Earlier this month, legendary comic book writer Alan Moore – the man behind such greats as Watchmen and V for Vendetta – made headlines by saying that the popularity of superhero movies among adults could be a “precursor to fascism”. The statement was deemed a tad hyperbolic even by those sympathetic to his utter exhaustion with the genre. But the worldview of Black Adam, the latest chapter in the ailing DC Extended Universe, actually poses a heap of problematic questions along those lines.
The film follows Dwayne Johnson’s eponymous antihero as he rises to become unelected ruler of a fictional Middle Eastern nation called Kahndaq, where he wields absolute power and brutally murders anyone who dares oppose him. This narrative could work as the origin of a super villain (which Black Adam generally has been in the source material), but that’s not what we get here. Despite the character’s repeated claims to the contrary, he is very much painted as the “hero” of this story.
We’re supposed to whoop and cheer as he ruthlessly dispatches any and all adversaries in excruciating slow motion, whether by hurling their puny bodies hundreds of feet into the air or simply zapping them until a charred skeleton is all that remains. The script’s flimsy moral debates – largely held between Black Adam and Justice Society leader Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) – do little to meaningfully challenge these condemnable actions.
Rather, most conversations between them quickly devolve into yet more violence, with both characters stuck in a perpetual state of squaring up as they vie to prove who has the most testosterone coursing through their body. Of course, Black Adam wins that battle as he does every other with relative ease. But it’s a truly embarrassing display of performative masculinity, in which the antihero becomes a kind of übermensch figure for lesser subjects to bow down before.
Watching Dwayne Johnson tear through waves upon waves of enemies in this film also brings to mind the alleged contract he had in place for Fast & Furious: Hobbs and Shaw. According to The Wall Street Journal, it dictated the number of physical blows that could be landed on Johnson’s character, while also specifying that he could never be seen on screen to ‘lose’ a fight. That obsessive focus on appearing near-invulnerably tough certainly carries over to this project, but does it no favours at all.
Unsurprisingly, repetitive sequences of The Rock smugly eliminating his foes are less fun to watch than presumably they were for him to film. There’s not a moment of tension across the two hours as Black Adam continuously reminds us no one is strong enough to stand against him. It might have been interesting to try developing the character by having a formidable opponent come along and shatter this outlook, but the film doesn’t bother to do that – the half-baked main villain poses no real threat.
As a result, Black Adam is just a story about a big scary man that terrorises his way to the top. The themes are so overtly autocratic that a token gesture has to be shoehorned into the final scene to make it all appear less disturbing.
If audiences receive this character as Warner Bros seemingly hopes, with the same level of idolisation as kid sidekick and Bart Simpson wannabe Amon Tomaz (Bodhi Sabongui), then what does that really say about what we look for in our leaders?
Black Adam is out now in UK cinemas. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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