'Black Adam,' 'Midnight Club' hit their targets

‘Black Adam’ has uncompromising commentary

Kirk Boxleitner | Oct 27, 20220

Courtesy photo count

Dwayne Johnson is a living weapon of mass destruction in "Black Adam."

"Black Adam" is a dark and explicitly political film with unlikely origins, since the ancient Teth-Adam began as an antagonist to magically empowered child hero Billy Batson in the relatively sunny and inoffensive "Shazam" mythos but evolved over time from a villain into the would-be liberator of the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq.

Dwayne Johnson portrays Teth-Adam as a slave under Kahndaq's original tyrant king, during the dawn of civilization millennia ago, whose wizard-derived powers enabled him to overthrow his people's oppressors, but also effectively entombed him until he was uncovered by those seeking another mystical treasure, the demonic Crown of Sabbac.

Teth-Adam reawakens to find a crime syndicate called Intergang running his country to help outsiders drain it of its oil and other resources, including the potent mineral "Eternium," a veritable "Fifth Element" that can bestow all sorts of superpowers. He attracts the attention of the U.S. government by overthrowing Kahndaq's new corporate and mercenary oppressors.

Which is why shady high-ranking government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sends a lineup of the Justice Society of America to restore Kahndaq's unjust status quo by subduing Teth-Adam.

Johnson is impeccable in the role of Teth-Adam (who ultimately renames himself "Black Adam") because it draws on the dramatic skills he's developed as a serious actor and his experience as a professional wrestling "heel." But I was not expecting this film to devote the bulk of its story to speaking out against colonial exploitation with even more stridency than Marvel's "Black Panther."

Nor can I fault any of the film's other casting choices. Pierce Brosnan could read the phonebook and be a superb Doctor Fate (DC Comics' Doctor Strange). Noah Centineo radiates earnestly good intentions and puppy-dog heart as the size-changing Atom Smasher. Quintessa Swindell is breezy, fetching fun as the wind-manipulating girl genius Cyclone. And Aldis Hodge does a yeoman's job with the thankless task of selling Hawkman, a character who's been dunked on by fandom and pop culture alike for decades, even before this film's plot cast him as the jobber to Johnson's Black Adam. This onscreen Hawkman's black-and-white morality and stubborn refusal to back down are entirely in keeping with his comics counterpart.

Except there's a difference between a group of superheroes and a superhero team, and we see it in how consistently this version of the Justice Society drops the ball. On the one hand, while such inept teamwork is explicitly intended in DCEU projects such as "Suicide Squad," "Doom Patrol" and "Peacemaker," it feels out of place when applied to an ostensibly elder statesman team. On the other hand, given that the Justice Society is serving as an allegorical stand-in for American military intervention in the Middle East, I get what this film's social commentary is going for.

For as much as "Black Adam" overtly champions its title character's self-described anti-heroic position as necessary in tough times, its moral messaging feels muddled.

Part of this owes to the fact that, as the film's mid-credits conclusion (perhaps unintentionally) acknowledges, Black Adam's stance doesn't so much set him apart from the rest of the DCEU as it does make him a competitor to plenty of other characters in the same shared universe who already harbor a largely identical ethos. Black Adam is not really challenging bright-and-shiny superheroism, because he's muscling in on an established grim-and-gritty sellers' market.

Then again, as has been pointed out by viewers less privileged than myself, there are additional considerations at work here, one of which is that "Black Adam" is rare among superhero movies for the degree to which it rails against the existing balance (or imbalance) of power in the real world.

Another consideration is that Black Adam, like Black Panther, furnishes non-Caucasian, non-Western-European audiences with a liberated and powerful protagonist of their own, as Johnson noted during a screening of "Black Adam" attended by a Black youngster wearing a Black Adam costume.

Whatever my technical concerns with this film, I appreciate both its uncompromising commentary and its inclusive representation, and judging from its ticket sales and word-of-mouth reactions from audiences, I'm far from alone in those regards.

Black Adam's ethos of not needing others' permission is viscerally satisfying, and when he's offered the opportunity to be his country's new ruler, his response is pitch-perfect.

I'll be pleased to see this one get a sequel, which its box office has all but guaranteed.

The Midnight Club on Netflix

If you're a fan of 1990s young adult horror novels who really enjoyed Netflix's adaptation of R.L. Stine's "Fear Street" series that premiered last summer, if there's one thing Netflix knows how to do, it's offer more of the same, so enjoy this month's 10-episode adaptation of Christopher Pike's "The Midnight Club."

As with "Fear Street," I came to this miniseries not having read "The Midnight Club," so I can't evaluate the streaming series' fidelity to its source material, but its premise is a clever conceit for a thriller anthology, as the teen residents of a hospice for dying young people meet up at midnight every night to trade spooky stories.

It likewise benefits from an appealing and diverse cast of characters, with genre notables such as Heather Langenkamp (Nancy from the original "Nightmare on Elm Street") and William B. Davis (the Cigarette-Smoking Man from "The X-Files") thrown in as sops to us old folks in the audience.

Be warned, the first episode broke the Guinness World Record for jump-scares, but the characters themselves are canny enough to comment on the laziness of such scare tactics, as they reflect on how to live whatever lives they might have left, when the specter of all-but-certain death precludes any long-term plans or goals they might have made before their diagnoses.

Also, be advised that the unresolved plot threads of the 10th episode's conclusion are clearly setting up a second season, which Netflix can be skittish about greenlighting for anything that isn't "Stranger Things" or "Cobra Kai."