The couple of reviews I’ve read make this 100% in the watch at home camp (if I ever bother). Everything I’ve read or seen about this film, from the reviews to the trailers to the Rock’s insistence than this “changes the DC universe” (or whatever was his claim) convinces me this is going to be profoundly mediocre.
DC movies don’t exactly have a great track record anyway. This certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to improve their record any.
This is what I really look for in a superhero movie. Especially DC films, which get the benefit of bottomed-out expectations. Which is a shame, because when I was a kid I loved Stan Lee, but was a hardcore DC fan when it came to content. But in the movieverses, I go into Marvel movies expecting a minimum 7 out of 10 quality and am only occasionally disappointed, whereas I go into DC movies with the meter set at about 2 and ready to add another director to my “don’t really like them anymore” list.
All that said, the spawn and I are going to see this tonight, so will report back.
Please do! I would love another reason to go see it on the big screen too.
The nice thing about seeing mediocre movies in the theater is that you’re kind of forced to actually sit through them. I have huge problems doing that at home. If a movie is bad, I can laugh and sit through it, if it’s good, I can enjoy myself and have a great time, but if it’s mediocre and I get bored, if I’m at home, I just usually can’t get through it. That’s why I still haven’t made it all the way through Batman & Robin and Aquaman. But if I’d seen them in the theater, at least I would have finished seeing them! (And therefore might have realized that they had some great parts after all? Unknown, since I haven’t seen them all the way through).
So I should probably only watch this movie in the theater!
Huh. I thought Aquaman was actually pretty decent. Not great, by any means, but on the DC movies scale, I’d put it just behind Wonder Woman (the first one.)
See? If I’d been forced to sit through the whole thing in a theater I might feel the same way!
Its absurd, and leans all the way into the absurd.
The best DC film, Wonder Woman included, IMO.
Black Adam?
Aquaman.
What do you have against nipples in the Batsuit??? FREE THE NIPPLE!
So, the kid and I just came back from it.
It was… entertaining. Johnson played the character well. Brosnan’s Dr. Fate was great. Hated the way Hawkman was portrayed. (And zero indication if he was Carter Hall Egyptian rebirth Hawkman or Katar Hol intergalactic cop Hawkman.) Atom Smasher was amusing, and Cyclone was okay and probably fantastic if you know the Ma Hunkle JSA stories that led to her character.
Lots and lots of CGI fighting and violence which mostly just bores me nowadays… Shang-Chi was one of the only recent superhero flicks I’ve seen lately that had interesting CGI battles.
The highlight was that it was a good origin story, with some non-comic elements (unless they were added in the last set of DC reboots) that I was not expecting that made it way more interesting.
Had some interesting peripheral characters and a yawn-inducing big bad. My biggest problems was that they made the JSA pretty much jerks so they could have them spend half the movie battling or at least yelling at Black Adam. There should be a law that no movie can spend more than 10 minutes on heroes fighting heroes. Unless it’s Hulk vs. Superman, I’d let them have 15 for that.
So my rating is… 6 out of 10, I guess. It was mostly fun, there were some funny moments, Johnson did a surprisingly good job playing the character (helps that Black Adam is brooding; Johnson’s nailed the brooding), the characters reflected their comic personalities unlike the Snyder films, and there’s a Peacemaker connection that earns it an easy extra .25 or so.
If you want to see superhero CG battles, if you’re a long-time DC fan who never thought you’d see Dr. Fate or Atom Smasher onscreen, you love The Rock, or you just want a non-boring action movie to kill 2 hours and 18 minutes in, go for it. It definitely relies on visual spectacle and while I’d rate it a “go if you’re a fan” on the big screen, I don’t think it’s going to fare as well on your home TV or iPad.
Stay for the mid-credits scene.
Is the mid credits scene the one DC and the Rock have just been spoiling outright on the press tour?
I was avoiding spoilers before seeing it, so not sure…
If they were teasing Henry Cavill, then yup.
Yeah that’s the one
FWIW, Black Adam is never very far onto the “hero” line of the equation and is often an outright (if relatable) villain. I suspect putting him center stage forces the hero side but…let’s put it this way. Black Adam was the villain in the comic book story the Shazam movie adapted.
Oh, absolutely. But in the comic he fancies himself Khandaq’s protector, even if his methodology is suspect. But yeah, in this case it’s not heroes fighting heroes, it’s “movie protagonists who aren’t exactly heroes but end up defending the side of good for their own purposes, fighting heroes.” :-)
Question for the better versed in DC lore, where does the DCEU go from here if we want a villain to unite Black Adam with the other heroes in the face of a bigger threat? Spoilers for Black Adam movie (which I haven’t actually seen, but read about):
Clearly a showdown between Black Adam and Superman is being teased, and I assume it would be the pretty standard fighting each other until a bigger threat unites them, so who is the most future-of-the-DCEU-friendly villain to put them on the same side?
Darkseid seems like a non-starter after Snyder poisoned that well. Superman (and the rest of the JL) weren’t irrevocably damaged by the JL movie because you can sort of operate from the context of vaguely acknowledging some version of those events happened as you move forward without being too tied to specifics, while Darkseid is at the core of the differences between the theatrical release and Snyder cut. Seems like they’d want to leave that baggage behind.
Who’s the DC’s next best “Thanos”?
Somehow despite not being powered, the Joker continues to plague even Superman.
It’s Jared’s chance to shine!
The Anti-Monitor?
Superman but made evil? (I guess they did that one)
Lex Luthor? (I guess they did that one)
Brainiac? (I honestly don’t remember if they did that one, but they probably did)
General Zod? (they definitely did that one, both clothed and naked)
Starro the Conqueror? (The Suicide Squad did that one)
Space Cabbie and Detective Chimp, but made evil?
I can’t really think of too many Thanos-scale bad guys, but I never got into the Green Lantern, Adam Strange, and other DC cosmic stuff. Except for when Starman went on a long run into the cosmos. Would it be accurate to say that DC villains are typically more on the human scale? The Legion of Doom might be able to pull off something that could make the Earth uninhabitable, but I don’t think they could kill half of all living things throughout the galaxy and beyond.