Contributor Enrico Versace: BLACK ADAM and the Justice Society

I think this film, and the comicbook fan’s response to it, tells us that we’ve come to a point now where we’ve seen so many superhero films, that it almost doesn’t matter what happens on screen. Allow me to explain. Critics praised a product like She-Hulk for going outside the box on how it wrote and presented a superhero character; bringing it out of its genre and giving it new elements, like the ones of a sitcom. Not to mention, let it embrace new ideas about how women should be perceived on screen. And fans didn’t really respond that well.

Meanwhile, you have BLACK ADAM, which finally gave Dwayne Johnson a chance at being a superhero, something for which his career trajectory was destined. The director Jaume Collet-Serra and writers Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani decided to take a very traditional route within the superhero film genre, especially for Warner Brothers. Dark tones, god-like beings, and an emphasis on what it means to be a hero and have responsibility. It also took it’s 200 million budget to focused on the slo-mo action sequences and CGI rather than character development. It almost felt like a Fast and Furious movie, except oddly enough, I always finish those films with the feeling that I spent enough time with the characters. Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve made it this far without assuming I’m just another film critic – I do think Black Adam overall was fun and very entertaining.

However, the characters of the Justice Society don’t stand out all too well. Yes, you could say they’re simply another rendition of the Justice League or the Avengers, but that’s not what I’m talking about necessarily. This DC film had a big challenge, introducing a new team of four characters, enough to where most people would like them. They tried this with Batman V. Superman when they forced half of it to be a prequel for Justice League (2017), the tried it again in either Suicide Squad film, and you could say that in Black Adam, the studio’s nearly perfected it. Except this time, DC is aware of the success of the MCU: Avengers Endgame, Doctor Stranger, Ant-Man, Falcon, Scarlet Witch or rather what Fox 20th Century did with Jean Grey, and doesn’t try to do too much of anything original with Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom-Smasher (Noah Centineo), Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell). It’s almost like the studio said to themselves, Marvel/Disney have already done the work to conditioned the general audience to certain elements of the genre; has already created characters where if this is their power, then this is their attributes, their personality, how they look, if they have a cape or fly, if they shrink they need to be funny, what challenges they may be facing in their heads or what they may have faced before, how they got their powers, etc. The writers of this film looked at the outer shell of these four DC characters and treated them as almost literal copies of familiar superheros, knowing they didn’t have to do much to make us understand or even like them.

It’s easy, for instance, to make a sorcerer someone who wears a cape and has a beard or is aged. Now, that may be who Dr. Fate actually is in the comics and in the comics there may be very clear things that separate him from Doctor Strange, but those differences don’t show up on screen,where it’s needed. The Justice Society in this film are no more than caricatures of characters we’ve already seen before, this is why we need time with characters, we need something to present itself in front of them and then they have a reaction to it that’s different from any other character we’ve seen on screen. Their reaction or the actor’s performance creates an identity, and the more unique or different it is, the more interesting. But sadly, that is not what we received from the characters in Black Adam.

Hawkman is an Egyptian in the comics, he’s been reincarnated several times and has or is looking for his Egyptian mistress Hawkgirl. They’re destinies are tied to villains like Vandal Savage, it’s all very elaborate. Yet, here Aldis Hodge may be one of the many reincarnations of Hawkman’s original Egyptian persona, but it’s highly unlikely, he just feels like Marvel’s Falcon, or even more generic, since Falcon has his Air Force experience and buddy-buddy charisma that sets him apart from just a man with wings. Regardless, almost nothing sets this version of Hawkman apart.

Then you have Atom-Smasher who feels like a mashup of Ant-Man and Deadpool. Or Cyclone, that could have been the most unique character. The typical moviegoers doesn’t know anything about antibodies, but all of what that could have been is just summarized in one or a few lines of dialogue.

And to top it all off, the clichés of a comicbook film are very present. The Justice Society live in a mansion where their futuristic fighter jet comes out of the backyard garden, you have Black Adam moving so fast, everything is in slow motion for him and he can change the position of things or make a guy hurt himself with 70s or 80s music in the background like Quicksilver. Marvel has recently been trying to set their movies apart from what we’re familiar with, and whether or not it’s been working with audiences, at least they’re trying. Well you could say that this film did one thing a little differently, it showed a dark, antihero and made one question what does justice and being a hero mean; not everyone has to be a boy scout like Superman. Plus, the film has social commentary on occupying a country that isn’t yours, but is it needed? Do we need social commentary in this particular film on what happened in places like Afghanistan? This movie could have been simpler, yet at the same time, more complex. However, Black Adam has successfully done its job: It has won over  enough comicbook fans, and did well enough at the Box Office. It proved that it didn’t need to do very much at all.

See other Contributions from Enrico Versace –
THE ETERNALS  THE FUTURE OF SPIDER-MAN MORBIUS

My name is Enrico Versace. I graduated from Rowan University with a bachelor’s degree in Writing Arts. I have a personal blog where I’ve written more analyses like this about movies, art, horror, and Star Wars. I wasn’t always a writer though fun fact. I used to be into architecture and built with Legos from when I was a kid to after high school. You can find my blog posts at wrtversacee4.wordpress.com. And my social torusbrusk1138 on Instagram.