Black Adam

The Static Thunder of a God

There is a peculiar tragedy inherent in *Black Adam*, though not necessarily the one intended by its script. Released into the dying breaths of a cinematic universe that was already being dismantled, the film stands less as a narrative breakthrough and more as a monument to sheer, unyielding will—specifically that of its star, Dwayne Johnson. For over a decade, we were promised a shift in the "hierarchy of power," a phrase that became a marketing mantra. Yet, what Director Jaume Collet-Serra delivers is not a revolution of the superhero genre, but a brutalist piece of architecture: massive, loud, and imposing, yet curiously hollow, echoing with the sounds of a battle fought for a kingdom that no longer exists.



Visually, Collet-Serra—known for taut thrillers like *The Shallows*—attempts to bring a mythical weight to the proceedings. He films Johnson not as a man, but as a geological formation, a statue of granite and gold that occasionally moves. The aesthetic is steeped in a sepia-toned gloom, heavily reliant on speed-ramping techniques that slow time to a crawl, allowing us to fetishize the destruction. When Teth-Adam obliterates a mercenary or intercepts a rocket, the camera lingers with a painterly obsession. However, this visual language often traps the film in a uncanny valley of weightlessness. The violence is sanitized yet relentless; bodies disintegrate into dust rather than bleed, turning the act of killing into a bloodless digital ballet. It is a spectacle that demands we look at it, yet offers very little for the eye to actually hold onto.



The narrative heart of the film attempts to beat with a rhythm of anti-imperialism. The fictional nation of Kahndaq is under the boot of foreign occupiers (Intergang), and the Justice Society of America (JSA) arrives not to liberate the people, but to jail their champion. This creates a fascinating, albeit undercooked, friction. Pierce Brosnan, lending a weary gravitas to Doctor Fate, represents the old guard of moral absolutism, while Adam represents the jagged edge of retribution. The film posits an interesting question: Is a monster justified if he is *our* monster? Yet, the script is too timid to fully embrace the horror of Black Adam’s rage. Johnson plays the character with a stoic monotony, stripping away the manic vulnerability that makes a fallen angel compelling. He is an unstoppable force who rarely seems burdened by his own immortality, making it difficult to find the human pulse beneath the lightning bolt.



In the end, *Black Adam* serves as a fascinating artifact of the modern blockbuster era's identity crisis. It struggles between being a gritty deconstruction of heroism and a standard, crowd-pleasing vehicle for its star. It yearns to be *Dirty Harry* with superpowers, but it is constrained by the safety rails of a four-quadrant tentpole. We are left with a film that generates an immense amount of energy and noise, a lightning storm of visual effects and grand posturing, but one that fails to strike the ground and start a fire. It is thunder without the rain—loud, impressive, and ultimately, fleeting.