The Rock has some non-“it didn’t make much money” theories about not getting a Black Adam sequel
Bad box office? Don't be absurd: The "vortex of new leadership" is to blame for Black Adam's non-starter status
Aux News Black Adam
It’s a shame that Dwayne Johnson isn’t getting another Black Adam movie any time soon, because he’s got a hell of a pitch for a villain: The “vortex of new leadership”—which is what he’s blaming these days for, well, him not getting another Black Adam movie any time soon.
Johnson was bemoaning his Teth-Adam-based woes to his old pal Kevin Hart on Hart’s Peacock show Hart To Heart, when he brought up this ominous maelstrom of corporate command. Black Adam was, after all, released into a very weird moment for Warner Bros.’ DC movie apparatus: Two days after the resignation of Walter Hamada, the person-shaped placeholder who took over DC Films after Justice League under-performed at the box office back in 2018, and a month before James Gunn and Peter Safran were installed as the studios’ new overlords. Johnson’s not wrong when he says the film landed right between the couch cushions of the two regimes.
Of course, you could also argue that Johnson seems to have tried his damnedest to take advantage of that same lacuna to firmly put his own stamp on the DCEU, semi-hijacking it into a hypothetical Black Adam And Friends. He reportedly pushed extremely hard for the return of Henry Cavill’s Superman for the movie’s after-credits scene, for instance, at least in part to set up some kind of climactic grudge match between the two characters that could carry forward into future films, centralizing his own role. (He also allegedly put pressure on Warner Bros. to keep characters from Black Adam from appearing in Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, at least in part, presumably, because he’s always seemed bound and determined to distract people from the fact that his beloved anti-hero badass is intimately tied to the company’s goofiest and most kid-friendly franchise.) If Black Adam had done numbers, the future slate of the DCEU might be looking very different right now.
But Black Adam didn’t do numbers: It made about $400 million at the box office, i.e., just enough to not get outright called a flop, considering its $150 million-plus budget—but not enough to get anyone reaching for another one. (In his conversation with Hart, Johnson mostly glides over the financials, focusing mostly on the movie’s decent opening performance—although he does admit that, “Sure, no China. That could have been maybe $100 million, maybe $200 million more dollars.”) But he nevertheless contends that his franchise plans were the consequence of the leadership switchover, not box office concerns. And, hey, who wants a sports metaphor?
“You know what it is?” Johnson asked Hart. “It’s like new ownership coming in and buying an NFL team going, ‘Alright. Not my head coach. Not my quarterback. Doesn’t matter how many times we won the Super Bowl. Doesn’t matter how many rings we got. I’m going with somebody else.’” Which would seem to ignore, very stridently, the fact that there’s no reality in which Black Adam could be said to have “won the Super Bowl” even once, because it didn’t make any damn money. But whatever, what are we going to do, argue with The Rock? He’s so big!
Johnson released a statement back in December saying that Gunn and Safran would not be using Black Adam as one of the building blocks of their new DCEU.
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The Henry Cavill cameo at the end of the film really confirmed some thoughts about Dwayne Johnson for me. He’s an A-lister but he thinks in terms of B-movies. He wants the audience to go ‘woh, Superman’s there!’ but there’s no plans going on outside of that shock. Like a big explosion or a cool one-liner, it’s about seeking momentary pleasures, not about making a larger narrative. And he’s seemingly going to want to keep making these sorts of films, because that’s the way he thinks. But he’s going to find out why B-movies had small budgets.
Eh, San Andreas, Rampage, Central Intelligence, all movies that were… eh, OK. All movies that made eh, OK money. The failures tend to be things like Doom that ALMOST squeak by.He’s bigger than straight B, but he’s not a franchise star that can elevate a production into the stratosphere. I kinda think of him as Steven Segall at the height of his career minus (hopefully) the love for murderous dictators.
I’d put Dwayne Johnson right about where I’d put Jason Statham—keeps working steadily and has some real hits on his resume, but has yet to find a series role to make him into an A-Lister.
Kim Jong-Un is actually really charming once you get to know him.
