Black Adam (2022) Review: The Rock Delivers, the Film Doesn't

Black Adam was Dwayne Johnson’s passion project — a character he had been championing for adaptation since 2007, fifteen years before the film reached cinemas. That level of personal investment in a role can go two ways: it can produce a performance of specific commitment and depth (see Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips), or it can produce a film shaped by a star’s vision rather than the story’s logic. Black Adam is, unfortunately, closer to the second. It is not a bad film. It is a film that could have been better in ways that Johnson’s ownership of it may have prevented.

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The action sequences and the Doctor Fate visual effects look best in 4K. The post-credits scene is worth seeing in the best quality.

The character premise is strong. Teth-Adam is a Kahndaq slave who was given the power of Shazam 5,000 years ago and used it to kill the king who enslaved his people — an act of justified violence that the Wizard subsequently judged as darkness rather than heroism. He was imprisoned, he’s been dormant, and he’s been freed in the present day as the contemporary Kahndaq resists occupation by the mercenary organization Intergang. He doesn’t want to be a hero. He’s not interested in your moral framework. He’ll protect Kahndaq because it’s his, and anyone who threatens it will die for it.

Johnson commits to this character with a physicality and a specific menace that the film’s PG-13 constraints only partially suppress. In the film’s better moments — particularly the early sequences in which Black Adam kills Intergang soldiers with blunt efficiency, before the Justice Society arrives to complicate the ethical framing — there’s a version of this character who could anchor a great film. The problem is the script.

The Justice Society of America — Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) — are deployed as the film’s moral counterweight and provide its best material. Hodge’s Hawkman is straight-edge heroism with genuine gravitas, and his ideological confrontation with Black Adam about the difference between justice and violence is the film’s best dialogue. Noah Centineo’s Atom Smasher is comedy relief that lands in the first act and becomes slightly exhausting by the third.

Narrative Architecture: The Pitch vs The Film

The great idea at the center of Black Adam is that the DCEU finally gets a true anti-hero who challenges the mythology’s moral framework. Unlike most superhero films in which the villain is wrong by definition, Black Adam’s actions are genuinely defensible. He kills people. The people he kills deserve it. The film keeps gesturing at the philosophical complexity of this — is lethal force justified to protect the innocent? what distinguishes a hero from a killer? — but never fully commits to the interrogation. By the third act, Black Adam has essentially been domesticated into a conventional superhero facing a generic ancient evil, and the moral framework dissolves.

Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate is the best thing in Black Adam by a distance, and his arc is the only one in the film that achieves genuine emotional resonance. Kent Nelson is a man who has worn a helmet that shows him all possible futures — including his own death in this particular conflict — for centuries. He has seen the outcome. He knows what sacrifice is required. Brosnan plays this knowledge with a weariness and grace that makes every scene he’s in feel like it belongs to a better, more mature version of this film. His resolution is the film’s most moving sequence, and the fact that the character was subsequently killed off for the DCU reset is one of the larger creative losses in this franchise.

The Superman Moment

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Johnson's Black Adam design is one of the stronger DCEU costumes — the lightning motif translates well to the collectible format.

The most famous moment in Black Adam is not in the film itself. It is in the post-credits sequence: Amanda Waller contacts Black Adam with a warning, and Henry Cavill’s Superman arrives in response, telling him that Waller has allies who will keep the new world order claim in check. It was the moment Cavill’s Superman returned to the DCEU after years of absence, met with genuine excitement by audiences who had wanted more of the character since Man of Steel.

Within weeks, news broke that Cavill would not be returning as Superman under the new DC Studios regime. The scene that was supposed to begin a new chapter became, retroactively, a farewell. Watching it now, knowing what followed, adds a specific melancholy to what was intended as excitement. Cavill’s Superman deserved better — a proper send-off, a proper final film, not a post-credits cameo serving another character’s setup.

The film’s action sequences are functional but generic — large-scale CGI battles without the specific choreographic intelligence of Birds of Prey or The Suicide Squad. Lorne Balfe’s score is competent without being memorable. The Sabbac villain, introduced in the third act as the actual antagonist behind the Intergang occupation, has the limitations of most DCEU third-act villains: he exists to be defeated rather than to be understood.

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Complete the DCEU collection. The film has enough genuine spectacle to justify the disc.

Is Black Adam (2022) worth watching?

Conditionally. Primarily worth watching for Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate, who is one of the DCEU’s most interesting and tragic characters. Dwayne Johnson is committed to the role. The film around them is generic but has enough genuine moments to justify the runtime.

Who is Doctor Fate in Black Adam?

Kent Nelson, played by Pierce Brosnan — an ancient sorcerer whose magical helmet grants near-omniscience. He has seen his own death in this conflict and accepted it. Brosnan brings genuine dignity and sadness to the role. He’s the film’s best element.

What happens in the Superman post-credits scene?

Henry Cavill returns as Superman, sent by Amanda Waller to warn Black Adam that his new-world-order declaration has attracted attention. It was intended to set up a Superman-Black Adam confrontation. Cavill’s subsequent departure from the role makes it retroactively an elegiac farewell.

Who directed Black Adam?

Jaume Collet-Serra, known for action films including several Liam Neeson vehicles. He handles the action competently but the script’s limitations constrain what he can do with the material.

Is Black Adam suitable for kids?

PG-13. Action violence throughout, some intense sequences. Fine for 12+. Black Adam kills people, though the violence is not graphically depicted in the theatrical cut.