The first trailer for the upcoming Black Adam movie has just been released and it presents
Dwayne Johnson's DC antihero as being seemingly invincible.
Judging from the first trailer, Dwayne Johnson's antihero in the upcoming Black Adam could
be essentially immortal.
After over a decade in development, The Rock's superhero origin movie is on the way, with
Black Adam's first full trailer hitting the internet.
The teaser references Teth-Adam's comic book history as a slave in the ancient nation of
Kahndaq, and places a very strong emphasis on his power level in the movie.
In the comics, Teth-Adam was bestowed with the powers of the gods and used them to unleash
merciless vengeance on his and his people's oppressors.
As Black Adam, he is extremely powerful, with superhuman strength, speed, flight, and other
abilities.
The Black Adam trailer also shows Johnson's character as seemingly impervious to any and
all harm, and this is very much in line with his comic book background.
In the comics, Black Adam is also an effectively invincible character with few weaknesses.
The magical basis of his powers makes sorcery one of his few weaknesses, as well as lightning.
Despite the appearance in the film by the Justice Society of America, however, the Black
Adam trailer doesn't show any characters who are fully like Adam in terms of invulnerability.
Rockets, machine guns, blunt trauma - nothing can hurt the magically powered antihero.
That doesn't mean that Adam is totally undefeatable; there is his aforementioned weakness to magic.
It can also be expected that Adam will face some kind of obstacle or opponent of a similar
power level in the movie simply for there to be any risk for him at all.
That said, as the big-screen debut of a character whose history has been reshaped and retconned
multiple times, the Black Adam trailer has let Black Adam's Injustice mindset to fighting
evil be known.
It's also shown that he's all but totally indestructible by any known characters in
the movie so far.
As the film's leading man and executive producer, Dwayne Johnson is well-known for his marketing
savvy.
With Black Adam being sold as much on his involvement and passion for the project as
on the DC character himself, the trailer's clear mandate was in familiarizing the world
with Johnson's character.
In showing Adam being harmed by nothing thrown at him, Black Adam appears intent on minimizing
any and all vulnerability of its antihero to set him apart from other superhero adventures
populating movie theaters.
With Black Adam releasing in October, Johnson and everyone involved has gone out of their
way to show Adam as virtually unstoppable.
Indeed, the question could well be whether or not Superman is the only opponent who could
stand his ground against Adam.
With Dwayne Johnson long envisioning Black Adam and Henry Cavill's Superman doing battle,
after the release of Black Adam, the Man of Steel himself might be Adam's true Kryptonite.
Despite being played by such a lovable actor as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, the first trailer
for DC's Black Adam presents him as a killer, questioning whether or not he'll be a hero
or a villain in the film.
The character of Black Adam has been one yearning for an on-screen debut since 2006 when New
Line Cinemas first displayed interest in producing a Shazam film starring Dwayne Johnson as the
hero's arch-nemesis, Black Adam, also known as Teth-Adam.
Since then, the character's growing popularity and status as one of DC's most powerful figures
has only grown, leading Warner Bros. to officially give Johnson his own spin-off as the character
back in 2017.
While details on the movie's plot have been relatively light, there are a few things that
fans know of for certain.
The movie won't feature Zachary Levi playing Shazam, and will instead use the Justice Society
of America as an "antagonist" and a physical threat for the ruler of Khandaq.
On top of this, based on the footage from the teaser trailer it can be assumed that
the movie will be a retelling of the character's origins, as Adam was killed in Ancient Khandaq
before being accidentally resurrected by an expedition team stumbling upon his tomb.
Considering that in the comics, Adam wages a bloody war on the dictatorial rulers now
governing modern Khandaq, it's also not much of a stretch to assume that the movie might
follow him fighting the Justice Society of America and liberating his former kingdom.
For many DC fans, the teaser was exactly what they expected from such a beloved and complicated
character.
However, for the general audience, some people might be confused by the brutality displayed
by a "superhero," which introduces a specific point of contention: is Black Adam a killer,
and does that make him a supervillain?
In the almost 80 years since Adam was created, the character has gone through many different
characterizations and origins, but the most popular came about in the pages of a 2002
ongoing series about the JSA (a team that will now be adapted in both Black Adam and
Stargirl).
In it, Black Adam is revealed to be the former ruler of Ancient Khandaq, bestowed powers
by the wizard Shazam and transformed into the character Mighty Adam.
However, Khandaq is conquered by a superpowered villain named Ahk-ton, who also murders Adam's
family, prompting him to seek revenge by any means necessary.
The wizard Shazam, of course, disagrees, and strips Adam of his powers and buries him in
a tomb underneath the kingdom, where he stays until he's accidentally resurrected hundreds
of years later.
Because of his traumatic childhood and the tragic loss of his family, Adam is a character
who believes in the ubiquity of absolute justice; to him, there is no gray area.
Evildoers deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the word, and that outlook is precisely
why Black Adam and Shazam come to blows so often.
With that being said, Adam's killing might seem overtly villainous from the outside looking
in, but much like a superpowered version of characters like Red Hood or The Punisher,
his moral structure is too complex to be classified as a villain.
He truly believes in justice, even joining the Justice Society of America at one point
in the comics.
Shortly after his violent liberation of Khandaq, Teth-Adam and Billy Batson even came to an
understanding of sorts, with the Marvel Family serving as guests of honor at Adam's wedding
to Isis.
Even though the DCEU is in a constant state of flux regarding what is or is not canon,
most of the heroes in the DC Comic Universe have an absolute stance against killing.
Teth-Adam frequently finds himself in conflict with them because he doesn't share that same
viewpoint.
The first trailer for Black Adam that dropped at DC FanDome 2021 makes it very clear the
character isn't bound by the same moral logic, so it'll be incredibly interesting to see
how he conflicts with some of the other characters when his movie hits theaters.