Exactly. A-listers don’t have to make excuses for their lack of projects, unless they’ve done something to upset producers and their fan bases.
I mean, he doesn’t even have to apologize if he’d just accept that – for the moment – he’s basically at the Dolph Lundgren/Jason Statham etc. level. He’s good enough to carry a film as long as the film is suited to his skills, but even then don’t expect billion plus box office without something truly special behind him.
That’s why his ego about this is so funny to me. He makes okay movies that make okay money. As much as he wants to believe that he saved the Fast and the Furious franchise, Fast Five made a metric fuckton of money because it was a legitimately fun heist movie, not because The Rock showed up to awkwardly call Gina Carson “woman”. Giving Justin Lin another crack at the helm after Tokyo Drift turned out to be the right call (also people just straight up loved the franchise — the fourth movie was decidedly not great, but did well on the strength of “The gang’s back!!!”). As much as he and Vin Diesel hate each other, they do suffer from the exact same problem of becoming less and less charismatic as their careers go on, while simultaneously believing themselves to be absolutely beloved.
Thing is, I’d take Johnson over Diesel anyday. Every Diesel franchise is nothing but ‘He’s built different and more awesomer than you’ and its gotten pretty bad. I watched the last XxX movie wondering how he was the lead when he was the guy who seemed to be putting the least effort into everything. It’s like he’s in capable of doing anything else anymore. Even his kids movie was him playing a secret agent who was good at everything he did. I think the most charismatic character I’ve seen Diesel play was in Find Me Guilty and even that was him being an obnoxious guy.
Johnson’s charisma tends to vanish whenever he has to play guys who aren’t tough but funny. I honestly didn’t mind him in Black Adam but the movie’s script was garbage. It was like they shifted the film to a totally different idea after Black Adam’s introduction massacre. I went in expecting him to act like a superpowered version of his character from Faster and instead got a messy film that poorly copied the John Conner and T-800 dynamic. 80% of the plot was the JSA attacking Adam out of some random notion that heroes don’t kill despite every other DCEU film featuring heroes killing people (except Shazam), really bugged the hell out of me.
Also, Gina Carano was Fast 6. I consider Hobbes and Shaw a better film than the last two F&F movies, though that isn’t saying much.
“the most charismatic character I’ve seen Diesel play”?
All of that could be said about Zack Snyder, who molded the DCEU that Johnson was trying to slot himself into. Maybe it would’ve worked out for him better if Snyder was still at the helm. But the movies would still suck.
GODDAMMIT PAL GIMME THE MOMENTS!
All of his ballyhooing didn’t get him a movie but it’s gotten him some attention in the press. Mission accomplished.
The elephant in the room: that it just wasn’t a very good movie.
Did I make a flop? No, its the executives who are wrong.
But I thought he was “franchise Viagra!” People are bored of Dwayne. I DO think he’s a genuinely good person, but when folks like John Cena and Dave Bautista are out-acting him, he gets upset and shifts the blame. When a project he’s been pushing for, like, 15 years shits the bed, he gets upset and shifts the blame. He wants to be the hero, but doesn’t know what it takes to be the villain.I think it’s apt to point out where Black Adam fell in the WB release schedule and that if it were a smash hit, things might have gone different. Yet, Black Adam pulling mediocre numbers (at best, given its budget) put the gods/overseers/overpaid assholes in panic mode and went to James Gunn. I don’t know about everyone who isn’t THE ROCK, but I’d rather have a creative genius in charge than a guy whose only thing is he’s a big muscle guy who is generally charming and good at business. Would you want Ryan Reynolds to run your studio? (Intentionally stupid question).
