Black Adam (2022)

This movie isn’t terrible, but it was a bit lackluster in my opinion. Visually, there were a lot of amazing moments, while other moments look like the CG was made 15 years ago. The story is fine and the characters are decent. The Justice Society was actually a fun group of characters. There were a couple of humorous moments that made me laugh. The problem with the movie overall is it felt very blah, and felt like it was playing superhero movie bingo. It even had the classic giant beam in the sky that everyone loves in their movies. All that being said, this was also the movie that made me strongly dislike the Rock. I’m not saying the Rock is a bad person. The press around him and his ego, both before and after this film came out, was just infuriating. He plays the same character in every movie: The masculine guy with quippy one-liners that gets the badass moments sprinkled in all of his fights. He leans so heavily on his charisma, that he doesn’t know how to be him without it. Everything is all about drive and when he fails, he can’t accept it. There were so many reports about him trying to make Black Adam look like more of a success than it was. There were reports saying he essentially was too good for Shazam! and only wanted to play with the big boys like Superman. The Rock is faltering in my opinion. He will always be a go-to action guy, but at this point, I’ll only watch his movies based on the story rather than just his name alone. Okay, I think I’ve ranted enough about the Rock. All in all, this is a fine action movie, but besides a few get visual shots, it doesn’t do anything special. It’s average fair in the superhero genre.

Story - 14%

Characters - 15%

Pacing - 17%

Spectacle - 16%

Entertainment - 15%

Total score: 77%

Grade scale:

90%-100% = must watch

80%-89% = solid, but could be better

70%-79% = Not terrible, watch if the characters or story interests you

60%-69% = only watch for completionist reasons

0%-59% = just skip it, I find the positives and they don't exist here