‘Black Adam’ Review- Anti-Imperialism, Innit?

This is gonna be kind of a weird one for me.

Spoilers incoming, so be warned.

The superhero genre is built on the backs of military propaganda for WWII, but as the genre has grown with the times, so has the look of military propaganda. The United States has become a global police force and uses that guise to invade other countries. Namely, it has a very strong presence in the SWANA region and uses that influence to maintain control over their natural resources (oil).

This topic has been very important to me for a very, very long time. It wasn’t until I read Edward Said’s Orientalism that I had the words to describe what I was seeing on the screen and what it was advocating for. There’s a lot that seems harmless but perpetuates a norm that’s anything but.

Black Adam finally tried to break that streak in a way I haven’t seen any mainstream superhero movie try so far. It has SWANA people both on and behind the screen in some capacity (I peeped an Iranian screenwriter) and you can tell that at the very baseline level, they cared. And, as corny as that is, that means a lot to me so I’ve extended a lot of grace to this movie’s rating when I probably otherwise wouldn’t have.

That being said, the anti-imperialist themes of Black Adam are like if you took shrooms and stared into alphabet soup. Every so often, for a blissful second, the letter would come together and spell it out for you so clearly, but at every other moment, it’s just alphabet soup. The movie is alphabet soup. Even the worst alphabet soup out of a can still has a little flavor to it, some fun times, but it’s still just trying to make sense of a mess.

When the characters look straight into the camera and are like “imperialism bad”, they’re right! The reason, though, that the bluntness was needed is because the allegory collapses under its weight. With the number of motivations and groups of people involved, it loses sight of the point.

A huge contributor to the confusion is that the allegories don’t have clear equivalencies. The “Intergang” that occupies Kahndaq, the West Asian city where the film takes place, is described as a militant force, but has no country nor ideology. They take these resources… for what? This is never made clear, which later becomes a problem.

At first, based on a bit of a monologue at the beginning, you think that the Intergang is some sort of stand-in for a western force. They’re called imperialists. But later, you learn that Ishmael, who we thought to be working with the protagonists, actually is the leader of the Intergang. So, this isn’t an imperialist force at all, is it? The leader of this group is descended from the region, and they’re abiding by his personal interests, rather than operating under a larger system that imperializes and conquers other lands for foreign interest.

When Ishmael asks Adrianna, the woman he betrayed, how she could side with foreign invaders for teaming up with the Justice Society, I first thought he was being a hypocrite. He’s the leader of Intergang after all. But then I realized that Intergang is not defined enough to be classified as a true imperialistic force, and I just had to accept that his question is genuine. The Intergang, then, is not an imperialistic force in the narrative, but an allegory for oppressive regimes in West Asia.

Black Adam, then, becomes a movie about a foreign force helping liberate a foreign country from its domestic, oppressive, militant regime. Which, let me remind you, is exactly how imperialism actually operates in Central and West Asia. Western (American/British) interests intervene for their own personal interests, destabilize the region, and an oppressive regime takes control in the subsequent power vacuum or in the midst of instability. Those same American forces then use the oppressive regime as justification to occupy and fight a quasi-war in the country as a “global police force”.

Which, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the Justice Society describes itself as a “global police force” or a “global peacekeeper”? Adrianna tries to tell them off for not caring before when they were occupied, instead only showing up when Black Adam does as a threat to be neutralized, but I thought this movie was supposed to be against imperialism aka foreign intervention? It gets murky.

The Justice Society, known as the Justice Society of America in the comics, got its American association chopped for this movie. Probably because the optics would be bad if they pointed attention to how the global police force that forcibly inserts itself in foreign entanglements is, indeed, American. They’re bossed around by Amanda Waller, a US operative, so they’re still American. Just toothless all around. I’m still going to shorten their acronym to JSA, though,

I don’t actually have much to say about the JSA. My brain kinda turned off when they were on screen. What can I say, they were charming to watch. The big emotional moments didn’t work for me, because I didn’t see enough of them to care about them as people. But… they were fun to watch, even if their justification for being in the film, framed as heroes, is weak. Every explanation for why it is okay for Black Adam and Adrianna to work with the JSA feels so “this needs to happen in the plot because it has to” that I don’t think there would be much value in trying to make logical sense of it. But it did, certainly, muddy the thematic waters.

At the end of the movie, the JSA and Black Adam dispose of the dictator together. It seems here that the writers realize they have a power vacuum problem. Putting Black Adam on the throne would be just replacing one dictator with another, since he’d rule entirely through brute force and quite literally does not understand modern politics considering he’s like 5000 years old. And so, they end the movie just resolves with “oh Black Adam will just be the protector of Kahndaq”. So, who’s gonna run this city then? The answer can’t just be “the people”. That’s not how it works. It’s a question that the movie doesn’t seem to be very concerned with, but it has to be if it wants its allegory to check out. Otherwise, the loose strand could very well play into pro-Imperialist and Orientalist narratives.