He’s basically Schwarzenegger but without the same sense of savvy to back up the ego.Sure, he can be a big draw in certain circumstances (or, at least, he could be for a while, I’m not sure how true that still is) but his whole “I can’t ever contractually lose a fight, I must always be the biggest badass in the film” thing is totally counterproductive when you compare it to the sort of moves Arnie made – choosing to be the “bad guy” in Terminator, putting himself in a position to work with “high end” directors who he knew would be able to work around his deficiencies, then pivoting to comedy (against the advice of his agents) as a way of expanding his brand and making fun of himself.I’m sure he can/could turn things around, but at the moment Big Dave is making a much stronger case for being a legitimate “actor”, and Big John is acting more like a more versatile “movie star”, so he’s at risk of losing the shine he developed over the years.
Hell, I don’t think Schwarzenegger has that much of an ego – I think it’s fairly self-aware of how he looks, and with that he can subvert expectations. I can’t imagine The Rock playing half his roles. Kindergarten Cop? Harry Tasker in True Lies – why do I suspect that The Rock has a clause that says “If my character is married, his wife can’t cheat on him…because who’d cheat on me, The Rock?” Twins? Nine Months?
but his whole “I can’t ever contractually lose a fight, I must always be the biggest badass in the film”
This is the part that I don’t understand with him. He comes from pro wrestling and really understands it. He knows the value of putting someone else over (wrestling terms for you take the loss, the other wins). Despite being a huge star, The Rock actually lost quite a bit yet still knew how to still be a star. He wasn’t like Hulk Hogan who was protected at all costs (always won). Yet for some reason, he can’t make that connection in movies. He always has to look like the biggest and baddest. It’s just weird given his background that he can’t see it (or refuses to).
Yeah, the reasons The Rock got so big in wrestling were:1) His microphone skills2) His willingness to put others over (ask Mick Foley)3) His sellingAnd a very distant4)His offense. Let’s face it, the Rock Bottom and People’s Elbow never looked convincing, but the theatrics were fun. Plus his Sharpshooter was straight up garbage.
Yeah. And at this point it’s kinda like… where IS his really huge, defining movie? His Die Hard, Rambo/Rocky, Terminator?
He doesn’t have one, and it’s looking increasingly likely he never will.
The Rundown was pretty solid.
Would you want Ryan Reynolds to run your studio? (Intentionally stupid question).As opposed to Dwayne Johnson? Yes, I would prefer Reynolds.As opposed to James Gunn? “Of course not, don’t be silly,” said Ryan Reynolds, stepping aside to let Gunn take over. “Just…don’t cast me as Green Lantern again, okay? Anything else, I’m happy to help in any way I can—and Jim? Here’s your free Mint Mobile burner phone.”
He needs to take way more risks and actually do roles that challenge him. Cena and Bautista are doing that now, and reaping dividends.
I mean, yeah he’s making excuses for the movie underperformed.But also, he’s not wrong. If the executive leadership hadn’t changed, we probably would have seen a sequel or at least a continuation that maintained the same general storyline and continuity. And the choice of the leadership to move away from the established DCEU continuity isn’t just numbers based. It’s also just that they don’t believe in the previous vision and want to start over with their own thing.
Why would they continue it? Leadership aside, the movie didn’t make money. They’re not gonna spend another $200 million on Black Adam 2 when no one showed up to see Black Adam 1.
It made money. Not as much as they hoped, but it wasn’t the type of flop where the box office is lower than the budget.Certainly they might change some things for a sequel but choosing to entirely erase the character and plot line is more than just a money thing. Plenty of other film franchises have less than steller entries but they still keep moving forward. Because at least the money already spent has done some work of creating a brand impression so you can save on costs with the next entry. Look at the Xmen movies. Origins: Wolverine sucked dick at the box office, but Sony still made more movies with Hugh Jackman.
X men origins wolverine turned a profit. Black Adam didn’t.
*sigh*Studio gets about:Domestic: 60% share of the first week, 55% share of the second week and 50% share since the third week and later.International: 40% share (22,5% from China)Do your math!PS.
“but Sony still made more movies with Hugh Jackma”Jesus, you don’t even know which studio did X-Men…
For a variety of issues, Black Adam was garbage all around, Johnson included. Only Brosnan was decent in it. Often times, good films flop, but this was hardly the case.
It was devastating for me to watch Pierce Brosnan being fun and good in a superhero movie and having that movie be Black fucking Adam.
