Dwayne ‘The Rock' Johnson dubbed 2022 the year “The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe” would change. One of the few legitimate movie stars remaining in Hollywood, Johnson finally made his long-awaited super (or anti) hero debut in Black Adam this past October. However, the result was anything but game-changing for Hollywood's proverbial golden-goose, ‘franchise saviour', etc.; it was, undeniably, a failure. Only two months after Black Adam's release, Johnson and new Co-DC CEO, James Gunn, announced that ‘The Man in Black' would not be returning for a sequel. In the same year, however, Johnson's fellow former WWE Champions successfully returned to their superhero characters. John Cena cemented his super/anti-hero status in the much-lauded Peacemaker series. Dave Bautista then reminded viewers why Drax is such a beloved staple in the MCU with a fun cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder and a featured part in the feel-good Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
In addition, Rian Johnson closed out the year by one-hundred-percent agreeing to the statement that Bautista is the greatest wrestler-turned-actor, suggesting that the only hierarchy that changed in 2022 was Johnson's status as the premiere former wrestler in Hollywood. Fans debated the director's opinion, countering with The Rock's position as a superior star, which is undeniable, as Johnson remains a bigger box office draw than his wrestling peers, and one failure hardly changes that. But if 2022 highlighted anything, it is that his commitment to adhering to his star persona as the charismatic, loveable action hero with a grade-A sense of humour has handcuffed him. Yes, this star image is arguably the primary reason why he has become a global superstar, yet it's also the crux of why he failed to become a champion in the superhero genre like Bautista and Cena.
Various film theorists have spent years dissecting how star images are created by taking elements of a star's real life and expertly merging that with an on-screen character. Theorist Christine Geraghty stated that stars are: “providing the pleasures of stability and repetition and the guarantee of consistency in the apparent plethora of choice offered by the expanding media.” In the past decade there has been no better illustration of this than Dwayne Johnson. After re-entering the action genre in 2010 and experiencing some setbacks with intense, no-nonsense action flicks like Faster (2010) and Snitch (2013), Johnson found his perfect formula with high-paced action adventures. The cycle has seen a regurgitation of films like Hobbs & Shaw (2019) and Red Notice (2021) that embody the former WWE Superstar's MO of fun, where he can play his charismatic self while beating up bad guys and delivering comedic one-liners.
The formula has proven mightily successful and endeared him to audiences around the world. But this success has operated largely on the other side of Hollywood and away from the dominant cinematic force that is superhero films. Quentin Tarantino recently highlighted, much to the dismay of some, that superhero projects have rendered movie stars obsolete. According to Tarantino, the content or comic book characters are the stars in the eyes of audiences, not the actors who play them. Essentially stating audiences come to see these characters, not the stars behind them — a reality that had not plagued Johnson's career until 2022.
Although Black Adam was not a property many casual fans were familiar with, a fact Johnson highlighted when defending the film's box office numbers, there remained an expectation among viewers that the film would oblige to the dark lore of the comics. For more casual fans, they were made aware of the anti-hero's contrasting tone through a reference in 2019's Shazam!, where The Wizard explains that a previous champion was corrupted and driven by revenge. In addition, The Rock used his stardom to hammer home the fact Black Adam was a bada** that would kill his enemies, as well as informing Total Film that the role would be “a departure” from what audiences had grown accustomed to seeing from him. The Black Adam film is also inspired by the character's 2011 New 52 comic book origin story, which sees a young boy in Kahndaq granted god-like powers by The Wizards.
However, after the boy shares his powers with his uncle to save his life, the uncle, driven by revenge, kills his nephew, who disagrees with his desire for revenge, to become the menacing and ruthless Black Adam. Those who have seen the 2022 film — know that we see a much lighter version of this origin (spoiler alert). In the film, it's Black Adam's son who gifts him the powers, and after the evil King Ahk-Ton's henchman kills his son, Adam storms the King's palace and, in a rage, kills everyone while destroying the palace in the process. Due to his actions, the wizard Shazam imprisons Adam. Although revenge remained a theme, a man simply driven by the love of his son hardly felt like a polarising anti-hero, but much more like a heroic figure one would associate with Dwayne Johnson.
Unfortunately for the former WWE Champion, tweaking Black Adam's origin story was just the beginning. The entire 2hr 5min runtime feels like a constant battle between the film's source material and maintaining the elements of its movie star. There is no better illustration of this than Black Adam's grand entrance. After archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) is captured by the villainous group Intergang, she reads a text to awaken Teth-Adam (Black Adam). Wearing a black cloak, the anti-hero mercilessly kills members of Intergang by electrifying the skin off their bodies and flinging them around the cave while ominously uttering the words: “Your magic is weak” in Kahndaq's native language as he catches a bullet. It would have been a perfect opening had it not been for what transpired moments later. In what feels like a complete tonal change (one of many), we then see Adam outside the cave battling numerous helicopters and Intergang members.
