Let’s keep it short and sweet: Black Adam (dir. Jaume Collet-Serra) is a really fun movie. I’m certain by now, unless you live under a rock (pun intended), that you’ve seen promotional advertisements for the film. Perhaps you’re even aware of the terrible critical reception the film has received in advance of its full-release. As of Friday, October 21, 2022, the film has an aggregated Metacritic score of 40% (based on 38 reviews). Whether Black Adam is ultimately deemed a box-office success (yielding an adequate profit for its investors) has yet to be seen (though projections suggest it’s off to a decent start). Still, however financially successful (or not), it’s safe to say the film is a critical failure.
There’s already so much discourse around Hollywood’s love affair with the blockbuster superhero picture and I’ll try not to indulge much of it here. Rather, I’m curious about this all too common phenomenon often described by an ex as “don’t yuck my yum”. How could critics be so blind to what seems so obvious to me and others? How could they yuck my yum?"
I enjoyed the movie. Not only that, my family really loved the film (perhaps more than I—who fell asleep for a bit) and left that theater feeling full and satisfied. By what? By the spectacle. And here’s where audiences and critics part ways. The critic has a job to do. They are to review the work according to a standard. Often, for a well-informed and cultured critic, this means approaching that work as one would any piece of art in the medium. Does the work push the genre forward? Does it subvert expectation? Does it illustrate some profound knowledge of the human experience? It’s a critic’s job to be honest about these things and, frankly, Black Adam does none of the above. You can’t fault the typical critic for calling it like they see it.
The audience wants to see action! Adventure! WRESTLING! And plenty of it. They don’t wanna see a guy wrestling with his soul...well, alright, a little bit for the critics...but you make it the carrot that wags the dog...too much of it, they head for the exits, I don’t blame em! There’s plenty of poetry right inside that ring, Fink!
—Jack Lipnick (played by Michael Lerner) in Barton Fink
Maybe you’ve seen the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink, the story of an idealistic playwright (based on Clifford Odets) contracted by a Hollywood studio to write a b-movie wrestling script. Poor Barton can’t seem to wrap his head around the basic formula the studio requires for its basic product (the film). He wants to do more! He wants to elevate the script to something more literary! Ultimately, he does too much. That’s part of his (and our) critical failing.
To treat what is inherently spectacle as high art is to have missed the point completely. High art, if we’re being honest, requires a kind of literacy, a familiarity with the aesthetic history and continuity that situates a particular piece in time and space. The spectacle, on the other hand, requires no literacy. Anyone can appreciate the spectacle—like pulling over on the shoulder of a highway to watch fireworks in the distance or see the sun as it sets. You don’t need prior knowledge to appreciate the spectacular. And Black Adam was spectacular.
Was it the greatest spectacle in film history? Not by a long shot. But it was, after all, a wrestling picture starring a wrestler. Duh! What the duck did you think this movie was going to be about? A man wrestling with his soul? Well, alright, there’s a little in there for the critics…But only just enough.
The character of Black Adam was created in 1945 by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck for Fawcett Comics. Originally written as a foil to Shazam/Captain Marvel, after DC acquired Fawcett in the 70s, Black Adam would gradually become more of a lawful neutral anti-hero.
Like Pacino’s 2010 performance of Shylock in Daniel Sullivan’s The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare in the Park), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson imbues the conventionally sinister character of Black Adam with just enough pathos to make him a compelling sort of hero.
But no, per critical film-acting standards, the Rock’s performance isn’t revolutionary. He does what he did best as a wrestler—he gets you to trust him as a face, one you’re happy to root for, one whose dynamism and strength (inner and outer) you believe can vanquish the foe. Part and parcel of his performance in such a role is his capacity to be a commanding presence, one that boldly takes up space and artfully dissects and directs others within the frame he’s determined. This he undoubtedly learned from his father and mentors in the world of wrestling.
But how, with so little dialogue, and action sequences that are more digital than they are feats of physical prowess (he’s 50 years old btw), did he manage to get me hooked? Three good reasons:
First, I have to cite his awesome supporting cast. Pierce Brosnan (as Doctor Fate), Aldis Hodge (as Hawkman), and Sarah Shahi (as Adrianna Tomaz) each offer as good a performance as any (considering the campiness of their dialogue). When we’re not gawking at Black Adam’s power, we’re happy to witness any of his unwitting mates assert their own authority.
Second, the fictional setting of the film is as much responsible for our investment in Black Adam as was his backstory or performance. Kahndaq, the ancient country he’s said to have come from, is a vaguely orientalizing mashup of Arabic nations occupied by a mercenary force. In the most whitewashed, least conspiratorial reading of this, we’re dealing with an occupied territory. And while Adrianna and her son offer us glimpses into Kahndaq’s grassroots resistance, the masses seem to hope for and wait on a salvific hero to liberate them. While such ideas have probably done more harm to grassroots movements than they have helped, it’s nevertheless a compelling fantasy for those of us who come from occupied territories. The fantasy of the strong-man, the liberator, or, as Lê Thi Diem Thúy beautifully put it, The Gangster We Are All Looking For.
Finally, it is the spectacle of it all that evokes so much of a kind of basal arousal. What the filmmakers were able to do, again, was not somehow beyond what we’ve come to expect in film. Rather, it’s so well curated, a pastiche of visual cues, icons, and language culled from a variety of sources: chief among them, I’d say, is the Wagnerian maximalism of twenty-tweens Kanye West. Featured in the film is not only his hit song Power, but also a visual vocabulary (and foreboding drama) akin to its accompanying music video.
I remember when I first saw West’s music video thinking that it had all the refinement and elegance of a sweaty Ed Hardy t-shirt abandoned in a molly-fueled rave-factory. It’s that kind of spectacle you can’t help but have an opinion about.
Black Adam doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s def rollin’. It doesn’t overstate its intentions or the various motives of its larger than life characters. Black Adam, and films like it, remind us that there’s plenty of poetry in the ring.