Black Adam -

The problem arises when the film introduces its foils: the Justice Society of America (JSA). Led by Aldis Hodge’s noble Hawkman and Pierce Brosnan’s soulful Doctor Fate, the JSA arrives to “contain” Black Adam. They argue for collateral damage, due process, and the sanctity of life. In a more daring film, this would be the start of a genuine ideological war. Is Black Adam’s bloody revolution just, or is he simply a new tyrant waiting to happen? Unfortunately, the script lacks the courage to explore this gray area. To make the JSA sympathetic, the narrative contrives a larger, unambiguous evil—the demonic crown of Sabbac—that both parties must unite to defeat. The thorny political questions about occupation, resistance, and justified violence are shoved aside for a third-act sky-beam battle against a fire-breathing CGI monster.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s long-gestating passion project, Black Adam (2022), arrived in theaters burdened by nearly two decades of hype and the promise of “changing the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe.” As a spectacle, the film delivers on its primary promise: raw, destructive power. Black Adam (Teth-Adam) is a force of nature, dispatching armies of heavily armed mercenaries with a flick of his wrist and a crackle of magical lightning. However, beneath the slow-motion carnage and CGI battles lies a film wrestling with a genuinely provocative question: what does a liberator look like in a world where super-powered beings are expected to be benevolent guardians? Ultimately, Black Adam is a fascinating failure—a film too timid to fully embrace its own morally complex premise, settling instead for the safe, familiar rhythms of a traditional superhero origin story. Black Adam

Furthermore, the film suffers from a lack of compelling human stakes. The citizens of Kahndaq are a faceless mass, a prop to justify Adam’s anger rather than characters whose liberation we feel. The lone exception is a young boy, Amon, who acts as a cheerleader for the hero. But Amon exists not to challenge Adam, but to admire him. The film misses a crucial opportunity to show the messy aftermath of liberation—the power vacuums, the revenge killings, the fear of a new strongman. Instead, it offers a simplistic equation: oppression + violent hero = freedom. The problem arises when the film introduces its

This pivot is the film’s fatal flaw. By creating a literal, non-negotiable villain, Black Adam absolves itself of the very tension it worked so hard to build. The JSA’s concerns about Black Adam’s methods are never truly tested or resolved; they are simply rendered irrelevant by a greater threat. When the dust settles, Black Adam has not evolved his philosophy. He hasn’t learned that sometimes restraint is better than rage. Instead, he has been validated. He killed his way to a solution, and the narrative rewards him by having the JSA shake his hand. The film tries to have it both ways—to market an anti-hero who breaks the rules while ensuring that those rules are broken only in a context (fighting a demon) that no reasonable person would object to. It is the cinematic equivalent of a rebel who only jaywalks when the street is empty. In a more daring film, this would be

The film’s greatest strength is its initial setup. Unlike the boy-scout idealism of Superman or the brooding restraint of Batman, Black Adam is introduced as a killer. When he is resurrected in the fictional nation of Kahndaq, his response to a room full of hostile soldiers is immediate, brutal, and fatal. This is not an accident or a tragic necessity; it is his instinct. The narrative wisely does not apologize for this. Johnson plays the character with a stoic, simmering rage, a man who watched his family be destroyed by tyranny and has no patience for the procedural ethics of modern heroes. For the first act, the film poses a compelling ethical dilemma: is a violent revolutionary preferable to a gentle occupier? The citizens of Kahndaq, oppressed by the criminal cartel Intergang, certainly seem to think so. They hail Black Adam as a messiah, not in spite of his violence, but because of it.