Dwayne Johnson tantalizingly revealed that while Superman and the majority of the DCEU’s superheroes operate under a strict no-kill policy, unless of course we’re talking about Ben Affleck’s Batman who definitely didn’t murder any hapless henchmen according to Zack Snyder, Black Adam most certainly does not.
As the world’s biggest movie star, Johnson has a carefully curated on and offscreen persona to protect, but one of the side effects is that it’s been a long time since he took any creative risks. While Black Adam certainly isn’t a risk seeing as it features one of the most popular actors on the planet diving into cinema’s most bankable genre, the comic book adaptation sounds as though it’ll have harder edges than much of his recent work.
In a new interview, producer Hiram Garcia teased that a PG-13 rating isn’t going to compromise Teth-Adam’s quest for vengeance, and he even pulled out the standard comparison to The Dark Knight for good measure when revealing the titular antihero’s body count isn’t going to be affected by the restrictions of what can be shown on film.
“This will be PG-13, but it’s not because we’re being forced to be PG-13. The way we devised the movie, it just wasn’t necessary to make it R, and it’s something we discussed because we did want to be true to the character. The truth is that we felt we were properly able to represent the edge and power that Black Adam has without needing to go to an R rating. This movie can thrive in a PG-13 space and that’s great for us because we want to introduce Black Adam to as many people as possible. No one ever felt like The Dark Knight was too soft. That was probably one of the hardest PG-13s you’ve ever seen. That’s the way we’ve approached our PG-13, and by no means has that rating limited our kill count!”
Obviously, we’re not expecting to see Dwayne Johnson popping heads and tearing his enemies limb from limb, but having been attached to the role for close to fifteen years, he’ll know better than most how important it is to reflect Black Adam’s comic book roots as someone painted in many shades of gray.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen The Rock cut loose and venture outside of his wheelhouse as the modern era’s premiere family-friendly action hero, so the prospect of Black Adam letting him throw the shackles off is a very exciting notion indeed.