Black Adam is the only movie that is going in DC’s favor. However, because of all the controversies, people’s attention has been diverted from the latest DC flick. Well, to guide them in the right direction, Warner Bros. has been promoting the film with great heart. We got news regarding the film that Black Adam has added some extra post credit scenes. The film features Dwayne Johnson as the titular anti-hero and will showcase his origin story. DC wants this film to do well so when they eventually do make Shazam and Black Adam fight it’ll be a spectacle. However, I’m unsure what a solo film to a potential villain means. I mean if Black Adam chooses to be the destroyer of the world at the end of the film to make his villainous arc complete, that’s a bummer note to end a film on.
Or if they do the opposite where he chooses to be the survivor, why will Shazam and him fight? Shazam is clearly a hero figure. So that’s unclear to me. Black Adam is an adversary of Shazam portrayed by Zachary Levi in 2019’s Shazam. It is quite possible he makes a cameo in the film along with Henry Cavill’s Superman The film had its premiere last week and we’d gotten great first reactions but now that the embargo has lifted, a lot of critics have posted the reviews of the film and spoiler alert…they’re not super.
Black Adam Reviews Roundup: An Overhyped Misfire?
Black Adam was the saving grace for the DCEU and the amount of hype that the Rock and Warner Bros. was generating for the film seems to have fallen flat. It was a lot of time in the making but it feels like the final product that we’ve gotten has fallen short to fulfill the fans’ expectations. The first reactions of the film were great but as the embargo lifted, the real reviews came in and they ain’t pretty. The film has a dull Rotten Tomatoes rating (54%) but has a surprisingly high IMDb score of 7.6/10. Scores aside, let’s see what is the film’s specific problem.
Jake Cole
Slant Magazine
“The film has the courage of its convictions, suggesting that violence on behalf of an oppressed people isn’t only justifiable but even moral.”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Perri Nemiroff
Perri Nemiroff (YouTube)
“Black Adam’s got its highs and lows, but the lows are buoyed by charisma, vibrant set pieces, and the thrill of seeing the JSA in action.”
Original Score: 3.5/5
Jordan Hoffman
AV Club
“There’s not really much to stew on with Black Adam once you’ve left the theater, except to be somewhat amazed at how the story comments-but-doesn’t-comment on the actual political situation in the Middle East.”
Tim Grierson
Screen International
“The latest installment in the DC Extended Universe too often succumbs to the conventions of its genre, but some compelling performances and director Jaume Collet-Serra’s ebullient B-movie flourishes prove to be sufficient compensation.”
Eric Francisco
Inverse
“Ultimately, the needs of the DC Universe butt up against the overwhelming star power of Dwayne Johnson, and the film ends up losing many of the entertaining qualities it might have had.”
Jesse Hassenger
Houston Chronicle
“Johnson’s career has become so meticulously engineered and marketed that even his brooding, murderous DC antihero can only cause Teflon mayhem.”
Mark Kennedy
Associated Press
“Director Jaume Collet-Serra and the design team do a great job in every department but are let down by a derivative and baggy screenplay by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani that goes from one violent scene to another like a video game.”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Alonso Duralde
TheWrap
“The idea of introducing new heroes with powers first, origin later, seems appealing on paper, but knowing nothing about the Justice Society and its members doesn’t make them particularly interesting adversaries for our anti-hero protagonist.”
Clarisse Loughrey
Independent (UK)
“Whatever this new hierarchy of power is, it’s confusing as hell.”
Original Score: 1/5
Michael O’Sullivan
Washington Post
“Does the world need a hero, or someone less afraid to get their hands dirty?.. [That question] hangs over the CGI-heavy proceedings like a brooding shadow, cooling and darkening the overheated action just enough to make things interesting.”
Original Score: 2.5/5
David Fear
Rolling Stone
“Johnson is not the problem with Black Adam… The issue is with everything else happening onscreen around him. Even by the DCEU’s dodgy standards, it’s a mess in a cape.”
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian
“Droll, witty, and proportioned like the proverbial outdoor brick-built convenience, Johnson is well placed to realise the superhero movie’s potential as surrealist action comedy.”
Original Score: 3/5
Jason Bailey
The Playlist
“The the effects are phony and weightless, even for these sorts of things, and the stakes are non-existent.”
Original Score: D
Helen O’Hara
Empire Magazine
“Dwayne Johnson and director Jaume Collet-Serra attempt to offer a grand unified theory of DC, mixing family-film tropes with a protagonist who straight-up murders people. The result is sometimes a mess, but it’s a generally entertaining one.”
Original Score: 3/5
Brian Lowry
CNN.com
“After DC’s happy experience with the lighter-hearted Shazam, this drab addition to its universe merely underscores how hard it is to catch lightning once, much less twice.”
David Ehrlich
indieWire
“There isn’t a single character here that doesn’t feel like a cheap photocopy of one from Gotham or the MCU, not a single beat that doesn’t feel like it hasn’t been audience-tested within an inch of its life.”
Original Score: D+
Todd McCarthy
Deadline Hollywood Daily
“Johnson is the man. Unfortunately, such arguably worthwhile matters as narrative coherence, appealing characterizations and suspense struggle to emerge here amidst a veritable logjam of intentions and tones.”
Sandra Hall
Sydney Morning Herald
“I’ve always thought that Johnson’s charm was pretty well indestructible but whenever it looks like surfacing, a piece of flying hardware comes crashing down to extinguish it. There’s not much suspense either.”
Original Score: 2/5
Johnny Oleksinski
New York Post
“The Rock arrives with the power of a pebble in the new action movie Black Adam, in which the popular star plays the titular anti-hero in his first solo outing. It’s just as thoughtless and rancid as the rest of DC Comics’ crummy catalog.”
Original Score: 1/4
John DeFore
Hollywood Reporter
“This passion project serves the character well, setting him up for adventures one hopes will be less predictable than this one.”
Brian Truitt
USA Today
“This is Johnson’s baby, a film spotlighting a complicated antihero he has championed for years. It wins some battles and packs plenty of punch, yet it just can’t get past familiar tropes and flaws.”
Original Score: 2/4
Matt Singer
ScreenCrush
“Black Adam was a long time coming. And it wasn’t really worth the wait.”
Original Score: 4/10
Black Adam is helmed by Jungle Cruise’s Jaume Collett-Serra, and will star Dwayne the Rock Johnson in the lead role of Black Adam. The supporting cast includes Aldis Hodge (The Invisible Man, Underground) as Hawkman, Quintessa Swindell (Trinkets, Euphoria) as Cyclone, Noah Centineo (To All the Boys I Love Before, Charlie’s Angels) as Atom Smasher, and Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye, Mamma Mia!) as Doctor Fate, with Uli Latukefu, Marwan Kenzari, Mohammed Amer, James Cusati-Moyer, and Bodhi Sabongui have also been cast in currently unknown roles.
Black Adam will release in theatres near you on 21st October 2022.
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