And playing one of my favorite DC heroes that he was perfect for too, fuck.
Cursed monkey paw shit, truly.
Universe be like ‘Oh you like the Dr. Fate, do ya? Let’s see how you like these apples!’
Brosnan being great in the nothing role and immediately killed off was the biggest reason to not bother with any sequel.
“It’s like new ownership coming in and buying an NFL team going, ‘Alright.
Not my head coach. Not my quarterback. Doesn’t matter how many times we
won the Super Bowl. Doesn’t matter how many rings we got. I’m going
with somebody else.’”
You won no rings. You were the 2022 Pittsburgh Steelers: 9-8, no playoffs. Didn’t suck enough to be offensive but wasn’t good enough to matter.
I can only think of one NFL owner who bought a team then immediately shitcanned a multiple Super Bowl-winning coach, and while I think Tom Landry deserved better, Jerrah wasn’t wrong in leaving that era in the past.
Didn’t expect a (very accurate) reference to the Steelers on the AVClub today, good job.
Hey! Hey! Leave the Steelers out of this.
Technically, he’s not wrong. New management is to blame for no more Black Adam movies. Of course, they chose not to make any more Black Adam movies because the first one MADE NO FUCKING MONEY!!!! (Well, technically “not enough money to justify another,” but the other phrase is funnier.)
“I blame the fire for taking my house.”“Yes, but you also had like 150 plugs going into that one outlet behind your couch that started the fi-”“I FAIL TO SEE HOW THAT IS RELEVANT.”
I finally gave in and actually watched the movie in question.It is a mess. There is a major problem with inconsistent tone, the overall look did the “let’s film everything in one major color so nothing really stands out” thing that DC does VERY well, on the whole this felt like at least two movies fighting to emerge from one kinda shoddy project.So, yeah. He’s kinda right. Kinda. Having a strong core management structure in place with the vision and the authority/ability to make that vision happen would have solved a good chunk of the wildly uneven tone of the movie. Choosing the “we’re going to go full on silly like Deadpool” or “we need more serious, think the last five minutes of Infinity War for two hours” or what have you would at least have given them a better shot at coherency.
Very few wanted a taste of that strudel.
I’m sorry Dwayne, but take the L on this one. This movie should’ve never been greenlit, they should’ve never caved to you throwing your weight around to prevent Black Adam from being attached to ANY project with Shazam. Black Adam is not an “anti hero”, and no we weren’t interested in seeing a phase 2 of the DCEU centered around Black Adam all building up to a big drawn out fight with Superman.
Dude buys too much into his own hype. Definitely needs to learn how to take an L.
I don’t know a lot about DC comics but is Black Adam a character a lot of people even know much less have any affection for? It was new to me and nothing about Black Adam seemed all that interesting. It’s not even a good name. It’s like The Rock was thinking his star power alone could make this nothing of a property into something and he’s taking it personally that this didn’t happen.
He’s one of those side characters that people like to see hang around because he’s no longer quite a Villain™, but definitely not one of the Good Guys™. His most successful comic runs are always the ones where he’s learning to work within the actual Good Guy framework and struggling/bristling against it. Never has success with the kind of story where he’s both the lead and his moral code is supported by the narrative.
Black Adam is one of DC’s C-list characters that they bought from Fawcett Comics. Originally a straight-up supervillain who was a former Captain Marvel (“Shazam”’s Captain Marvel, not Marvel Comics’s Kree warrior) out to take Billy Batson’s Captain Marvel’s place, they started retconning him around 1999-2000 as a former supervillain trying to atone for his past evil deeds. Of course, his ideas about justice, crime, and punishment are still stuck back in the pre-Christian Era Middle East, which causes him to butt heads frequently with the newer superheroes who believe there’s never rarely an excuse to take a life or inflict permanent damage on another….There is a good movie to be made about Black Adam, who is like Season 1 Boyd Crowder from JUSTIFIED, only with superpowers. (So who would be Super-Raylan Givens, then?) This movie wasn’t it, though.
