Twitter is abuzz over Dwayne’ The Rock’ Johnson’s comments over his protective nature of the Black Adam DC character. If you just read the Twitter comments, you’d think he was slamming the Shazam movie starring Zachary Levi and didn’t want the two characters sharing the same screen. The flies in the face of the comic arcs that have the two eventually facing off.
That has brought about hot takes, hoping the Black Adam movie fails, and your normal Twitter trolls. One problem. That’s not what he said in the Vanity Fair interview. Here’s the actual quote from the interview:
“When the first draft of the movie came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie,” Johnson said. “Now that was the goal — so it wasn’t a complete surprise. But when I read that, I just knew in my gut, ‘We can’t make this movie like this. We would be doing Black Adam an incredible disservice.’ It would’ve been fine for Shazam having two origin stories converge in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.”
“I said, ‘I have to share my thoughts here. It’s very unpopular’ because everybody thought, ‘Hey, this script is great, let’s go make this movie.’ I said, ‘I really think that you should make ‘Shazam!,’ make that movie on its own in the tone that you want. And I think we should separate this as well.'”
In case you’ve lived under a rock, the DCEU is an absolute mess, and one of the bright spots was the 2019 Shazam movie. Having separate origin stories for the characters makes sense instead of shoehorning as many characters as possible into one movie. The Rock is correct here and preserves a bigger movie further down the line when the two do face off as they did in the comics.
Nothing in the above two quotes is wrong. Shazam works well as a standalone origin story for the character, and screen tests have pointed to Black Adam as a hit for DC when it desperately needs to build momentum.
As for tone? Just look at the trailers.
Yep, the tone isn’t remotely similar. While a risk a few years ago, the separation will pay off for the DCEU that could stand a new kickstart.
Image Credit: DC / Warner Brothers