There is something perversely cheering about the DC Extended Universe’s ramshackle approach. Whereas competitors at Marvel look to have an intricately planned schedule of well-oiled releases that takes us from now until sometime after your great grandchildren will have died, the DC slate is increasingly taken up with borderline-demented adventures in overpriced chaos. Woo-hoo!
Astonishingly, Black Adam does seem to have once had ambitions to say something big and important about the world. But any parallel with current unhappiness is drawn and then quickly dropped like the truly scalding potato it is
What is this thing? The enormous screeds of voiceover suggest efforts have been made to make sense of Black Adam for viewers unfamiliar with whatever comic that character comes from. They talk us through the antihero’s incarceration in an ancient city called Kahndaq (no, it’s not a new stock exchange) several millennia ago. We learn that he is returning to our present in the welcome form of Dwayne Johnson.
Viola Davis appears on a screen to explain the makeup of some variation on the Justice League of America called the Justice Society of America. “F**k off! Judean People’s Front? We’re the People’s Front of Judea!” nobody actually says. We are, however, told that young Al Rothstein (Noah Centineo) is “nephew to the original Atom Smasher”. All of which is very grown-up.
Astonishingly, the picture does seem to have once had ambitions to say something big and important about the world. The middle-eastern citizens of Kahndaq (down two points since opening) are now suffering under military occupation. When Black Adam offers super-violent resistance, he is schooled in restraint by members of the Justice Society of America. “No more extrajudicial killings,” he is told during one of many baffling pursuits. The parallel with current unhappiness is drawn and is then quickly dropped like the truly scalding potato it is.
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Nothing exemplifies the randomness better than a sudden, entirely pointless explosion of computer graphics to the rhythms of Kanye West’s Power. It’s as if the producers suddenly realised they needed to confirm they were hip to popular beats of the first Obama term. Now do a joke about Jay Leno leaving late-night TV.
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Rendered in the sort of chalky CGI that confuses the eye when too many objects move too quickly, Black Adam does, at least, prove itself open to heart-warming diversity. The nonbinary actor Quintessa Swindell makes the weather as Cyclone. The Iranian-American Sarah Shahi is charismatic as a resistance fighter. They even find space for an older gentleman from Navan. I am not entirely sure what Pierce Brosnan is up to as Doctor Fate, but he seemed to have great fun doing it. None of us would begrudge him that.
On general release from Friday, October 21st
