Black Adam Will Be “Gruesome in Places”

Black Adam dropped its trailer on Wednesday morning, giving the world the first full look at Dwayne Johnson as the titular DC Comics anti-hero. With the trailer came a dark promise; Black Adam is going to kill. In a couple of sequences from the trailer, blood spills from Johnson’s Teth-Adam as he is slain before becoming the super powered character, one which launches a man who steps to him several stories into the sky before presumably plummeting to his death. Black Adam is not playing around. While speaking to ComicBook.com, Black Adam producer Beau Flynn opened up about how far the DC Comics film will push the intensity and violence.

“Just from the experience of all the Dwayne Johnson movies we’ve been privileged to be part of, we’re a four quadrant. I mean, we really like to service all demos, all ages, but we had to be authentic to Black Adam and we had to really push,” Flynn said. “The violence is real and it can be rough and gruesome in places, but I think the audience will be okay. I think the kids will be okay. There is a huge heart in this movie. And at the same time, you have to have fun. You have to have joy in these movies. And I think even when you see the trailer, you see, there’s like even the palette, the colors, the world, it’s not as dark as some other movies, but it still has some dark undertones. And I think that’s important. The tone I think is what I’m really most proud of with the film. That’s hard. Tone is hard.”

Black Adam trying to push the tone and intensity comes at a time when comic book films have been actively exploring new boundaries in the genre. PG-13 has become the standard expectation for films, sometimes pushing the envelope with jump scares and terror as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness recently offered from Marvel’s arsenal. In other cases, DC Comics films will dive into R-rated territories with titles like Birds of Prey or Joker, both of which offered crude language and intense violence. Black Adam does not seem to be going quite as far as either of those titles and R-rated films are quite rare for Johnson with only 2017’s Baywatch and 2013’s Pain & Gain being the R-rated titles from the actor in the last decade. Furthermore, Black Adam is on a collision course with Shazam!, a DC character who was made to be family-friendly in his debut film.

“I think that was why the breakthrough for us was when we separated Shazam! and Black Adam and then we had some more real estate, and we love Justice Society and they’ve been around, they’re fan favorites, but we’re like, this is really important and they need to be present to try and stop Black Adam,” Flynn said. “In terms of him being kind of unleashed and it was so fun to greet those characters, but also in terms of in our mind’s eye and really our cast informed a lot of that too. It’s diverse, our cast, it’s like really the inclusivity is awesome and watching Black Adam interact with Justice Society is so cool and where we can go with it… That relationship between Cyclone and Atom Smasher, I think is very unique. And then when you see the movie, you’ll see Hawkman and Doctor Fate, those guys, they really have unique and special energy in the film. That relationship I think is going to be really celebrated.”

Are you excited to see Black Adam? Share your thoughts in the comment section! Black Adam hits theaters on October 21, 2022.