Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has spent 15 years developing his superhero film “Black Adam” which finally hits theaters on Friday, and based on the reviews, critics found the superhero film “underwhelming,” “super messy” and “baffling.”
In his review of the film, TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde wrote, “That task is the capture of an exceedingly powerful ancient metahuman known as Teth Adam (Dwayne Johnson), and despite the movie’s best efforts to jazz up the increasingly predictable superhero genre — this one doesn’t care if he kills people — “Black Adam” feels like both too much and not enough, and none of its narrative gambits are helped by a sludgy visual style that’s either distractingly artificial or dispiritingly gloomy, except when it manages to be both.”
Johnson produces and stars in “Black Adam,” which is his live-action entry into the DC universe and reunites him with “Jungle Cruise” director Jaume Collet-Serra. The film also stars Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi, Noah Centineo and Aldis Hodge as members of the Justice Society.
Eric Eisenberg from Cinemablend wrote in his review, “Black Adam is more mediocre than bad, but that’s perhaps worse in a pop culture landscape that will be quick to forget about it as audiences’ attentions drift to the next superhero blockbuster. Even Dwayne Johnson seems ready to move on, as the biggest hype he has generated for the release has been about it setting the table for the future. Given the number of years this project was in development, and how it was promoted to shift the balance of power in the DC Universe, it’s disappointing that the end result is so unremarkable.”
Gizmodo’s Germain Lussier wrote in his review, “Black Adam is filled with intended emotional threads but most of it gets lost in the explosions. Everything is rushed, half-explained, glossed over, and as a result, a movie that’s generally fun to watch ends up feeling super messy.”
Johnson is known to be both charming and super charismatic, however Uproxx’s Mike Ryan wrote in his review, “For the life of me I will never understand why anyone would make a superhero movie with, perhaps, the most charismatic action star working today and decide, hey, what if we took away all that charisma? It’s truly baffling.”
Critic David Enrlich from IndieWire in his review wrote, “The question that “Black Adam” poses is a simple one: What happens when Hollywood’s most risk-averse movie star collides with Hollywood’s most risk-averse movie genre? The answer provided by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s depressingly inevitable (and inevitably depressing) foray into the superhero-industrial complex is, of course, even simpler: Exactly what you’d expect. Only worse.”
CNN’s Brian Lowry in his review wrote, “There’s simply no getting around the clunkiness of the dialogue, or the sense “Black Adam” overestimates the character’s appeal. Even a sequence during the closing credits hinting at a more dynamic follow-up doesn’t do as much as it should to fuel an appetite for an encore.”
“Black Adam” opens in theaters on Oct. 21.