Black Adam reviews are a mixed bag – but everyone agrees Dwayne Johnson is a great superhero

Dwayne Johnson and Aldis Hodge in Black Adam — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Dwayne Johnson finally dons the superhero spandex in Black Adam, which hits the big screen later this week. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the movie sees the 5,000-year-old superpowered antihero unleashed into the modern world and face off against the Justice Society – that's Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher, Aldis Hodge as Hawkman, Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, and Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate – as they try to reign him in and team up to defeat an even more powerful force.

But what are the critics saying about the latest DC movie? We've got a round-up of the verdicts below.

Black Adam reviews

Total Film

"Repressing his smolder judiciously, Johnson shoulders the show well enough. Sift through the wreckage and there’s potential in Adam, even if his film is more an extended, excess-all-areas introduction than a Batman Begins-ish slam-dunk. To paraphrase the curiously under-surprising credit scene, he gets our attention. But the major question left frustratingly unresolved is, can he do anything new with it?"

The Independent

"It’s relentless but stubbornly monotonous – what I imagine it’s like to be picked up curbside by the FBI and have a cloth bag thrown over my head, all while the car I’m in barrels through the dark towards an unknown destination. "What do you want?" "Where are we going?" "What do I have to do with any of this?" Don’t expect answers to any of the above."

Forbes

"Black Adam is a joyfully over-the-top action fantasy tentpole. It has the pulpy and no-pressure pleasures of a New Line flick, even as it comes armed with a WB-level budget. Like Doctor Strange 2, it reminded me of the early MCU movies (Iron Man, Thor, etc.) from before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was anything other than a single ambitious Hollywood franchise amid other Hollywood franchises and non-IP blockbusters."

Vanity Fair

"There’s no point in denying the 270-lb wrestler in the room: even within the realm of the superhero genre, this is an ephemeral motion picture, lacking depth, originality, or storytelling panache. Much like a McDonald’s hamburger is technically food, Black Adam is technically a movie, and both can be intermittently enjoyable before you come around to ask “why am I consuming this?”

Rolling Stone

"Should you not have entire multicharacter histories at your beck and call, you may find yourself lost in the worldbuilding wilderness, wondering how so much of this fits together, who’s capable of doing what, why certain sacrifices matter, and why you should care about these peripheral, yet supposedly important characters that take up so much screen time."

The Hollywood Reporter

"Johnson creates a magnetic antihero, volatile and antisocial. He doesn’t fly so much as stalk the sky; he swats opponents like the bundles of weightless CG pixels they are. And this passion project serves the character well, setting him up for adventures one hopes will be less predictable than this one."

Black Adam arrives on the big screen on October 21. In the meantime, make sure you're up to date on the DCEU with our guide to watching the DC movies in order.

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related. I help bring you all the latest news, features, and reviews, as well as helming our Big Screen Spotlight column. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.