Dwayne Johnson explains how his Black Adam director first inspired him when they were at work Jungle Cruise. DC’s Teth-Adam is finally making its way onto movie screens, with no less a movie eminence than The Rock taking the part. But interestingly, Black Adam won’t be taking on his frequent comic book nemesis Shazam this time around.
Instead of fighting Zachary Levi’s Billy Batson, Black Adam sees Johnson’s antihero emerge from thousands of years of captivity in the modern world, and face the Justice Society of America. This premise provides Black Adam the chance to introduce many new characters to the DCEU, including Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan). The film also features a new great evil in the form of the horned demon Sabbac (Marwan Kenzari).
Of course, every time The Rock is involved in a movie, it means that the hype level for that movie is going to be cranked up to the limit. When it comes to Black Adam However, Johnson had been hyped long before the movie even started filming. Exclusive to BADpi, the star revealed how Black Adam director Jaume Collet-Serra got him excited about the project while they were still working on their previous film Jungle Cruise. See Johnson’s comments in space below:
Jaume [Collet-Serra] had a vision of tone, temperament, pace and action. And he was hungry too, I noticed that on Jungle Cruise. And he had a hunger to disrupt and elevate and grow the DC universe. … He’s the one who came to me first, and he said, “Man, let’s create the Dirty Harry of superheroes, because that’s who Black Adam is. He doesn’t f–k, but he gives an f- -k about people he loves and wants to protect I loved our director, Jaume Collet-Serra And also, for me, what I had to do was, it was such a departure from anything I’ve seen in the past so he also helped me with the character.
How Black Adam differs from previous superhero movies
Black Adam differs immediately from other superhero films in the relative obscurity of the main character. But according to director Collet-Serra, not being famous like Superman or Batman actually gives Black Adam an edge in mystery factor and the freedom that comes with not having to deal with a familiar origin story. Indeed, Black Adam undermines the whole concept of a superhero origin according to Collet-Serra, who said in a recent interview that “a movie where you introduce Black Adam right away, and then through the movie you slowly peel off the onion and reveal what happened.”
But more than just going against the grain of standard superhero storytelling, Black Adam also promises to be a major outlier in terms of tone. Indeed, the Black Adam character is not bound by the same morality as Batman or Superman, and is willing to kill anyone who threatens him or anyone he loves. In Johnson’s own words, this makes Black Adam a sort of “Dirty Harry” of superheroes, a man who lives by his own code and has no qualms about resorting to murder in the name of protecting the innocent.
Indeed, all signs point to Black Adam be a unique experience among modern superhero movies. It’s no surprise that Johnson is incredibly excited to bring this unusual and mysterious character to the big screen, as Johnson is always incredibly excited about everything, all the time. Whether the audience eventually falls in love Black Adam as much as Johnson of course remains to be seen.
