The Rock is still rehashing Black Adam’s flop at the Oscars
Dwayne Johnson dismisses Black Adam's critics in his latest defense of the ill-fated DC film at the 2023 Academy Awards
Aux News Black Adam
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is used to winning, so maybe it’s no surprise that he can’t let go of Black Adam’s box office bomb. To be fair, he spent many years developing the film and setting up a future for the character only for the thing to flop, and for him and his preferred Superman (Henry Cavill) to get the boot on top of that. As much as Johnson’s attempted to reframe the outcome in positive terms, that’s a few major Ls for his record.
This may be why journalists can’t resist asking about it, even on the Oscars carpet many months later. And why The Rock can’t help taking the bait, though his response was typically diplomatic. “All that I can do, and all that we could do when we were making Black Adam, was to put our best foot forward and surround ourselves with the best people and deliver the best movie we could,” he told Variety at the 2023 Oscars. “Our audience score was in the 90s. Critics took a couple shots, but that’s just the business of it.”
If The Rock wants to pin Black Adam’s issues on critics (and not the behind-the-scenes turmoil), that’s his prerogative—except the question was actually about DC dropping Cavill as Superman right after Johnson had taken credit for bringing him back. Johnson offers this analogy for head honchos James Gunn and Peter Safran’s decision: “It’s almost like when you have a pro football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes in and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback. I’m going to go with somebody new.’”
The sports metaphor isn’t entirely necessary since Warner Bros. and DC literally did get new ownership and decided to go in a different direction. Though if Johnson and Cavill are the head coach and quarterback in this scenario, their combined DC track record is less championship-winning and more mixed-to-negative results, so who could blame the new guys for wanting to start fresh?
Of course, The Rock doesn’t see Black Adam as a negative result, and has been stubbornly insisting that the outcome was Good, Actually. He’s been extremely defensive of Black Adam over the last few months, likely because it was his bid to shift the hierarchy of power at DC (with him on top). Unfortunately, that prophecy unfolded like a monkey’s paw as the hierarchy ended up shifting in favor of someone else. The sting of defeat will surely fade with time, at least enough that he won’t be asked about it next time he’s at the Academy Awards.
102 Comments
Maybe he should change his name to “Dwayne ‘The I Know You Are But What Am I?’ Johnson”.
Do you think HE can smell what he is cookin?
Whomever smelt what is cookin’ dealt what is cookin’
I want Gary Garver to approach him and ask “Who are you?”
HA! Excellent reference!
“I’m Darth Nihilus!”
(muffled) I’m a Gamorrean Guard!
Do you still live at home with your mother?
Do you?
What else you gotta say to me?!
I haven’t heard the show in like 10 years but it’s amazing how embedded in my brain all this shit is.
I let my subscription go in 2017, but yeah, there’s a lot of songs that I just can’t hear without the parody versions.
The dude must be a fantastic actor to hide how he’s such a whining infant all these years.
“Nyah, who’s a candy-ass now, Dwayne? Nyah!“
Candy ass, or Jabroni would also be accepted.
I remember early in his acting career the Rock really looked like he was trying to give serious acting a shot, with stuff like Be Cool and even Pain and Gain. But now that he’s fully transitioned into “movie star” mode (i.e. people come to him with parts that fit the Rock persona as opposed to the Rock embodying a persona to fit a part) he’s obsessed with his “brand” to the point he’s doing stuff like demanding people don’t throw more punches than him on fights or this sad spectacle. I don’t know a lot about pro wrestling but is this attitude something that comes from there? IIRC latter career Hulk Hogan was notorious for refusing to “job” for up and coming wrestlers just so he could always look like an invincible force.
not dave bautista.
I dont know. Dave Bautista seems like a good dude who seems serious about actually acting and seems to go after, and has gotten, a varitety of different roles. But I guess time will tell since many of us thought the same about The Rock.
I think it’s generally accepted now that Bautista is the best Wrestler-to-Actor that the WWE has ever produced.So this isn’t surprising in the least bit.
