When you see Dwayne Johnson’s name attached to a movie, you generally know exactly what you’re going to get. The actor can almost always be found headlining an effects-driven blockbuster with a budget in excess of $100 million, where he plays either an adventurer or a form of government or law enforcement veteran drawn into a scenario that stacks the odds against him, which he manages to overcome with a blend of charm, charisma and physicality.
While next summer’s Black Adam definitely ticks at least one or two of his signature boxes, it’s also uncharted territory for the world’s biggest movie star. Having been attached to the title role for fifteen years, every ounce of his boundless energy and passion will have been poured into the project, and the prospect of Johnson finally making his debut in the superhero genre is a tantalizing one to say the least.
Tipster Mikey Sutton is now offering that we’ll be seeing the 49 year-old unleashed, with Johnson throwing off the shackles of essentially playing the same archetype over and over again to deliver the kind of performance we’ve never seen from him before, which includes living up to his boasts that not only is Black Adam going to change the DCEU’s hierarchy of power, but it’ll push the PG-13 rating to its limits as the titular antihero makes it clear he doesn’t have a no-kill rule.
To find the last time Johnson played against type, you’d have to go all the way back to Michael Bay’s 2013 dark comedy crime caper Pain & Gain, where he gave one of his best performances as a drug-addled ex-con, and while Black Adam still sees him fitting the action icon mold, it promises to be something entirely different.