Black
Adam
IMDb Rating
310K
IMDb Votes
39%
Rotten Tomatoes
$393M
Box Office
Synopsis & Review
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Black Adam (2022) is the passion project Dwayne Johnson spent 15 years building toward — a film he fought to greenlight, fought to control, and fought to make on his own terms. Set in the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Kahndaq, the film begins thousands of years in the past, when a slave named Teth-Adam was granted the powers of the Egyptian gods — strength, speed, flight, invulnerability, and the ability to channel lightning — after his son sacrificed himself to stop a tyrannical king seeking the Crown of Sabbac, a mystical artefact that grants its wearer demonic power. In the present day, archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) uncovers the Crown in the ruins of Kahndaq and inadvertently awakens Teth-Adam (Johnson) from his millennia-long imprisonment. But Adrianna's excavation attracts the attention of Intergang, a mercenary organisation that has occupied and exploited Kahndaq for years — and when Adam is unleashed, he dispenses justice with a brutal, unsparing ferocity that kills rather than merely defeats. Alarmed by this new meta-human threat, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) deploys the Justice Society of America — Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) — to neutralise Adam before the Crown of Sabbac is used to unleash an ancient demon upon the world.
Black Adam is a film at war with itself — and that internal tension is both its most interesting quality and its most significant limitation. Johnson conceived the character as a dark, morally complex antihero, a figure who exists outside the hero-villain binary and operates according to his own brutal code. The film delivers on that promise in stretches: when Adam is simply unleashed — flying through mercenaries, channelling lightning, staring down the Justice Society with the calm certainty of a man who has never encountered anything he could not destroy — the film achieves a genuine mythological scale that the DCEU rarely managed. Johnson's physicality and the conviction he brings to Adam's ancient weariness and rage are the film's strongest assets. But the screenplay frequently retreats from darkness into the safe territory of quippy superhero formula, and the film's actual plot — stop a demon, save a country — is a functional chassis rather than a compelling story. The Justice Society members, particularly Brosnan's elegant, melancholy Doctor Fate, offer more interesting character work than the mechanics of the plot allow them to fully explore. The mid-credits arrival of Henry Cavill's Superman — choreographed by Johnson as a franchise-launching moment — was ultimately rendered moot by DC's subsequent creative overhaul under James Gunn and Peter Safran. Black Adam is the film Johnson always dreamed of making; it was just unlucky enough to arrive at precisely the wrong moment in DC's turbulent history.
Why Watch This Movie?
Johnson's Most Physically Committed Performance
Teth-Adam is unlike any role Johnson had previously played — a character with no comedy, no warmth, and no interest in being liked. Johnson spent years preparing for the physical transformation the role required and worked with Collet-Serra to develop a movement vocabulary for Adam that felt genuinely inhuman: slower than you'd expect, deliberate, with a brooding stillness that communicates absolute confidence in his own power. When Adam finally speaks — sparsely, deliberately — the weight behind each line carries the accumulated gravity of five millennia. It is Johnson's most restrained and perhaps most disciplined screen performance.
Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate — A Career Highlight
In a film full of impressive visual spectacle, the most quietly extraordinary element is Pierce Brosnan's performance as Kent Nelson, Doctor Fate. Brosnan plays him as a man who has seen too much — a sorcerer who can perceive all possible futures and has made peace with what that knowledge costs. The role gives Brosnan, too often reduced to suave surface in his post-Bond career, genuine emotional depth and a heroic arc of real sacrifice. His final sequence is the most genuinely moving moment in the film, and Brosnan plays it with a grace and dignity that deserved a longer franchise to inhabit.
The Action Sequences Are Among the DCEU's Best
Collet-Serra, who cut his teeth on tightly choreographed action-thrillers, brings a kinetic clarity to Black Adam's set-pieces that the DCEU frequently lacked under Zack Snyder's more operatic aesthetic. The Kahndaq street battle — Adam's first full unleashing against Intergang mercenaries — is a genuinely thrilling piece of superhero action, shot with enough spatial clarity to make Adam's power feel tangible and terrifying rather than abstractly digital. The JSA vs. Adam confrontation sequences are similarly well-staged, and the film's finale, whatever its narrative shortcomings, delivers the large-scale mythological spectacle the premise demands.
Cast & Crew
Director
Jaume Collet-Serra
Screenplay
Adam Sztykiel / Rory Haines
Producer
Dwayne Johnson / Hiram Garcia
Black Adam / Teth-Adam
Dwayne Johnson
Hawkman
Aldis Hodge
Doctor Fate
Pierce Brosnan
Atom Smasher
Noah Centineo
Adrianna Tomaz
Sarah Shahi
Amanda Waller
Viola Davis
Official Trailer
© Warner Bros. Pictures. Trailer embedded via YouTube.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Black Adam a hero or a villain in DC Comics?
Black Adam occupies a deliberately ambiguous position in DC Comics — he has functioned as a villain, an antihero, and occasionally a reluctant ally across different storylines and eras. Created by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck in 1945 as a straightforward Shazam villain, Adam was substantially reimagined by writer Geoff Johns in the mid-2000s as a morally complex figure whose methods are brutal but whose motivations — protecting Kahndaq, avenging the innocent — are not without justice. Johns' run in particular, including the 52 weekly series and the Black Reign storyline, transformed Adam into one of DC's most compelling grey-area characters. The film draws heavily from this Johns-era characterisation.
Why did Henry Cavill's Superman cameo matter — and what happened to it?
The mid-credits scene in which Henry Cavill appeared as Superman — his first appearance as the character since Justice League (2017) — was intended as the opening move in a Johnson-engineered confrontation between Black Adam and Superman that would anchor DC's next phase. Johnson had orchestrated Cavill's return to the role in parallel with Black Adam's production, and the cameo generated enormous excitement at the time of release. However, Warner Bros. Discovery's appointment of James Gunn and Peter Safran as DC Studios co-chiefs in late 2022 led to a full creative overhaul of the DC Extended Universe. Cavill was subsequently released from the Superman role entirely, and plans for a Black Adam-Superman confrontation were abandoned. Johnson's Black Adam is currently on indefinite hiatus within the new DC framework.
How much did Black Adam make at the box office?
Black Adam grossed approximately $393 million worldwide against a production budget of around $195 million — a result that was considered disappointing relative to both its budget and the expectations Johnson's involvement generated. The film opened to $67 million domestically in its first weekend, which was strong but not the franchise-launching statement Warner Bros. had hoped for. International performance was similarly solid without being exceptional. The film's financial underperformance, combined with the simultaneous DC creative transition, effectively ended its planned sequel and Johnson's aspirations for a Black Adam franchise within the DCEU as it existed at the time.
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