There aren’t many superheroes out there like Black Adam, but that hasn’t stopped producer Hiram Garcia, director Jaume Collet-Serra and leading man Dwayne Johnson from comparing the DC Comics favorite to any number of pre-existing pop culture favorites to try and give us a handle on what we’ve got on our hands when the movie comes to theaters next summer.
Even if you don’t have the slightest clue who Teth-Adam is, a pretty decent picture is being painted. Johnson has touted the antihero’s lack of a no-kill rule, Collet-Serra named him as the Dirty Harry of superheroes, and now Garcia has outlined to CBR that he’s got plenty in common with The Boys‘ sociopathic Homelander, the grizzled Wolverine and motor-mouthed Deadpool, too.
“I think people are very used to heroic versions of Dwayne Johnson, right? I mean, he’s a heroic guy. He’s just a natural leader. He’s very charismatic. He’s very positive, loves to give advice. He has all the elements of a hero. So anytime we can play against those types a bit and still deliver a lot of the things that fans like and still deliver something different is really appealing to us.
There’s antiheroes in the hero world, but we’ve never seen an antihero at that power scale, because a Homelander is more full villain, and Deadpool, obviously, and Logan are antiheroes, but they’re not flying around and so forth and can move a planet. Black Adam is a very unique figure to be that powerful and be on that side of the debate. So very appealing… It’s one of the reasons why we’ve always wanted to do Black Adam, for many years,” he concluded.”
Those are some interesting comparisons to make, but all we’ve seen so far to formulate our own vision of Black Adam inside our heads was the sizzle reel showcased at DC FanDome, which was admittedly tantalizing if far too short. In the broadest of strokes, Black Adam is not somebody you want to get on the wrong side of, something we’ll be discovering firsthand in a little over eight months when Johnson’s passion project that’s been fifteen years in the making explodes onto the big screen at long last.