BLACK ADAM Star Dwayne Johnson And Producer Hiram Garcia Address The Character's "Villain" Status

BLACK ADAM Star Dwayne Johnson And Producer Hiram Garcia Address The Character's "Villain" Status

Fans are concerned that the DC Extended Universe's Black Adam will be portrayed in a heroic manner when he's introduced, but some new details about his anti-hero status have been revealed. Check it out...

By JoshWilding - Jul 29, 2019 04:07 AM EST
Filed Under: Black Adam
Source: ComicBook.com
It's been in the works for what feels like forever, but Black Adam is indeed happening with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson attached to star and Jaume Collet-Serra in the director's chair. With the screenplay still being worked on, we don't really know what to expect from the movie but there are concerns that the villain will be watered down due to such a likeable actor being cast in the lead role. 

In a new interview to promote Hobbs & Shaw, Johnson commented on the character status without giving too much away. "Black Adam, how he starts, he starts off as a villain," the actor mused. "Then, he becomes an anti-hero. And then he might become a hero or he might not." 

Black Adam producer Hiram Garcia also threw around the "anti-hero" moniker, and it sounds like that's how the character will be portrayed on the big screen (which could mean he won't even start off as a bad guy). Just how well that will work obviously remains to be seen. 
 
"Well, you're going to meet is you're going to meet a character who's going through a journey. And I think the idea is, look, we know the root of obviously Black Adam. He was created as a villain. And through the love of the fans and through some great writers and storytellers, he evolved into an antihero. The antihero is a character that we always loved and that we responded to. But we understand that there's been many aspects to Black Adam through him. But ultimately this is a guy who he does have a moral compass as skewed as it may be. And ultimately he is a guy that everything has always been driven by his family and what happens to them. And he is never opposed to unleashing hell when you cross him. So I think when you add in those elements of that DNA, those are things we're very aware of."

Taking the anti-hero approach to Black Adam could work, of course, but if that is what's in store for the character, common sense says he will probably clash with Shazam down the line over a misunderstanding as opposed to some evil deed! 

As for when the movie will be released, all Garcia would say is that it will come after Red Notice (which is set to be released in 2020).

What are your thoughts on these comments about Black Adam?
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FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 7/29/2019, 4:59 AM
Well, that’s not really right. He starts of as hero, becomes a villain, then settles in a little grey area.
emeraldtaurus
emeraldtaurus - 7/29/2019, 5:04 AM
It will be similar to Venom .....funny, heroic, action packed but quite goofy. ....which is a good thing (I liked Venom)
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 7/29/2019, 5:07 AM
@emeraldtaurus - I... don’t think it will be, or at least I hope it isn’t. Black Adam isn’t goofy at all. That’d be a total betrayal of his character.
tmp3
tmp3 - 7/29/2019, 5:11 AM
@emeraldtaurus - Venom was the product of Sony execs who wanted to start their own cinematic universe. It had a reportedly troubled production, rewrites and big reshoots. This project sounds a bit like Dwayne's vanity project, but I don't know how much studio interference it'll have since his team is producing it. If it's bad, it'll be for different reasons than why Venom was bad.
Kman
Kman - 7/29/2019, 7:25 AM
@emeraldtaurus - I feel like a more serious tone for Black Adam would contrast well with what he have in Shazam!
WruceBayne
WruceBayne - 7/29/2019, 10:31 AM
@tmp3 - I think Black Adam is going to be bad. He just doesn’t need his own movie. And they need to keep him a villain.
Kozmik
Kozmik - 7/29/2019, 11:24 AM
@emeraldtaurus - Then your stomach is stronger than mine because I thought Venom was barely watchable. And I keep having nightmares about Woody Harrelson in that horrible wig.
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 7/29/2019, 5:04 AM
Despite slightly underperforming, Shazam! was probably the best start to a Shazam film series you could ask for, so I really hope WB don’t shit the bed with future instalments or mess up Black Adam. They’ve got a good little franchise on their hands here.
tmp3
tmp3 - 7/29/2019, 5:07 AM
Speaking of The Rock, I've heard some... less than positive things about Hobbs/Shaw in the quality department. Hopefully this has more care put into it - Dwayne's track record is incredibly hit or miss.
Kumkani
Kumkani - 7/29/2019, 5:13 AM
This movie is just a concept at this point to me
Matador
Matador - 7/29/2019, 5:24 AM
Soooooo....Vegetta...
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 7/29/2019, 5:34 AM
@Matador - More like Namor.