I want to make it very clear that I don’t think that this was the intention of the narrative. The writers wouldn’t call out Imperialism by name, try to write scenes about the people coming together to fight against their oppressors, and give Adrianna back her agency in multiple scenes to reflect how domestic issues should be handled between their people. When the characters get on a soap box, they are right. Imperialism bad. The west doesn’t care. The people should stand against their oppressors. Yada yada. But, the plot and players involved are so convoluted and toothless that the allegory crumbles.

Another thing that Black Adam wants to do is deconstruct the idea of what a hero is. Which, cool. Whatever. That’s never been an idea I’ve been particularly interested in. I’m just not a morally gray girlie, but I see where others find appeal.

The thing about Black Adam is that his personal moral code is supposed to extend to a larger point about what’s acceptable when fighting an oppressive force. Or, at least it thinks it’s challenging that notion.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t really challenge what it means to be a hero. Within the context of DC superheroes, maybe it does a little. People get sad when Superman and Batman kill people. They don’t see that as very heroic. But that’s because they’ve been established as heroes that don’t kill and their enemies have been established as people they have a modicum of empathy for.

The audience is not uncomfortable with the bloodshed Black Adam spills throughout the film, from the brutal kills from the beginning to the end, because he is killing people they do not care about. In America, the heroic thing is to murder your foreign enemies. And so killing Intergang, some nondescript oppressive, militant, occupying force occupying a West Asian country, is nothing shocking. We’ve been conditioned to accept it as a necessary evil to the point where most don’t blink twice anymore. It’s almost a staple of all action and war movies that take place in this region and the people who do the killing are always framed as the hero.

There’s a false dichotomy in Black Adam. The JSA doesn’t kill people, they believe in due process, so the only way to actually get rid of these oppressive occupiers is to be willing to resort to Dark Violence™. Because Black Adam is violent and Kills™, he cannot be a Hero™. In reality, that’s the exact justification that America uses to drone strike West Asia and kill a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. And for the most part, historically speaking, that decision has been framed as the morally correct thing to do in the mainstream. A difficult decision, but one for the greater good. Those who make those hard calls are the heroes of the story.

If Black Adam was an American hero and the movie took place in America, I’m sure we’d be having a very different discussion about the place of violence in revolution and fighting your oppressors. But alas, this is a very specifically a SWANA film, and so its context lies in how violence has historically been wielded in that region and for whom it’s acceptable.

If you want to read an interesting essay about oppression, Ursula Le Guin essay titled “A War Without End” is a great one. It’s about the willingness and responsibility of people to fight against their oppression and injustice and the cost associated with it. It doesn’t come down very strong on a final solution, but it explores a lot of questions around oppression that Black Adam tries to simplify. I was reminded of it a couple of times during this film, and if you have me thinking about Le Guin during your movie, you’ve already lost bro. It’s over.

On to normal movie stuff, when the Rock was cast as Black Adam, I asked myself, “Are they really going to send one of the most easily charismatic actors in Hollywood to the emotionless gulag?” The answer is yes.

The Rock was fine. I did not care about his character. For 70% of the film, we think that he’s a kid with a big heart who was willing to die as a martyr. When we learn that isn’t the case, it really doesn’t recontextualize the Rock’s performance. It’s so stilted that it’s near impossible to get a read on the character’s personality.

This movie’s third act also felt an hour long. There were just so many action sequences that felt like they were supposed to signal the end. Honestly, they didn’t feel like a drag or a slog individually, but so many in succession tired me out. The huge third-act fight sequence with the JSA and Black Adam fighting Devil!Ishmael was just a mess. There was so much going on emotionally that I couldn’t bother to care about any of it.

The third act is also where the themes go all wonky. They just want the cool factor of Black Adam fighting alongside the JSA. Which, I get it. But also, at that point, I found most of what was going on the screen to be completely pointless. The movie had already found a good resolution with Black Adam deciding to submerge himself, his self-acceptance arc as believing that he can do right with the power he’s been given even though he isn’t pure of heart is extraneous. Why should I care? It wasn’t something that we saw him grapple with throughout the film. Even without knowing his backstory, it would’ve been possible to outline this insecurity Black Adam has. Instead, he proudly blows stuff up and kills people. The shame around his morality is such a sharp 11th-hour turn that I’m not sure what to do with it.

On a positive note, both in the narrative and in this review, I kind of love the presence Amon, Adrianna’s son, had throughout the film. His character’s presence was strong and meaningful in the narrative, and it was a fun addition. Screw that Black Adam vs Superman crossover bullshit, I wanna see Black Adam’s Amon become besties with Shazam’s Freddie Freeman.

In the end, the movie was a movie. There were characters in it who did things. I am almost beginning at this point to lean into the zaniness of it. No, I did not laugh once, but the humor kept the movie from sinking. You need the camp, besties. It cannot stand on its own. I appreciate the attempts at heart and authenticity, but it needs cleaner writing to pull it off. I know this script was written and had to be rewritten by new screenwriters and I’m sure they had numerous constraints. But man, the final product was a mess.