John Cena, although I say that tepidly, might go more Bautista than The Rock. He seems willing to do stuff that’s still in his wheelhouse but also gives him room to actual act, such as Peacemaker.Also, despite I don’t think fitting the ‘out of his element criteria’, I can’t miss the chance to mention Rowdy Roddy Piper, who’s role in They Live was second only to The Maniac in Always Sunny, and Andre the Giant, because he’ll always live on in my heart as Fezzik.
Cena seems to genuinely have a good humour about himself and is willing to stretch his comic and dramatic muscles. Bautista is currently the king though. Johnson gave up a couple of decades ago.
Andre was great in that role; but the role was “The Giant”. And the heavy lifting was not dialogue.
I disagree. He had a lot of dialog in that movie and he had to come across as kind of innocent and charming and sympathetic despite the fact that he is introduced kidnapping an innocent woman and threatening to kill the guy who is trying to rescue her.
Bautista’s performance was the highlight of the otherwise dreadful Knock At The Cabin, but I do think his sleeves and chest tats really limit the roles he can convincingly portray.SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN:When he said “I’m a second grade teacher.” all I could think was “Where? What school lets you near children?” Maybe if they can digitally de-age people they can do something about that.
I used to be a teacher and I know dozens upon dozens of teachers with visible tattoos and piercings. Plus I know countless other professionals with them too. It’s 2023, man; the only people who are about tats/piercings/colored hair are boomers who also criticize people for chewing gum and wearing hats inside.
I went to Catholic school. It never really leaves you; or you never really leave it. And I always take my hat off because I still feel an invisible hand to the back of my head if I don’t.
as a younger person I can’t say I had a fully formed opinion in The Rocks early days (he did seem like he was up to interesting stuff with Walking Tall) but for a solid 8 years now I’ve been telling my parents I cant stand him. The other day my Mom suggested him as the new James Bond and a big “hell no” arose from the house.
This is the guy who starred in Tooth Fairy.
The Hulkster is legend. Rememba when he and Thiel tag teamed those shitheads at Gawker?
It’s remarkable how daring Johnson once was to make a movie like Southland Tales.
“I don’t know a lot about pro wrestling but is this attitude something that comes from there?”
No.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/11n702r/great_segment_from_the_last_wwe_rivalries_episode/Back in WWE for The Rock’s return, Cena famously ad-libbed an insult about Rock writing promo notes on his wrist (which was really the only exciting thing about that feud). The Rock was reportedly HEATED about that for at least a full year afterwards.
He hasn’t hid it well at all, though. lol
When it comes to picking scripts, the man is no Arnold.
I know, that Arnold Palmer could act, as well as mix a mean lemonade and iced tea.
this isn’t a question you would normally ask on the red carpet, is it?
That was the weirdest part, right? It’s usually “Who are you wearing?” “What party are you looking forward to?” “Who do you want to see?” Not “So can you explain your biggest career flop and how it yo-yoed Henry Cavil back into the Superman suit for 30 seconds?”
I wonder if it was planned in advance with the person being asked the question being the one who set it up?
Knowing The Rock it was probably The Rock who set it up so he could keep talking about Black Adam.
I let my Sirius subscription lapse. Does Howard Stern have a new guy asking wacky red carpet questions?
They’re no Stuttering John or Gary Garver.
You didn’t hear Batista whining when Hotel Artemis failed to take the world by storm.
I’m one of the 17 people who love that movie.
There are dozens of us!
Well, almost a dozen and a half.
Enough to fill an IHOP?
Number 6 here, we missed you at the Waffle House on Thursday.
That difference is Batista can actual act.
Johnson can absolutely act.He just doesn’t have to to make the big bucks, so he doesn’t bother.
Dwayne “The Actor” Johnson IS Othello
I’m actually an Olympic gold medalist athlete but I don’t compete because nobody is asking me to. I swear I’m amazing tho. But I don’t feel like showing you right now.