Both Marvel and DC, so far, seem only committed to their fan base and, sorry to say, male viewers since men are prioritized in the narratives and male heroics are essential to the plots. Those of us who knew little or nothing about the comics get interested because the marketing is irresistable and the spectacle is compelling. I didn’t know about Black Adam either. Personally, I lost interest in most of the superhero stuff because of its continuing sidelining of women characters and it’s committement to depicting violence.
I didn’t know that Harley Quinn : Birds of Prey, Black Widow and WW84 were a success? I think most common theatre audience who watch superhero movie didn’t care about wether it’s male oriented or sidelining women, but how fresh the story and of course the hype that follow it (eg. Barbenheimmer).You don’t make this type of movie for neckbeards but you make movie (and market it) for all of the people that willing to spend money on movie tickets
Lol.
Yeah my mom has seen damn near every Marvel movie in the theater and doesn’t give 2 shits about continuity, sidelining women or whatever, she wants to see some ‘turn your brain off’ entertainment for a couple hours in a movie theater.
A couple of decades ago, Black Adam was one of the faces of the “modern, mature DC”. Between bold like JSA and Checkmate and others, he was possibly the most recognizable face (at least among comic book fans of that specific time) of a subset of books that were ostensibly Authority/Ultimates Lite. There were definitely some good stories there (p sure Greg Rucka did a lot of the character work for Adam), but I don’t think he’s got that much cache decades later.
And on top of that, “Arab strongman willing to murder systematically to protect his borders” is an incredibly tough character to pull off just about anywhere, much less in the reductionist landscape of superhero stories.
Indeed! He was quite a big deal in the early to mid 2000s under Geoff John’s’ pen when he became the breakout character of JSA but post Infinite Crisis and the complete fucking hodgepodge that DC made of Captain Marvel and his characters, he fell off the radar hard.
It’s always seemed odd to me that The Rock is basically this huge blockbuster action movie star without a star character or franchise. The other big stars like that have at least one iconic role – Bruce Willis as John McClane, Stallone as Rocky and Rambo, Arnold as the Terminator. It’s like Dwayne Johnson has this Arnold Schwarzenegger status except he skipped the whole iconic stage of Terminator, Commando, Total Recall, True Lies movies and just made a whole bunch of movies like Eraser. Though maybe that makes him the most 21st century movie star of anyone, because more than any film franchise, his iconic role is playing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on social media and Saturday Night Live. Nobody’s running up to him in the street because he’s “the David Okoye guy” or he’s “that Will Sawyer dude” – they do it because he’s The Rock.
But, but he was the Scorpion King!
I think “The Rock” counts most of the way toward an iconic role. It is still a character after all. If it were still the 90s, Hollywood might even try to transition the whole persona into a bonafide movie character for a franchise run. He just happened to do all his franchise work in a different medium before breaking into movies to play slightly different roles.
I don’t know, there are lots of iconic wrestlers who are very far away from being superstar celebrities outside of the wrestling world. I do think “The Rock” is basically a character he’s playing, probably a life-as-art thing, though.It’s just like, I totally know why the other big action movie stars are big action movie stars, but it seems like The Rock is just trucking along. Liam Neeson has made a bunch of forgettable action movies in this part of his career, but he did the whole Taken series that was huge and iconic, which is why he does them all. The Rock doesn’t really have anything like that, unless you think Fast and the Furious is his. It’s like he’s knit this huge billion-dollar behemoth of a career from starring in a whole lot of forgettable movies that pretty much only do okay/good. In a lot of ways, Black Adam is, like, the quintessential Dwayne Johnson movie. They made it too expensive and didn’t take it to China, but it comes in with about right what you can expect from a movie starring The Rock.Black Adam, cost $190 million, made $393 million.Skyscraper, cost $125 million, made $305 million. San Andreas, cost $110 million, made $474 million.Rampage, cost $130 million, made $428 million.