Matador
Matador - 7/29/2019, 6:00 AM
@PlusUltra - Why does your pic have to be bigger than mine? :(
LongMayHeReign
LongMayHeReign - 7/29/2019, 6:09 AM
@PlusUltra - @Matador

Actually, the most accurate comparison I see is this guy...



Remember when Hobbs was the villain, then the anti-hero, and now the full on hero?
Kman
Kman - 7/29/2019, 7:28 AM
@Matador - sounds like somebody has some pic envy
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 5:43 AM
WB has seemed to want to turn everyone squarely into a morally-gray antihero at some point. Superman was never real, Batman's a criminal and he always has been, Deadshot just wants to spend time with his daughter, Harley Quinn just wants to reform the Joker, and the Joker is a really devoted son who just wants to bathe his mother's problems away.

There are good ways to play with moral grayness in contexts that tend to dwell in absolutes. (Krypton has done a pretty astounding job of that by introducing time travel into a context where "the end of the world" is supposedly the good outcome). And there are terrible ways. (Many of the Netflix Marvel shows struggled to navigate basic questions of violence in an unjust society and came across as infantile at times.) But WB in film seems to tend toward a certain nihilism that I'm not really a fan of.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 5:44 AM
(Can I get a ruling on whether this complaining makes me a Marvel stanboy or whatever it's called now. I would think that having the most glowing words for a DC property and a pretty harsh assessment of Marvel's would insulate me, but I can never tell.)
tmp3
tmp3 - 7/29/2019, 5:54 AM
@Spock0Clock - "Joker is a really devoted son who just wants to bathe his mother's problems away"
That's... not true at all, unless they completely rewrote the script.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 5:57 AM
@tmp3 - I was being a bit facetious on that last one. But based on what I've seen and heard, the movie either casts Joker as an outlet for populist rage, albeit flawed, or casts the whole lot together into a mass that some people will still view fairly positively.
tmp3
tmp3 - 7/29/2019, 5:59 AM
@Spock0Clock - I don't think we should blame art for how some morons misinterpret it; the script very clearly paints him as a pathetic and sad man, who's no more heroic than Travis Bickle. Whether Todd Phillips botches that in execution or not we'll know in a month when it screens at Venice, but on the page he's by no means an anti-hero.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 6:17 AM
I guess I'm just frustrated with modern adult storytellers taking these relatively simplistic children's stories and flipping the generally good messages and morals on their head for shock value, drama, or some imagined sophistication. As someone with a passing familiarity of storytelling, I understand the impulse, obviously. If "sympathy for the devil" was good enough for Milton, it's good enough for Hollywood, right?

But it's tricky when dealing with superheroes in a way that it's not for traditional fairytales or ancient myths. Old stories are built on cultural expectations that are generally very alien to modern sensibilities. Again, Milton is a great exemplar of this. When his Satan speaks of the valor of overthrowing a divine king, he does so with the same fervor that Milton had for dethroning the English monarchy. Milton was a Christian, but he was intimately sympathetic with the liberal and populist impulses that would lead a loyal patriot to kill a king.

But superhero comicbooks reflect a society of post-war America, whose values (in broad strokes) are still deeply ingrained in us today and (I think most of us agree) should be. To seek sympathy for comicbook villains, you inevitably have to contort yourself to endorse greed, psychopathy, fascism, rage, nihilism, and all sorts of malicious things. Because superheroics at their core are still pretty simple morality plays.

Marvel showed how dangerous this is with Thanos. The Russos talked about making him the protagonist (fair enough, that's a narrative structural thing), but also making him sympathetic. They showed him grieving the murder of his own daughter as a genuine tragedy for him. The internet was swamped with #ThanosWasRight by people willing to accept (or pretend to accept) unimaginable loss of life as a reasonable temporary solution to a resource problem.