…wut?Johnson’s done plenty of good work (Be Cool, Pain and Gain, Central Intelligence, Jumanji, Moana).He also knows that if he half-asses his way through a middling action thriller, it’ll make $300-400m on a $50m budget…so he makes a lot of them.
To be clear, the fact that he’s a genuinely talented guy makes it worse that most of his movies are zero-effort dreck.I’m calling him Adam Sandler, haha.
lmao
I saw it for Sofia Boutella.
I like Johnson and would be happy to live in a world where he was at the top of Superhero Movie Mountain. But it ain’t happening, at least not on the back of Black Adam, which I think he cared about a lot more than most of the other middling stuff he’s been in. I can certainly understand why he’s having a hard time letting it go.
Reporter: Hey Mr. The Rock, how do you feel about your disappointing comic book movie?The Rock: Well, actually I—Reporter: IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW YOU FEEL!
“Would you ask Hugh Grant that?”
he was only in it for like two seconds
Praises to Mary Kate Carr for working in a reference to “shift[ing] the hierarchy of power at DC.” Well played.
“It’s almost like when you have a pro football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes in and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback. I’m going to go with somebody new.’”Just for the sake of analogy, who is the championship winning team/QB here?
The MCU.
To be fair, he’s talking XFL championships. Though I say that not having seen a single game or knowing the quality of that league.
ESPN is one of the relaunched XFL’s biggest broadcast partners, and I haven’t seen a single XFL-related headline on their website without having to seek it out. XFL 3.0 is clearly going great.
I know, right? The crazy thing is that new GMs/owners replace their QBs and coaches all the time… because they are not very good, have no history of winning and/or are delusional. Moreover, what fucking championship is he referring to?
he’s referring to his participation in the film / the film getting made as a victory. That has to be it.
His answer about Henry Cavill is right, though. They were trying to go with it since that is what people wanted. It isn’t the Black Adam crew or production that were teasing us with no plan to follow through. DC changed it.Still, Black Adam was a boring movie, though.
Boring and bad, in general. terrible dialogue, etc.
The Rock’s consistent whining that he’s not owned, actually, has been the most entertainment Black Adam has produced.
His superhero movie made less than $400,000,ooo. That’s not terrible, but in Marvel terms, he’s between Eternals and Black Widow, which both came out during a pandemic and aren’t remembered as their best. Audience scores are notoriously forgiving, but I doubt DC was thinking “we’re hoping this will do ‘a third of Aquaman’ numbers” at any point.
After seeing the movie and reading up on it, It was a middling movie that generated middling positive profits. I don’t really understand why people won’t leave The Rock alone about it.I didn’t realize that we hate The Rock now, and we have to make him feel terrible any chance we get. I hope whoever asks him that, at the Oscars no less, gets fired. Ask some softball questions and let him enjoy his night.
Maybe Vin Diesel was onto something… lol
Diesel is no saint either, but I’ve fallen pretty heavily on Diesel’s side in the feud between Diesel and Johnson.
Johnson projects a friendly “I’m such a chill cool guy who everyone loves” vibe, but the whole fiasco of black Adam has revealed a lot about him.
Saint Diesel, pray for us. Amen.
“It’s almost like when you have a pro football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes in and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback. I’m going to go with somebody new.’”Huh? When the fuck has this ever happened?
Raiders in ‘03?
It has happened, then? Ok, well, carry on.I honestly don’t know anything about sports.
I figured he was being hypothetical. Like really hypothetical. Like backbreakingly hypothetical.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ur Username is amazing.
I love how he thinks black Adam being a critical and commercial bomb is the same as winning a football championship. Also funny he chalks up his firing to new management, when the new management were fully backing Johnson right up until his movie was a critical and commercial bomb.
“when the new management were fully backing Johnson right up until his movie was a critical and commercial bomb.”
Uh, no they weren’t.
Gotta love a guy whose only marketable quality is “I’ll fuck you up” throwing that same attitude at a 115lb, mid-40s nerd to prove a point. If nothing, he’s consistent(ly bad in everything he does).
