The amount of self-control Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson exhibits in Black Adam is extraordinary. Not once does he turn his head and arch his eyebrow. It boggles the mind.
Of course, the Rock began his career in entertainment as a professional wrestler, and that history serves him well in Black Adam. The latest superhero movie isn’t an action movie exactly. It’s more of a “pose movie.” That’s a term I’m making up here for lack of something better. The actors in this film barely move. They mostly stand and pose. Even in fight scenes, the connecting action is edited out in favor of the moment of impact between two characters (or walls or tanks or helicopter blades). Then we get subtly moving tableaus – motion graphics, really – with the actors posed amidst chaos. It’s the superhero movie equivalent of the guy standing arms raised on the pylon preparing to leap onto his opponent and then cut to the two men bouncing off the mat the moment after impact. The Rock is a perfect model for this kind of visual conceit, all flex and grimace.
Do we lose something by never seeing the connecting action? By focusing on the impact but not the athletic rise and gravity-graced fall? Maybe, but who cares? We get the Rock glowering, snapping like lightning between adversaries, making mince meat of his foes. Black Adam feels unstoppable, a metaphor, maybe, for the Rock’s domination of the blockbuster box office, a victory march that has finally, after all these years, included superhero cinema in its parade.
The story… eh. It hardly matters, and the film cuts out logic and narrative progression like it removes the movements between high impact moments. Don’t think about the narrative at all. Just let it blast you like the heat from an explosion at a theme park stunt show.
The only part of the story that does matter is the repeated idea that Black Adam is an antihero for a group of people who have long been subjugated by superpowers (the civic variety) strip mining their country for a rare mineral. Think the Middle East. It’s a sly twist on Watchmen’s great question, “What if there was a man with god-like powers and he was American?” Black Adam nods at the same question but makes it, “What if he wasn’t American?” It doesn’t really do a lot with it though. It saves it for the sequels, I guess. These movies always promise to do more interesting things in their sequels and only rarely do.
I like the question, because I like remembering that the real God isn’t American either. The kingdom of God knows no border, no country, no culture. The God we know who came as Jesus would never come again as a superhero, but if he did, he wouldn’t wave any nation’s flag. Some of us wouldn’t even recognize him as a hero at all. We didn’t the first time.
Look at that. I just did more with that idea than Black Adam does. That last paragraph was like me turning my head and arching my eyebrow. I think I can see now why the Rock held off in Black Adam. You didn’t come here for a lesson. You came here to watch the Rock make things go boom. Go boom they do.
The amount of self-control Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson exhibits in Black Adam is extraordinary. Not once does he turn his head and arch his eyebrow. It boggles the mind.
Of course, the Rock began his career in entertainment as a professional wrestler, and that history serves him well in Black Adam. The latest superhero movie isn’t an action movie exactly. It’s more of a “pose movie.” That’s a term I’m making up here for lack of something better. The actors in this film barely move. They mostly stand and pose. Even in fight scenes, the connecting action is edited out in favor of the moment of impact between two characters (or walls or tanks or helicopter blades). Then we get subtly moving tableaus – motion graphics, really – with the actors posed amidst chaos. It’s the superhero movie equivalent of the guy standing arms raised on the pylon preparing to leap onto his opponent and then cut to the two men bouncing off the mat the moment after impact. The Rock is a perfect model for this kind of visual conceit, all flex and grimace.
Do we lose something by never seeing the connecting action? By focusing on the impact but not the athletic rise and gravity-graced fall? Maybe, but who cares? We get the Rock glowering, snapping like lightning between adversaries, making mince meat of his foes. Black Adam feels unstoppable, a metaphor, maybe, for the Rock’s domination of the blockbuster box office, a victory march that has finally, after all these years, included superhero cinema in its parade.
The story… eh. It hardly matters, and the film cuts out logic and narrative progression like it removes the movements between high impact moments. Don’t think about the narrative at all. Just let it blast you like the heat from an explosion at a theme park stunt show.
The only part of the story that does matter is the repeated idea that Black Adam is an antihero for a group of people who have long been subjugated by superpowers (the civic variety) strip mining their country for a rare mineral. Think the Middle East. It’s a sly twist on Watchmen’s great question, “What if there was a man with god-like powers and he was American?” Black Adam nods at the same question but makes it, “What if he wasn’t American?” It doesn’t really do a lot with it though. It saves it for the sequels, I guess. These movies always promise to do more interesting things in their sequels and only rarely do.
I like the question, because I like remembering that the real God isn’t American either. The kingdom of God knows no border, no country, no culture. The God we know who came as Jesus would never come again as a superhero, but if he did, he wouldn’t wave any nation’s flag. Some of us wouldn’t even recognize him as a hero at all. We didn’t the first time.
Look at that. I just did more with that idea than Black Adam does. That last paragraph was like me turning my head and arching my eyebrow. I think I can see now why the Rock held off in Black Adam. You didn’t come here for a lesson. You came here to watch the Rock make things go boom. Go boom they do.
Elijah Davidson is Co-Director of Brehm Film and Senior Film Critic. Subscribe to Come & See, his weekly newsletter that guides you through the greatest films ever made, and find more of his work at elijahdavidson.com.
We keep telling this story because we long for our relationships with out parents to be right.
