Black Adam Review

The structural failure is simple. Black Adam is introduced as unstoppable, is unstoppable throughout, and ends unstoppable, so every set piece is a demonstration rather than a contest, and the film compensates with slow motion so constant that it stops registering as emphasis. Dwayne Johnson plays him with one expression, which might have worked as deadpan comedy and instead reads as an actor protecting his brand. The Justice Society is the best idea here and it is squandered.

Pierce Brosnan's Doctor Fate has genuine gravity and the film treats him as a plot mechanism; Aldis Hodge's Hawkman is given an argument about state sanctioned violence that would have been the whole movie in better hands; Atom Smasher and Cyclone exist for scale. The fictional country of Kahndaq is set up as an occupied nation and then used purely as rubble. The finale is a horned demon made of orange light in a pit, which is the default ending of this genre and no better here. The end credits promise a rematch that never came.