I mean,…….be fair,….The Jumanji movies are pretty good.Entertaining, at least.
I stand by my original statement. Regardless how you Freaky Friday or Tooth Fairy him, his only marketiable quality is “I will fuck you up.”
What about in Be Cool?
I mean,… it still doesn’t detract from what I said either.The new Jumanji movies (of which he’s a pivotal part) are pretty decent to good movies and his part in them goes beyond “I will fuck you up”.Particularly the second one where he has to channel Danny Devito.
Point taken. I disagree but we can disagree.
They got little what’s’er’name in little short-shorts.
Yes,…..Yes,…..Karen Gillam.Probably those movies’ greatest triumph.
It’s so jarring now to see this (somewhat universal) opinion about the new Jumanji films. Just thinking back to the first one for a second people were lining up with pitchforks for them even daring to touch that IP after Robin Williams died. It’s just amazing how everyone was so passionate and then everyone went home and stopped caring.
As harsh as it sounds, Williams’ death was actually one of the best things those movies had going for them, because if he was still around you know they would have had a ton of pressure to bring him back, and once you do that it’s suddenly a Robin Williams movie and nothing more. Instead, they were able to grow into their own thing that’s had its own success.
I said they were good.I didn’t say they were better (than the original).You simply can’t replace Robin Williams and the original Jumanji movie was all Robin Williams.That being said, the new movie took what they had available to them and made a pretty decent effort (thanks largely to the competence and skill of the leading actors).
It’s because they were actually good, and didn’t really touch the original at all.
The sad thing is Black Adam could’ve been great if he had stayed as ruthless as he was in his intro, avoided the kid entirely, and dropped the JSA “Heroes don’t kill” nonsense (since I think Shazam was the only hero in the DCEU to not have a decently-sized on screen bodycount).
We are decades into the movie star career of Dwayne Johnson and I think it is pretty obvious at this point he either has no idea what a good story is and/or is perfectly fine with just playing The Rock in every movie. Both of which are fine! But the whole Black Adam thing is confusing because it is a bad story and he keeps *insisting* it is good and then goes the extra dick mile of using BO receipts as proof of it being a good story. Transformers also made a pile of money and that movie also had a shit story. I know David Harbour struggled with the failure of Hellboy, but at least he was able to diplomatically spit out that “there were a lot of different voices” or some nonsense to save face. If The Rock had said something stupid like “I had a great time making this, I loved the cast, and appreciate the support of the fans who loved it too” and stopped right there, he would stop getting clowned.That his ego is going to die on the hill that is Black Adam is understandable since this was his project, unlike Red Notice which is another bad movie but wasn’t his baby. But man, Black Adam just isn’t the masterpiece he thinks it is or wants it to be.
People were screaming for so long that its his destiny to play Black Adam or some shit. That couldn’t have helped.
I’m not even a fan of him, but even I am rolling my eyes every time I hear Black Adam described as a flop or a bomb.It didn’t make as much money as the studio wanted, but it did make money.Might want to look up the definitions of “flop” and “box office bomb”.
Oh okay go watch the greenlit sequel then poindexter… Oh wait it’s already confirmed that there wont be a sequel.
Guess they made enough money the first time! Cuz that’s how money works!
Oh I didn’t realize ur the smartest person here. You know whats really annoying/exhausting is contrarians…. do you have something better to do than to be “right” on the internet?
…. do you have something better to do than to be “right” on the internet?The lack of self awareness here is really something.
I thought this guy was running for president? biden should pick him for VP the next go around. guaranteed win for the dems.
There is not a faker person on the planet than Dwayne Johnson. What an absolutely terrible person.
What a trash article written by some click seeking blog writer at best. Twisting everything said to fit a narrative. Mary Kate Carr I don’t know how I ended up on an “AV Club” article but I pray it’s the last one I’m subject to. Especially if its written by you. Please stop your journey… you clearly have no dignity.
“It’s almost like when you have a pro football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes in and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback. I’m going to go with somebody new.’”It’s a really fun analogy he’s using here because this doesn’t happen.