The justice society does not agree with him.
But there is a generic Big Bad to fight.
Will the Rock and these other people join forces?
It is my understanding that when big movies need extra jokes, they will get a group of comedians together to riff over sections of the movie to find lines that will work.
I was reminded of that process throughout this airless, joyless slog whenever one of the characters would (try to) drop a one liner.
This movie is the breaking point for the Rock as a movie star.
At least that is my hope.
When Dwayne Johnson first got into movies, he was a joy. A bolt of charisma who lit up every scene he was in.
And in those early years, he had a go at a bunch of different roles. It felt like he was trying. It felt like he wanted to be a movie star and an actor.
About ten years ago, Johnson finally began to have hits of his own - and he changed.
Perhaps it was the nature of those hits - sequels like Fast Five and Journey 2; weird IP like Rampage.
There was a sneaking conservatism to these choices and a sense of calcification to Johnson’s persona.
Where previously it felt like Johnson could make fun of himself and show vulnerability, now it feels like he is just muscles and under armour.
The scales were lifted from my eyes with Hobbs and Shaw, and this movie only highlighted how limited Johnson has become.
Black Adam treats its central character as the most important character in the DC universe, as well as the funniest and the coolest.
The movie never really starts - it is just exposition dump after exposition dump.
While the primary setting - the fictional Middle Eastern state of Khandaq - is refreshing, the movie never grounds is in that world.
When Black Adam appears the movie starts moving at a gallop.
There is barely an attempt at a fish-out-of-water arc - Black Adam shows no disorientation or real surprise at how much the world has changed. He also immediately knows English.
The movie wants to juxtapose Black Adam’s Old Testament method of punishment against contemporary ideas of superheroes not killing, but the movie is too weighted on Adam’s side to make it funny.
The Justice Society constantly come across as incompetent.
The team also feel wedged in - there is a gracelessness to the way the characters are introduced and I spent the movie vaguely impatient with them.
It felt like another attempt at fast-tracking universe building, and is about as successful as previous attempts at DC.
This movie feels closer to the worst aspects of Marvel - when every character and plot point feels geared toward setting up other stories. This means nothing of consequence will take place and there are no stakes.
The cast also feel stuck in slivers of characters, with no chance to give them any dimension.
Sarah Shahi, Bodhi Sabongui and Mohammed Amer are fine actors, but they feel like non-playable characters in a videogame.
And after managing to inject Aladdin with a spark of menace, Marwan Kenzari is completely anonymous as the villain.
It is depressing because the movie this one is tied to - 2019’s Shazam - features a genuine ensemble and keeps one foot grounded in the ordinary lives of those characters.
Aldis Hodge is stuck in one mode as Hawkman and Pierce Brosnan is playing a super-powered character who is solely compelling because Brosnan is a movie star. Neither of them is bad - they just feel hostage to the checklist which is the script.
Supporting heroes Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and Atom Smasher (Noah Gregory Centineo) are the comic relief and the film’s vague maybe-romance subplot. Of course their bond is sketched in a few lines scattered over two hours so you will have to wait for their own spin-off adventure - if anyone cares.
Black Adam’s character never feels real - when we cut back to his past, Johnson’s digitally smaller physique was distracting.
It is never terrible - it is just bland and devoid of personality.
There was a small part of me that hoped this would be another Venom - a villain to a more popular character getting their own weird vehicle - but there is nothing here to match Tom Hardy’s performance or the romcom dynamic between its central characters.
It is a bigger disappointment because the director of this film is Jaume Collet-Serra, a filmmaker who made his bones on fun genre movies like Orphan and the Liam Neeson movies which are not Taken.
Here it feels like the movie has been made by an algorithm.
There are two separate set pieces where Black Adam destroys armies to classic rock tunes. It feels like the filmmakers (or Johnson) watched Thor Ragnarok and wanted to do the same thing.
The one vaguely interesting aspect of the film is its Middle Eastern setting but the attempts at a critique of western interventionism feels half-baked.
There are moments where the film almost makes a point, like when the Justice Society arrive in Khandaq and end up causing more destruction than Black Adam.
But after endless combat, it starts to feel less like an ironic comment and the filmmakers did not care enough about highlighting the ordinary people caught in the middle of the super battles.
A better movie would have focused more on Khandaq and the community so that their eventual uprising would have some gravitas - it is an interesting idea but feels unfinished.
Johnson has spoken in the past about running for office and all of his recent moves - on and offscreen feel like he is trying to present himself in the best four quadrant way possible.
If Johnson wants to be president, he should declare now so we don’t have to pay for his brand expansion.
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