This is complicated, and I've already written a book here about it so I won't go into the counterpoints and on-the-other-hands (and there are a lot of those). I'm just saying that this is potentially dangerous stuff, and it does concern me. This genre is important to me and increasingly helping to form the moral outlook of kids for years to come. I'm just putting that concern out there.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 6:20 AM
@tmp3 - I just did a big dump about the broader concerns I have about this below. I'll just add this point to respond to you:

On a fundamental level, I don't believe authorial intent matters that much. What matters is how people see that art and respond to it. And responsible artists should always have an eye on how morons may misinterpret it. (Obviously nobody is perfect, but an attempt should be made to keep from accidentally becoming a rallying point for some heinous social movement.)
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 6:25 AM
Or, I guess it's "above" now. Words.

And I said "modern adult storytellers", but I really mean to include the second and third generation of comic writers going back into the seventies. Not every deconstruction is bad or anything like that, but just that there is danger in taking something simple, pure, and aimed at children, and twisting it into the opposite of what it was to begin with, while still expecting those children to be in the audience.
tmp3
tmp3 - 7/29/2019, 6:34 AM
@Spock0Clock - I think this comes down to impact vs. intent. It's not like sad, angry men would be any less sad and/or angry if movies like Taxi Driver or A Clockwork Orange never came out. So much good art has morally unethical characters doing morally unethical things, but to think The Wolf of Wall Street condones Belfort's actions is to completely misunderstand the movie. I mean, just this past weekend a billion think-pieces were launched on how ethical it was for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to show characters doing questionable things.
If the only art produced was that which only had morally upstanding protagonists we'd lose out on a lot of great stuff. We'll see how Joker goes, but if it's bad it won't be because the Joker's an asshole - it'll be because it's a bad movie.
Chewtoy
Chewtoy - 7/29/2019, 8:53 AM
@tmp3 - I do think that there’s a difference between saying “the viewer has to think critically about the character presented solely in this challenging R rated film”, and saying “the viewer has to think critically *this one time* about this widely known children’s entertainment character and possibly divorce the intent of all those countless other appearances from this one, when applicable.”

It is a different kind of minefield... which is not to say that it can’t be navigated, but it’s a concern.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 7/29/2019, 9:00 AM
@tmp3 - It doesn't take an unorthodox reading of Taxi Driver or A Clockwork Orange to see it as ultimately vindicating Alex or Bickle. (In the case of A Clockwork Orange, there is certainly a sharper critique in there against society itself which is part of the conversation.)

But Taxi Driver and A Clockwork Orange and Wolf of Wall Street (and the murder of Sharon Tate) aren't Superman and Batman movies. Just by virtue of being a Superman and Batman movie, WB is signalling to parents that children should see the movie and regard them as role models. WB has licensed Mattel to make Suicide Squad Harley Quinn dolls. This is a completely different conversation than whether explicit art can be responsible.

(In my view) seeing a children's property and thinking "man, I wonder how [frick]ed up I can make this" is a pretty lame edgelordy art, but sure, it's art. But then continuing to market the supposedly adult version back to the same kids is [frick]ed up.

I'm not clutching my pearls about the Boys (I think it's pretty damn good), and I'm not against dark and twisted explorations of basically any subject matter. But doing so using characters that were built up (at least partially) role models I'm concerned does violence to our culture and the legacy of those characters (as I think Batman vs. Superman demonstrated).
Chewtoy
Chewtoy - 7/29/2019, 9:02 AM
@Spock0Clock - The one thing I did feel was missing from Endgame was a hero verbally taking apart Thanos’s argument. Neither of the two films gave a counterpoint to him. Emotionally, it wasn’t needed as Marvel was successful in making us feel the stakes... we all wanted the snapped characters back too. But for tradition’s sake and completion’s sake, I would have liked to have heard a dressing down from Cap. Thanos was a talker... there was room for it.
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