Black Adam, cost $190 million, made $393 million.Skyscraper, cost $125 million, made $305 million.San Andreas, cost $110 million, made $474 million.Rampage, cost $130 million, made $428 million.The Rock, especially in this stage of his career, is a very reliable, hard-working actor, that can essentially guarantee you a $350-$500m box office film without the added expenses involved with a big-name franchise.
He’s not going to get you a billion dollar movie (because almost all of those are in some way tied to a franchise or already-extant IP), and he’s too expensive for smaller films. But if you need someone dependable for a summer popcorn flick and don’t want to stack the cast with expensive names, you can turn to The Rock and he gets you there.
The reality is that the amount of non-franchise actors who can get you a $400m box office from a $100-200m movie is almost zero, except for one exception: The Rock. Franchise commitments lock up many of the other actors, and a studio isn’t gonna trust a $150m movie with a no-name. Of course, that warrants the question of whether the movies should be made in the first place, but studios have a financial imperative to pump out the movies.
The Rock is basically the Danny Strong character in Buffy who’s inexplicably mega-famous and no one can explain how.
I was going to suggest Fast & Furious, but apparently he first showed up in the fifth movie in that series.
Exactly, he has a character and a franchise: it’s called “Being The Rock”. And that’s all I see him as. The Rock. Not whatever character he’s allegedly portraying. If there’s a Star-Actor Spectrum, with the left side being Maximum Fame and the right being Maximum Acting Ability, Rocky there’s aaaaaaalllll the way over there on the left, with people like Gary Oldman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins, et al – people who disappear into their roles – on the right. What movie he’s in is irrelevant. What character’s he’s been saddled with is irrelevant. You’re just meant to pony up the dough to see Mr. Geology up there on the big screen, in a tight black T-shirt, never losing a fight, never breaking a sweat.
i think Jumanji is his iconic role, at least that’s the one i liked him best
Black Adam has never been very popular as a solo hero character, but he’s somewhat popular as a supporting character with a complicated moral code. He’s Shazam’s archenemy, originally created with the simple premise of “what if Shazam was a bad guy” (he has the same powers and his costume is just Shazam’s costume in black) but over time DC made him a more complex character to contrast Shazam’s immaturity. That’s all well and good, but he’s still fundamentally a character who exists to be the opposite of another more popular character, and it was really weird how DC just decided to pretend the two characters had no connection in the movies (even rewriting parts of the two Shazam films to remove nearly all mention of Black Adam from them.) The character just feels incomplete without the hero he’s supposed to be a foil for.And yeah, Black Adam is a dumb name. I dunno, he was created in the 40’s, shit was different.
he’s evil Superman or antihero Superman, depending on who’s writing. problem is evil Superman’s been done a bunch now and it doesn’t sound like they did much to really give Adam an arc to get from evil to antihero
No he’s anti-Captain Marvel (er, I mean, “Shazam!”). Anti-Superman is Bizarro or arguably Zod.
He’s been in some notable storylines in the past several years but he was never popular (as in well known), and was mostly a C-grade villain relegated to Captain Marvel/Shazam’s mythos. The Rock trying to make this guy a thing is the weirdest thing.
Every member of the Guardians is a B or C list character in Marvel. None of them had every successfully carried a book. Marvel kept trying to make Ant-Man books. And they kept failing because these isn’t much interest among comics fans in that character. Just as Captain Marvel has repeatedly failed as a solo comic due to lack of actual fans.Yet those movies did well. So the problem isn’t that Black Adam didn’t have an established fan base or significant public presence. The problem is that the movie was just nonsensical. Kinda like how Wonder Woman 1984 failed because it was a crap movie, not because of a lack of public interest in the character.
He can go toe to toe with Superman, so that’s cool, but he’s also pretty grimdark, so that’s pretty ‘90s.
at this point it’s probably for the best to join the next Fast & Furious films, this time alongside Vin Diesel, finish up that saga, then join Marvel for some projects. As far as characters, Tryco Slatterus, “The Champion” comes to mind. He usually fights major strong characters: the Thing, Silver Surfer.
It was a bad movie and he was bad in it. Nice, simple explanation.