However, instead of providing more of the same, director Jaume Collett-Serra inserts The Rollin Stones' “Paint It, Black” to accompany the visual of our protagonist watching the fire, bullets, and other machinery charging at him in slow-motion. He then proceeds to dodge and move the weapons into more favourable positions for himself. The playful nature of this moment felt eerily reminiscent of the hilarious slow-motion heroics of Quicksilver during 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, but unlike Quicksilver's scene, Black Adam's slow-mo felt totally out of place for the character. It felt like a desperate attempt to insert a light-hearted moment of violence that coincides with the lovable star image of Dwayne Johnson, not Black Adam, the anti-hero. Interestingly, Bollywood director Ali Abbas Zafar once spoke about merging a superstar with a character in a realistic manner by sticking to the story, as opposed to making things larger-than-life for the sake of it. In Collet-Serra's case, not only does he deviate from the expectations for the central character, but he also painfully forces the lighter tone of a stereotypical Johnson film.
Dwayne Johnson, to his credit, delivers an impressive performance and appears hell-bent on appeasing the masses' expectations of this ruthless DC character. The creative team around him, however, never allows him to fully steer into the dark side. Throughout the narrative, Johnson's character is aligned with a young boy that teaches him “cool catchphrases” and encourages him to be a hero, an old-age trick utilised by films like Terminator 2 (1991) and Iron Man 3 (2013) to make their protagonists endearing and less threatening. In addition, the creators cannot help themselves by constantly inserting one-liners and comical moments, such as Black Adam trying (more than once) to effectively deliver his catchphrase: “Tell them The Man in Black sent you.”
Despite the star's brilliant transitions from stoic figure to rage-fuelled bada**, the narrative he's stuck in cannot stop itself from presenting audiences with The Rock, who just so happens to be playing Black Adam. Johnson's Scorpion King co-star, Kelly Hu, once told Resonate in 2018 that the former wrestler possessed a charisma that made young children, grandmothers, and “everybody in between” love him. This is a fact the creators of the 2022 DC film were well aware of, so despite the narrative trying to force this question of is Black Adam a hero or not? The audience hardly questions his heroics as everything is done to ensure the film's star is never truly disliked. This inability to commit hurts the film's narrative and severely limits the impact of its leading man's performance. Critic Sameen Amer highlighted this for The News on Sunday by stating, “Its reluctance to do something dark and inventive with its protagonist makes Black Adam yet another, middling chapter in the DCEU.”
When it came to John Cena and Dave Bautista's transition into superhero land, it's fair to say there may have been no expectations – for the stars themselves and the comic book characters they were bringing to life. Bautista entered his role as Drax ‘The Destroyer' in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) with no momentum behind his acting career. On top of that, many viewed Guardians as a risky venture in 2014, as it was a relatively unknown property in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The same can also be said for John Cena's Peacemaker series. Cena was still carving out his place in Hollywood when cast as the unheard-of and obscure vigilante who kills for peace in 2021's The Suicide Squad. In the film, Peacemaker was a comedic figure with flashes of intensity. Therefore, when the Peacemaker series rolled around — beyond some laughs — few knew what Cena's character had to offer. In addition, both Bautista and Cena had director James Gunn leading the charge. Gunn also never overexposed the narrative of his projects, allowing audiences to be pleasantly surprised by the relatively unknown comic book material and the depth of his wrestling stars.
Bautista stunned audiences and critics by showing incredible comedic instincts, as well as great intensity and emotion, as Drax. Whether it's was his character's inability to understand metaphors or his raw emotion in Guardians Vol.2 when he screams at Rocket: “Where's Quill?” Bautista brilliantly adapts to where the narrative takes Drax, even if it's wearing a Christmas jumper with a cat on it for 2022's Holiday Special. The former wrestling powerhouse has adapted to various engaging roles ever since — a career path that's earned him many plaudits, such as Rian Johnson's beaming praise. Similarly, in Peacemaker, Cena surprised audiences with his level of emotional depth, too, as Peacemaker shifts from being genuinely unlikable to emotionally praying for the life of his pet bird Eagly, and in the process, garnering genuine sympathy from the audience. This ability to fully immerse themselves in their characters allowed Bautista and Cena to showcase a depth few knew they had — an opportunity Johnson's superior star power did not afford him.
In the end, there have been and will continue to be a multitude of reasons why Dwayne Johnson failed in the genre Cena and Bautista both aced. But one would be hard-pressed to deny that Black Adam was indeed handicapped by the weight of its movie star's required presentation – in a day and age where superstars cannot trump superheroes. Moving forward, Johnson will likely return to the blueprint he has spent the last decade creating, with a Christmas action-adventure titled Red One with Chris Evans and more sequels to hits like Hobbs & Shaw and Red Notice. Films that perfectly cater to his star persona. However, if Johnson wishes to have another crack at a superhero venture, he may need to step back and follow the path set by Cena and Bautista instead of his own recycled formula.
