"A bad plan is better than no plan." It's an in-joke that pops up at various points during Black Man , and while it's meant to be a pointless commentary on the assignment, on its second iteration it starts to sound like an apology to the film itself and its story. A mixture.
The problem is the capture of an all-powerful ancient metahuman known as the Tet Man (Dwayne Johnson), who, despite the film's best efforts to revive the increasingly predictable superhero genre, doesn't care that he's killing a man, the Black Man. there seems to be too much and too little, and no story movement is helped by the fantastical visual style, which is either artificial or very boring.
Flashback takes us to 2600 BC. when the Kandak people were enslaved by a sorcerer king who forced his people to mine a stone called Eternium so they could make crowns that would grant them demonic power. A young teenager like Musa rises up and is summoned to be punished by the same magical court (from Djimon Hounsou) that gave Billy Batson his powers in Shazam! The savior and rebel hero of Kandak was Tet Adam, who, according to legend, disappeared after the overthrow of the king.
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Cut to present-day Kahndaq, which has been taken over by an international criminal organization known as Intergang. Widowed professor Adriana (Sarah Shahi, "Sex/Life") wants to find the crown to keep it out of Intergang's hands, and is helped by her beloved skateboarder son Amon (Bodhi Sabongi, "A Million Little Things") and his comedy; savior brother Karim (Mohammed Amer, "Rami"). Adriano finds the crown in the old throne room, and as the Intergang prepares to shoot him, he reads the notes and calls Tet Man, who takes out the bad guys.
His return naturally attracts the attention of Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who urges the Justice League to subdue him. If you don't read comics, what do you think the Justice League is? In print, the team has a long and legendary history (even more so than the history of the Justice League), but in Man in Black we don't know if they are legendary or just thieves to Waller. The film doesn't even have a cast list, veteran Hawkman (Aldis Hodge, One Night in Miami) and Dr. In addition to Faith (Pierce Brosnan), they bring Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell, "Voyagers") and Atomic Destroyer. (Noah Centineo) to go ahead.
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The screenplay, written by a trio of screenwriters, doesn't know what to do with all these superpowers, except for more boring clichés, including Amon, the obsessed superhero who tries to raise Theta Man with capes and catchphrases. At first, the idea of introducing new heroes with power and a past sounds appealing on paper, but the fact that we don't know anything about the Justice Society and its members doesn't make them very attractive opponents for our anti-heroes. (Gas works on Atom Smasher because he's there to be an idiot out of his element, but when Cyclone talks about how he got his powers when he was kidnapped as a teenager, the conversation doesn't stay in the movie until the audience asks, " Sorry, what?")
The black man briefly addressed the elephant in the room with Adriana's short speech. He wondered why the Justice League lasted so many years while the Skull Crossers took over the country, but couldn't get there fast enough when the Tet Man launched. they are title, but here he explores the potentially subversive themes of a critique of American imperialism. He decided to tell a different story to find the monster that would destroy the world and stop the madman who wanted to take advantage of it.
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Director Jaume Calle-Serra made a name for himself by directing some of Liam Neeson's best action movies, but his collaboration with Johnson was less successful. As a leading man, Johnson works best in films where he balances his chiseled physique with a touch of self-awareness, but Cera lets him go too far in one direction or another; "Jungle Cruise" offers a good performance from Johnson, who likes to joke around, while "Man in Black"'s efforts at dark charm are stiff and stilted. (By the time he has a sense of humor at the end of the movie, it's too late.)
The ensembles did their best with the material, but none of them made it to the final rotation of the realization. There is an unsettling sense of connecting the four squares here; Brosnan for parents. Centineo for boys. A boy with a skateboard for teenagers. – which clearly reads like a marketing strategy rather than a character to interact with in this setting.
Most disappointingly, Black Man is one of the most visually confusing major studio epic superhero films, between lackluster CG and fast-paced editing that undermines the euphoria of every fight scene. (And there are so many fight scenes.) The idea of the conflict as a superhero throwing his opponents as far as he can gets some provocative laughs the first two or three times, but like everything else, it gets old quickly. . What has the black man done to his audience? Sometimes there may not be a better plan than a bad plan.
Black Adam opens October 21 at Warner Bros. and opened in US theaters through New Line Cinema.