DC has always made excellent animated specials. I can’t name a single one that I could not recommend and the most recent one, DC Showcase: Constantine – House Of Mystery, is a must-watch. If only they would apply the same quality and writing to their movies. Maybe the DC Cinematic Universe wouldn’t fumble so much.

Then came Black Adam.

Seeing Dwayne Johnson not playing himself in a movie is refreshing, I like how Black Adam and The Justice Society clashed ideologies, and I adore Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate.

The plot was alright, after 5,000 years the rage-filled Black Adam was reawakened when the same evil returns to threaten his home country. Misplaced by time, he tries to reconcile what he knows and what the people think of him, but before he could even do that, The Justice Society as a foreign entity, tries to impose their ways on him and his oppressed people.

The pieces for an excellent animated special are all there. But it lacks the polish of a blockbuster movie.

Kahndaq, the fictional Middle Eastern country where the movie is set, started as an exotic location, but as the movie goes on, it might as well have been Baghdad, Florida. It all broke apart when the movie starts to tell us more about Amon Tomaz, the “John Connor” of the movie. You know, the would-be “kid in distress”. He was so American they could have called him Andrew Tomas.

The movie also seems to pull punches. When values, way of life, and ideology clash in the movie, it didn’t go far enough for it to make an impact. There is character growth, but it’s limited to Black Adam and Doctor Fate.

What clinches the movie’s fate for me is its numerous side plots and character decisions that don’t make sense. Excusable in an animated special but not in a feature. To me, it took Black Adam from good to average. But it’s still better than the slop Marvel keeps dishing out recently.