Black Adam

I’ve heard this called a passion project and a vanity project for Dwayne Johnson, and I think both are wrong. Both carry with them implications; a vanity project is an ego-driven piece of media that serves more to puff up the creator, while a passion project is something the artist cares very much about and feels is important to put into the world. This shows signs of neither. Dwayne Johnson couldn’t be less passionate in this movie, and there’s no sign of passion in the movie to be found in any single frame. It is a rote, joyless, mechanical recitation of 2000’s and MCU Phase 1 cliches. Not a moment is spent in this movie where he, or for that matter the rest of the cast, does anything but barf up exposition, or engage in CGI-laden battles, and it all feels like a cliff notes version of the Snyderverse. Conversely, there’s no way this is a vanity project, because Dwayne doesn’t come out of this looking good. I’ve seen Dwayne play the stoic badass before, from The Rundown to Walking Tall and plenty more, and he can still draw from his bottomless well of charisma and ooze charm. Not here. He is not even bland, because bland is still something. He is devoid of anything. His stoicism comes off as dull, his anger comes off as petulance, his attempts at humor fall flatter than the 12:50 sketch on SNL, and he is so OP, you never feel like he’s in any danger, so there’s no sympathy. There is no possible way THIS is the movie Dwayne wanted to make for fifteen years. It’s like saying your dream vacation is a grocery store. If this is what he’s been working towards, it raises so many questions. Questions I don’t think we want the answer to. You’ve seen Black Adam before. Probably ten timesZ Literally nothing about it is new. You’ll watch it, finish it, and forget it. It’s big, loud, noisy, and completely bankrupt of anything interesting. There are so many questions to ask about this movie — why Dwayne loved this character, why his charisma is missing, the DCEU drama — but none of them require seeing it.