That movie was just dumb as fuck and felt like it was started in mid 2000s and deserved to fail.
That western theme duel between the BA and one of the henchman should have gotten him banned from DC alone.
They show a shot of BA’s hip, then a shot of the henchman hip. Are we supposed to feel tension? You have already established he is bulletproof. It ends exactly as you would have expected. Bullets bounce off BA and he hits the henchman with lighting. What was the point of that dipshit scene?I wathced it for “free” during a Comcast free week and still wanted my money back.
I don’t think The Rock has ever been this embarrassed by something before.
One weird thing tangentially related to the whole Black Adam mess is that DC League of Super Pets was actually a pretty good movie, and Johnson seemed to have at least a marginal amount of self awareness with the Black Adam cameo in it. Maybe that was just because it was a comedy and animated so the stakes were lower, but he could have used a little more of that energy in the film itself, and certainly in his response to its weak BO.
I’m making that picture of The Rock into my facebook banner. That’s hilarious.
1)Black Adam is a minor DC character that people dont have a huge amount of fondness for and non-comics nerds had no knowledge of him at all. Blue Beetle is more liked than Black Adam. 2) They spent too much money making/promoting it which made it unlikely to ever be able to be a huge financial hit. 3) The movie was just ok.
A movie that no one saw, and crying over not getting a sequel that no one wants. The disconnect from reality is striking.
While I’m sure the timing had some to do with it but the truth is there was absolutely nothing original about this film that could make it stand out other than characters only fanboys would know about and performances that seemed like the actors knew and put that level of excitement into their performances.
Shazam, regardless how mid-tier a commodity he is, was fun. It had the same Guardians/Ant-Man vibe and, considering the tone of the Snyderverse, it was a refreshing change. But for anyone to think they could spin Black Adam off that vibe and not only go back to that tone but make it twice as violent? This was stupid from the word go and, considering who was pushing it, is anyone surprised?
The only reason this made any money past the DC crowd’s hope and prayers was because people wanted to see The Rock brutalize people and, since that is pretty much his only value to any movie, it made that money as well. This was akin to Hancock, where no one knew the character but the star power could at least get you in the seat. Difference is Will Smith can actually act. The Rock is trash. Someday everyone will realize that.
Alternate Headline: Rock in Shock, Can’t Grok Black Adam Stock Dock
Subheading: Dwayne in vain tries to explain box office pain
The only vortex here worth considering is the spiral Mr. The Rock appears to be in.
To be fair, The Rock performs in all his movies, he’s a performer not an actor. He’s The Rock in all his movies. So I’m not sure at what point he “won the super bowl” for them to “drop their star quarterback”.
Guardians of the Galaxy skewed Hollywood’s perception of what obscure comic book franchises could do. Guardians was launched when Marvel was at the peak of its powers AND everyone was trying to convince themselves that they really really loved Chris Pratt. I think Hollywood looked at Guardians and concluded that it didn’t matter if a comic book franchise wasn’t well known, you could blow one up if you were willing to spend a bunch of money on it. Wrong.Black Adam fell for this trap. As did Marvel themselves, when they tried to launch another only-for-the-hardcores franchise (The Eternals) after the Marvel luster had worn off a bit, and it died painfully in public.A few have broken through – the first Shazam for example. But Shazam was marketed as a standalone kid’s movie, not part of the DC hero universe. I don’t think most of us even knew it was supposed to be part of the DC hero universe.
“You know what it is?” Johnson asked Hart. “It’s like new ownership coming in and buying an NFL team going, ‘Alright.
Not my head coach. Not my quarterback. Doesn’t matter how many times we
won the Super Bowl. Doesn’t matter how many rings we got. I’m going
with somebody else.’”It’s quite telling that Johnson, who ALWAYS plugs his latest get rich quick scheme, didn’t even use the XFL in his clunky metaphor.
He’s just bitter he didn’t get a Barbie cameo.
I thought it was an odd choice to began with. I am a fan of the Rock and of super hero films and I just couldn’t get excited about Black Adam. It did not interest me.