geezer cinema: black adam (jaume collet-serra, 2022)

Should I be embarrassed if I found Black Adam disappointing? That implies that I was looking forward to it, which I was (and which isn't the same as thinking it would be a good movie). And I was looking forward to it, because while The Rock's movies aren't always good, he is fun to watch.

Well, Black Adam sucked. And one reason is that Dwayne Johnson was wasted. He doesn't smile until the final scene. He buries himself in a one-note performance ... not sure who to blame, not sure who had the idea to take one of our most charismatic actors and turn him into an all-powerful blank. He kicks ass, sure, although I was unimpressed in general with the big action scenes, which were mostly just The Rock throwing people a mile away so they could smash against something and die.

And then there's the problem of the DC Comics universe. I'm not the audience for this stuff ... I barely care about most of the Marvel characters, and I'm even less interested in DC. But if you asked, I could name some DC characters. They are not in this movie. Instead, we get Hawkman and Atom Smasher and Cyclone and Dr. Fate, and I'm sorry, but who are these characters again? Aficionados know them, but if you want the rest of us to lock into your series, you need to toss us a little Batman or Superman once in a while. Maybe this contributed to the fact that Black Adam made almost $400 million at the box office but was considered a flop. I've seen 8 Dwayne Johnson movies, liked about half of them. Black Adam is the worst of the bunch.