Having comfortably conquered the global box office with a worldwide opening weekend in excess of $140 million, Black Adam has exploded out of the blocks – even if the reviews from critics have indicated that the hierarchy of power hasn’t exactly been changed in one fell swoop.
Leading man and producer Dwayne Johnson may have been the driving force behind the project escaping 15 years in development hell, but the latest installment in the DCEU is far from a one-man show. Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate has been stating his case as MVP after fans instantly took him to their hearts, but Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman also gets plenty of time to shine.
As the stoic, dignified, but still charismatic leader of the Justice Society, the actor’s on-point costume and chemistry with Teth-Adam has proven to be one of Black Adam’s strongest suits. However, during an interview with CBR, the actor admitted that he had to overcome his fear of heights beforehand, which is incredible considering he’s playing a character with literal wings who spent a great deal of time strapped in a wire rig being thrown around in front of a green screen during production.
“We would start the days pretty early. I got down there a couple of months before we started shooting so I could train with the wirework team. We had a fantastic team. I remember the first day getting in the wires. They took me up and then brought me all the way down so I could land. They took me up about 40 feet. In my mind, I was like, ‘We don’t want to start at five feet and figure it out from there? We don’t want to ease our way into this?’.
Regardless of how macho, manly, or strong you think you are, there is nothing that prepares you for going up 40 feet in the air and looking directly at the ground. ‘Okay, we are going to drop you now.’ ‘Wait. What?’ You are speeding towards the ground, and you just have to challenge your fears, which was the best part of the experience for me.”
Now that he’s put his fears behind him to soar in more ways than one, we can expect Hodge’s Hawkman and the rest of the JSA to become key cogs in the DCEU machine, with Johnson already teasing that more adventures for Black Adam are on the way sooner rather than later.