Black Adam: A Problem of Stakes
The Rock’s glowering antihero feels small, which is kind of the opposite of what they were going for.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
Let’s just get it out of the way: Black Adam is not a good movie. It’s not a good superhero movie, either, which is sometimes a separate distinction. It suffers from most of the sins of bad superhero movies: It’s an origin story, it begins with several minutes of excruciatingly dull exposition, it’s set in a vague and poorly-defined fictional country, and it tries to surprise the audience by withholding information, which is hack work1. Somehow it takes The Rock, easily one of the most preternaturally charming performers of the modern era (and also a man who apparently has to eat three entire chickens at every meal just to maintain his metabolism) and renders him into a scowling scold that no one could possibly like2.
All this is true, and Black Adam is awful. If anyone was surprised that this film did not generate record profits and establish The Rock as the newest swinging dick in superhero films, that person did not actually watch the film3. But! This is not what I’m here to talk about. Bad superhero films have existed for decades, and there will be many, many more—and they will all likely commit some version of these sins. These sins are commonplace and not worth dwelling on. No, I’m here to talk about the real problem with Black Adam, which could have been a mediocre film instead of a bad one. I’m here to talk about stakes.
English, Motherfucker! Do You Speak It?
Black Adam had a lot of potential. First and foremost, the potential to offer up one more superhero who doesn’t look like they shop at The Gap, but also the potential for a superhero anti-hero, which we need a lot more of. Most people, when blessed with superpowers, would be a bit ... conflicted, I think. The fact that so many superhero stories assume that the person in question will just immediately start fighting crime is kind of nuts, if you ask me: Most people would be robbing banks and recording themselves on Tik Tok, instantly becoming the most popular social media superstar of all time4. So the idea of Teth-Adam being a surly demigod (a demigod who instantly starts speaking modern English after being entombed for several thousand years because ... reasons5) with zero interest in anything beyond achieving justice and revenge in his home country could have been refreshing.
But there’s a trap there for writers, and by gum the folks who wrote Black Adam found it. The problem is that making Black Adam care about a pretty narrow range of issues removes most of the stakes from the film—he’s not concerned with justice or fighting off a threat to humanity, he’s mainly concerned with saving the life of a single boy. That’s certainly admirable, sure, but it kind of feels like a waste of his immense powers—I mean, this is a guy who can do just about anything. He could, you know, save a single kid and do a whole bunch of other stuff6.
The stakes issue is exacerbated by the production, which feels ... small for a movie that cost somewhere between $200-250 million to make7. The city in Kahndaq often feels like it has a population of about 50. The oppressive Intergang (LOL)8 mercenary army simply vanishes from the film halfway through (sure, Black Adam kicked their asses, but they literally disappear from the story as if they’d never existed). And there’re a lot of sequences with Black Adam simply ... floating about, with The Rock putting on his best “thoughtful” expression9. It’s a curiously empty world, and that sense of smallness is definitely exacerbated by the setting: Kahndaq never comes alive as a real place in the way other fictional countries—like, say, Wakanda—do in other films. It feels like a set, especially when about a dozen people populate the big scene where the country rises up in rebellion against their new king and the demonic forces he unleashes on them10.
Look, we’re all suffering from Late Stage Capitalism, but sometimes you just gotta say: You spent $200 million and this movie looks like you had to call in favors to fill out the cast.
My Magic Helmet
11Stakes also come into play in the central conflict, which falls into the old trap of having your antagonist be nothing more than a mirror image of your protagonist. Black Adam gained his powers from the Egyptian gods when his son transferred them to him after opposing the evil despotic King Ahk-Ton, and in the modern day Ahk-Ton’s descendant seeks the Crown of Sabbac in order to gain powers from the six demons of Sabbac, essentially becoming Black Adam’s equal (although he transforms into a fiery demon creature while The Rock still looks like a very grumpy body builder, again for ... reasons)12.
This is an incredibly common problem in superhero movies. Having your antagonist and protagonist not only equally strong but also nearly identical in terms of abilities reduces the final confrontation into a slugfest and drags the stakes down to a simple contest of who can punch the hardest and the fastest. At this point, it’s no longer a superhero narrative but just two huge dudes trading punches in an airless CGI universe where no one can actually be hurt in any substantive way, and it gets boring fast13.
In other words, this film took the largest human being currently alive and somehow built a film around him that feels microscopic. Black Adam’s victory means very little in terms of the course of fictional history, and it’s kind of telling that the most exciting moment in the film comes at the very end when Superman shows up14. This is exciting not because Superman is such a better character, but mainly because it actually brings the outside world into the story for precisely four seconds, offering a glimpse of what some real stakes would mean for the character.
If I could become a god simply by shouting Shazam! in public places15, have no doubt I would also disdain doors and simply float/crash through walls at all times like some sort of boozy Kool Aid Man16. In fact, I’d be pretty happy if that was my sole superpower, if I’m being honest.
Next week: The cromulent joys of The Last of Us
Also, The Rock wears exactly one facial expression in this film and it might as well be called Constipated Level Midnight.
I lifted weights, once. That’s it. That’s the footnote.
And we are all jealous of that person. I mean, this movie ain’t Morbius, but then no other movie is Morbius. Morbius stands alone.
This is my plan, and frankly has been since I was 7 years old. Time to go microwave my head again in hopes of gaining superpowers.
Because English is so damn consistent and logical it’s easy to learn!
The fact that superheroes essentially have magic powers and yet spend most of their time punching each other is he great failure of imagination of our generation.
One assumes a lot of this money was dedicated to supplying roasted chickens to The Rock.
Look, I know a lot of these details come from the comics, but for fuck’s sake, INTERGANG?
See footnote 1.
Demons running amok? New King looks like a classic devil with pentagram on his chest? Superheroes just spent an energetic 45 minutes destroying your city with their power punches? The best these people can do, apparently, is mild irritation.
I don’t know if anyone under the age of 40 gets the “Magic Helmet” reference. I also don’t know if I care.
It’s possible these reasons make sense in the comics, but that doesn’t count: Your film is its own thing, and you have to justify your storytelling decisions within the narrative.
It’s very similar to my college years, when my friends and I would so inebriated we could feel nothing and would set up Fight Clubs in our basement. I’m still having dental work done as a result.
Henry Cavill, we hardly knew ye.
Save yourself the trouble: I have tried, and all it got me was some jail time.
Does anyone under the age of 40 get that reference any more? Don’t answer that, because once again I do not care.
'The New Swinging Dicks' was the name of my band in college. '40s revival, that sort of thing.
Last night, I watched about five seconds of this movie on mute by accident. Pierce Brosnan said something, put on an unrealistically shiny gold helmet, and disappeared in a cloud of sparkles.
I changed the channel.