Black Adam - Nov 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about ‘Black Adam’, before MCU’s ‘BP2’ steals the spotlight.

‘Black Adam’ works. It is not the most powerful or poignant installment in the DCEU series, it is not necessarily even ‘the most’, period, but it works. The villains are villains, (with the final Big Bad being an actual devil of all things), while the good guys… Pause.

The titular character is an anti-hero, right? Yeah, no, it does not work like that. When anti-heroes first entered the fray, the cultural landscape was still dominated by heroes and villains; an anti-hero was a sinner who had found redemption; the grey area was located between light and dark; people could dwell there, spiritually speaking, but sooner or later they would have to make a choice between the aforementioned light and dark… or else they were NPC characters who had no role in the piece of fiction at all. Now, though, this dichotomy is over, grey morality is a thing, and people like Black Adam are just heroes who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty… unlike the Justice Society league, for example.

Here is…not so much another pause, as an admittance of a sticky issue: why was Amanda Waller bossing Justice Society league around? In the DC canon, she runs only the Suicide Squad, (which was absent in ‘Black Adam’), nothing else. True, the status of the Justice Society itself is suspect – these days it is more apocrypha than canon in the DC comics at worst, and a second tier to the JL at best…but we still got the JL in the DCEU, right? Henry Cavill is returning from the witcher-verse, and Gal Gadot has never left, correct? Somehow, the JL never gets a mention in ‘Black Adam’, and while the entire film never feels like a reboot, somehow it does not feel like a part of the already-established DC-verse.

…Yes, I am quite aware that DCEU - and the rest – are being overhauled by their superiors in real life, (re: the Batgirl film), but that is not a problem of ‘Black Adam’ cast and crew: they set out to make a movie, (and not, say, a pet project of The Rock), and they delivered. What else?

‘Black Adam’ is an entertaining movie. Well, naturally – it is a comic-book film, is not supposed to be informative or educational. The good people are good, the bad are bad, and Black Adam and his Kahndaq are not about to bow to the U.S. any time soon, Superman or not. Can the latter defeat the titular character is another issue, but it was not explored in the movie canon – and then there is Shazam. More precisely, Black Adam is a Shazam villain, (or at least a nemesis), so you would think that DCEU’s Shazam would appear in the movie under one pretext or another, but no, nothing. Is there some problem with Shazam’s actor in real life, I know not. Moving on?

Hard to say. Lately the Internet is being bombarded with the ‘BP2’ movie info, but I am holding out – lately MCU was more disappointing than not. ‘Ms. Marvel’ was pointedly downplayed for RL reasons… and she was flat-out lackluster, while ‘She-Hulk’ was a Mary-Sue story, period, with Titania getting the short end of the stick, here. See, a Mary-Sue cannot stand female characters that are equal with her, (and the same goes for the male characters in a Marty-Stu story), and does her best to get rid of them, or at least – seriously diminish them. This is exactly what happens to Titania: at the end of the ‘She-Hulk’ S1, the ‘Hulk-King’ and the Abomination are arrested, and Titania just… vanishes – clearly, the titular character’s deal with K.E.V.I.N. included getting rid of her for good – or something. In any case, the end of ‘She-Hulk’ S1 is all about the titular character and her new and updated family – though with her cousin the Hulk introducing his own son, the situation may begin to change – but what does this have to do with ‘BP2’?

Nothing, sadly. All I wanted to point out is that MCU’s Namor has at least some things in common with MCU’s Killmonger, (now deceased… probably). MCU’s Namor has strong Mesoamerican overtones, and some of his promo images show him wearing a jaguar-head helmet/headpiece/headdress… you get the idea. Plus, there’s his moniker Kukulkan, who was, or is, a Mesoamerican serpent deity in RL – and on the other…paw we have MCU’s Killmonger, who went with the moniker of the ‘Golden Jaguar’ in the first BP film. There are no wild jaguars in the Old World, (which includes Africa); they are an American-only species – and now we get a Namor with strong Mesoamerican connotations. Again, nothing is new under the sun, we already had a half-Japanese Namor, (located on Earth-13410, one Namor Miyamoto), so why not a Mesoamerican one?.. At this point, I am more annoyed with the endless barrage of pro-BP2 promotions, but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon, instead!