This article contains spoilers for Black Adam.By all accounts, Black Adam is shaping up to be the final nail in the coffin for the DC Extended Universe. Despite being hyped up as a game-changing epic by its star, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — particularly for its post-credits cameo by Henry Cavill’s Superman — it’s been confirmed neither Johnson nor Cavill will be reprising their roles following James Gunn’s takeover of DC Studios, making the whole film feel like a waste of time for everyone involved.
Black Adam has already been extensively criticized for everything from its bare-bones script to its dodgy visual effects to the Rock’s distinct lack of acting range. However, the film isn’t just subpar as a standalone work or an entry in a wider cinematic universe — it also falls short as a DC Comics adaptation. Because while the movie features plenty of characters who have been beloved by comic book fans for decades, it completely fails to capture any of the aspects that made them so engaging in the source material.
A Lighter Shade of Black
First and foremost, Black Adam isn’t a particularly faithful adaptation of its titular character. The basic premise is the same, certainly — he’s an ancient champion of Shazam who was imprisoned for his ruthless methods, and returns in modern times to become the defender of his homeland Kahndaq. However, the similarities between the Black Adam of the comics and his film counterpart don’t go much deeper than the surface. For starters, the Black Adam of the comics is known for being the king of Kahndaq, not just its protector. He’s a strict yet honorable ruler who is beloved by his people, but acts as a merciless symbol of fear to his enemies.
While he sometimes allies with the heroes of Earth against common enemies, Black Adam’s brutal pursuit of vengeance against any who would endanger his people has always caused him to walk the line between good and evil. In the Forever Evil storyline, he even formed a close friendship with Sinestro over their shared methods as rulers who use terror and brute force to maintain order. Despite his genuine love for the people of Kahndaq, Black Adam is still a merciless tyrant to his enemies. And while this moral ambiguity has made Black Adam a popular character in the comics, his film counterpart has little room for such complexity.
The Rock’s Black Adam constantly declares that he isn’t a hero, and is opposed by the Justice Society because he kills his enemies. But despite the attempt to portray him as an edgy anti-hero, Black Adam feels too tame to truly feel like a morally gray figure. While the comic Black Adam once started World War III out of revenge, the big-screen Black Adam only ever takes the lives of unambiguous villains. Indeed, despite the Justice Society’s protestations, the film’s story never seems to condemn Black Adam for his methods. In the end, he even rejects the opportunity to become king of Kahndaq — he feels more like a heroic revolutionary than the dark ruler of the comics.
Finally, there’s the matter of his nemesis. In the comics, Black Adam was created as a villainous foil for Billy Batson, better known these days as Shazam. After all, he’s a rogue champion himself, and still derives his strength from the power of Shazam. As such, it’s only natural that Black Adam would be the rival of the current Shazam. However, while Black Adam’s Shazam powers are indeed present in the movie version, Billy Batson is never even mentioned. It seems like the existence of a 21st century Shazam is the sort of thing that would be prevalent in this story, but it doesn’t come up once. Instead, Superman is hyped up as Black Adam’s future rival, despite the two barely ever interacting in the comics. This curious decision seems to be the result of Johnson’s attempt to hype up his character by engineering a confrontation between Black Adam and DC’s greatest hero. However, this cheap publicity stunt comes at the cost of both narrative cohesion and faithfulness to the source material.
Not-So-High Society
However, Black Adam himself isn’t the only character who’s done a disservice by this adaptation. There’s also the Justice Society, a team of heroes who make their DCEU debut in this film. In the comics, the Justice Society are the Golden Age precursors of the Justice League, initially presented as the League’s Earth-2 counterparts before the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot instead reinvented them as a WWII-era team within the main continuity. However, within the Black Adam movie, the Justice Society is given no backstory whatsoever. They’re introduced abruptly, having seemingly been operating for decades despite receiving no mention until now. Whatever connection they might have with the Justice League goes totally unexplained.
As for the individual members, none of them fare particularly well either. Hawkman has little in the way of personality, existing solely to serve as the by-the-book foil to Black Adam. Atom Smasher’s only contribution is comic relief, while Cyclone hardly offers anything to the film at all. Dr. Fate receives the best depiction, thanks in large part to the performance of Pierce Brosnan, but he still ends up killed off unceremoniously. And to make matters worse, none of these characters receive any meaningful backstory. Where Hawkman got his wings and mace, the nature of Dr. Fate’s helmet, when Atom Smasher’s uncle was active as a hero — these questions are never answered, leaving the audience to wonder exactly who all these people are and why they’re here.
The past decade has been a tumultuous one for the DC Extended Universe. Some recent films like The Batman, The Suicide Squad, and Shazam! have been well-received by fans for effectively capturing the appeal of the source material, while others have been far less popular. Hopefully in the new era to come for DC movies, other characters will receive more faithful big-screen adaptations than Black Adam and the Justice Society did here.