Black Adam

I expected nothing from this movie after hearing some pretty bad reviews, and ended up liking this more than I expected to. To be clear, this movie is downright mediocre and I’m only giving it a 4, but I thought this was going to be as bad as a lot of the other DC entries (I’m looking at you Justice League).

The acting is not great, but Pierce Brosnan manages to make his character Dr. Fate stand out from a pretty lame lineup of superheroes. Aldis Hodge tries his best as Hawkman, but the script really did him some major disservice as most of his lines are just meant to explain the plot, no matter how irrational it may be. Dwayne Johnson has a much smaller role than one might expect, as he just listens to the real main characters, Amon and Adrianna talk incessantly.

The characters are bad. The boy, Amon, spends most of his lines making jokes about what superheroes are supposed to be like, and the rest in unsuccessfully motivating speeches. His uncle is just a constant stream of failed attempts at jokes, as is one of the superheroes, Atom Smasher. There is another superhero introduced, Cyclone, who has no lines and does nothing. The main villain at least explains that he wants to be a demon to make his country great again, which is a huge improvement for DC! It’s a bad motive, but at least it’s a motive.

The story feels over explained, mainly because the writers want some conflict between Black Adam and Hawkman so they have the same conversation over, and over, and over again.

Regardless, I didn’t hate the entire thing. There were scenes I enjoyed individually, even if I can’t remember them five minutes after finishing the movie. I wouldn’t recommend this movie, but there are worse ones out there.