It’s been a long time in gestation, with Dwayne Johnson signing on to play the title role way back in 2014, but the moment has finally arrived: Black Adam is in cinemas now.
For those who came in late, Black Adam is a spin-off from the wildly successful Shazam! of 2019. Originally a villain in the old comics, these days Adam is more of a super-powerful antihero (albeit one not averse to a bit of a genocidal rampage when his blood is up). 5000 years ago Teth Adam, as he was then known, was the ruler of the ancient city of Kahndaq and was possessed of more or less the same set of powers as Captain Marvel.
Magically imprisoned due to his propensity for terminal justice, he was released in the modern age, where his rather brutal eye-for-an-eye views frequently put him at odds with your more cut-and-dried superheroes.
Which is more or less the plot of the new film, which comes to us courtesy of The Shallows and Orphan director Jaume Collet-Serra. But rather than butting heads with the more familiar heroes of the Justice League, Black Adam finds himself on the outs with the older and less familiar Justice Society of America, who first debuted on the page way back in 1940. Thus we get Pierce Brosnan as the magically powered Doctor Fate, Aldis Hodge as the winged warrior Hawkman, Noah Centineo as the size-shifting Atom Smasher, and Quintessa Swindell as the wind-manipulating Cyclone.
But the big draw here is, of course, Dwayne Johnson. Cinema’s premiere action man has bided his time until finally dipping his toe into the four-colour world of superheroes, which makes Black Adam a landmark event. It’s a dour soul indeed who can’t enjoy the sight of The Rock literally throwing bad guys over the horizon, so unless that sounds like you, get along to your local multiplex ASAP.
