and pushes and pushes and does not see any other way. It's very black and white."[62]
Johnson promoted the film at the virtual DC FanDome event in August 2020, revealing concept art and narrating an animated teaser for the film as well as announcing which members of the JSA would be appearing.[10] The film's new July 2022 release date was announced on March 28, 2021, with another teaser narrated by Johnson that was aired ahead of an NCAA Basketball Regional semifinal game and also announced during a "takeover" of New York's Times Square. Carly Lane at Collider described the Times Square event as thrilling,[96] while CNET's Mark Serrels said "booming it over a giant speaker in Times Square" was a "very cool way to announce a movie's release date".[97] The film was promoted at the 2021 DC FanDome in October, with Johnson revealing an opening scene for the film introducing himself as Black Adam. Tom Reimann of Collider was excited to finally see footage from the film after its long development history, and said "looks like Dwayne Johnson in a superhero movie, which is to say it looks awesome".[98] Both TheWrap's Ross A. Lincoln and The A.V. Club's William Hughes highlighted the short scene's violence,[99][100] while Matt Patches at Polygon compared the footage's tone to the Mummy franchise.[101]
In February 2022, more footage from the film was released as part of a showreel for Warner Bros.' 2022 slate of DC films, which also included The Batman, The Flash, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (before the last two were delayed to 2023 in March).[102][83] Johnson, Centineo, and Swindell promoted the film at Warner Bros.' CinemaCon panel in April 2022, where a teaser trailer was launched.[103] The first official trailer was released on June 8, featuring an orchestral remix of Kanye West and Jay-Z's song "Murder to Excellence" (2011).[104] Jennifer Bisset at CNET wrote that the trailer posed Black Adam as a character who "must choose between being a hero or villain -- and it looks like he takes the darker path, judging by his take on the question of whether heroes kill people".[105] Both Maggie Lovvit from Collider and Charles Pulliam-Moore from The Verge also noted Adam's brutality in the trailer. Pulliam-Moore felt that the death of Adam's son "radicalizes him and emboldens him to use his newfound powers to seek a kind of justice so brutal that those around him are forced to lock him away". Lovvit opined that Adam's morality exists "within the grey area between black and white" and was excited at seeing the character's future in the DCEU.[106][107] Writing for IGN, Rosie Knight also felt that it showed Adam's "tragic" backstory, speculating that it could take inspiration from the New 52 iteration of the character, and that it would determine his future actions.[108] Collet-Serra and the cast promoted the film in the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con and revealed exclusive footage for the film.[34] Scottie Andrew of CNN compared the footage to that of Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), calling it "somehow even moodier".[109] Charles Pulliam-More from The Verge felt the footage depicted Adam as a villain rather than an antihero, noting how the Justice Society of America (JSA) "seem much more keen on stopping him than trying to recruit him to their ranks."[110] Similarly, Pete Volk of Polygon also highlighted Adam's confrontation with the JSA.[111] Germain Lussier of Gizmodo praised the action sequences in the trailer, calling it an "action-packed little sizzle".[112]
Even so, Black Adam seems perfectly content to pick over the wilted remains of the superhero-movie salad bar. Its wry, goateed wizard Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan) plays like warmed-over wry, goateed wizard Dr. Strange. Its gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Atom-Smasher (Noah Centineo) can't help but remind us of gee-shucks, hero-worshipping giant Ant-Man. Its magical element Eternium feels like something scribbled on the whiteboard at the naming session where they brainstormed Vibranium. And the nerdy kid who eagerly advises Black Adam about his powers and catchphrases (Bodhi Sabongui) owes so much to the nerdy kid who eagerly advised Zachary Levi's character about his powers and catchphrases that it's gotta be an intentional attempt at parallelism. Right?
You'd think, in a movie that featured so many of the kind of super-powered confrontations that most films like this shunt to the third act, we'd be mercifully spared the climactic clash in which the hero fights an evil version of themselves.
"Watching an action movie shouldn't feel like a chore, but 'Black Adam' does," wrote Kristy Puchko in her review of the film for Mashable. "Amid a slew of publicly damned decisions, Warner Bros. has released a DC Extended Universe movie that is more exhausting than exciting, spooling out tedious exposition alongside ugly action for a muddled mess of a movie that squanders its big budget and the promising star power of Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge and Noah Centineo."
"They team up to fight what might be the single-most forgettable villain in comic book movie history, which is a wild thing to say about a giant hell demon with a pentagram scar across its entire chest," Ehrlich wrote.
The movie begins in ancient times in the mythical country of Kahndaq with the tyrannical king Ahk-Ton creating the Crown of Sabbac to gain power. The king is then killed by Teth-Adam, who was given the powers of Shazam by the Council of Wizards.
The movie then jumps to present day, where Teth-Adam is still hailed as a hero, but Kahndaq is now oppressed by the Australian militant group Intergang. Teth-Adam is released from his tomb after 5,000 years by archaeologist and resistance fighter Adrianna Tomaz, who has just obtained the Crown of Sabbac to keep it from getting into the wrong hands. As Teth-Adam slaughters a group of Intergang members, US government official Amanda Walker deems him a threat and contacts the Justice Society members Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone, and Atom Smasher to apprehend him.
Both the plot and the title of Black Adam immediately draw associations with Black Panther, especially considering that Black Adam is currently in theaters alongside the second Black Panther movie. Black Adam centers around two characters from a made up country in the global south, one character vying for control of the throne, while the other character is hailed as a hero and attempts to restore balance. Sound familiar?
Superhero movies, along with horror movies, are particularly interesting because they tend to be reflective of a fear or hardship facing society when the movie was released. The first Superman movie, for example, was released in 1978 and presented Clark Kent as a shining representation for an ideal America and as a beacon of hope for Americans dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and increasing unemployment and inflation.
Parents need to know that Black Adam is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie, and a spin-off from Shazam!. Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it ultimately becomes a dull smash-and-bash-fest without much time for character development or anything else. Expect large-scale action violence, with explosions/destruction, guns and shooting, and lots of fighting. Many characters (including women and children) are killed, sometimes in gruesome -- though bloodless -- ways: electrocution, stabbing, etc. Language includes occasional use of "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "piss," "damn," and "hell." There's a bit of flirting, and several posters and toys depicting other DC characters are shown in a boy's room. 041b061a72