Black Adam Audiences Are Trashing The Movie's Poor Dialogue
Dwayne Johnson's "Black Adam" has struck theaters in full force, with the charismatic Hollywood powerhouse finally lending his talents (and massive build) to a superhero franchise. The 15-year passion project of the "Fast and Furious" star, Johnson obviously sought to make a film that pleased fans of the DC Universe, as well as fans of the character — a group he likely considers himself a long-time member of.
To Johnson's credit, the film is doing surprisingly well on user-review sites like IMDb and holds impressive audience scores on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. This could be a sign that "Black Adam" genuinely resonated with fans, though it's also worth noting that user-review platforms are ripe for outside exploitation. The former theory seems a little more likely. That said, the film has not done well with the critical community, as well as users outside superhero fan spaces. While issues range from the story to the acting, a number of online users have united over the film's supposedly terrible dialogue.
The dialogue sucks (depending on who you ask)
On the r/movies subreddit, Reddit's most outspoken cinephiles have taken to the comment section to offer their scathing opinions of the film's dialogue. One user said "The dialogue was so bad. Sooooo bad. Like if you fed an AI every comic book and comic book movie, this is what it would regurgitate." Another wrote, "The dialogue was terrible, and cheesy. I didn't feel any of the jokes landed. The catchphrase thing that's been done before? Adam learning words like sarcasm? Idk, just fell flat. I think a more serious route woulda done this movie a lot of good."
Even those who felt the movie had other strong points had the experience hindered by the dialogue, like this user who said "Pierce Brosnan as Dr Fate and some of the action sequences make this passable, but dear lord the dialogue was awful." One user thought the movie was "alright," though they described the dialogue as "tryhard," while another said the movie was "fine" but still disliked the dialogue. One simply stated "the dialogue sucks."
Let's hear from Twitter
Even Twitter joined in on the party, with users dunking on the unimpressive writing of "Black Adam" with various memes and jokes. @CliffordBatteau quipped that "I'm not a good guy" is "half of Dwayne Johnson's dialogue in Black Adam." @FridayInHalifax wrote "Holy crap, the dialogue in Black Adam is *atrocious*" with a gif of a man pulling his own face down in pain. Sports reporter Wyatt Wheeler called the dialogue "laugh out loud terrible." @StreakofBlue claimed it had some of the "cringiest" dialogue in any comic book movie, which is quite a bold claim considering "Batman v Superman" is still out there somewhere (in a way, all of our moms are named Martha, and the real Martha is the moms you made a long the way or something like that).
Other words hurled at the dialogue were "goofy," "lazy," "meh," "generic," and "corny." One user wrote "Duane Johnsons [sic] entire black adam dialogue is "catchphrase."" Rolling Stone's David Fear wrote a hilarious and subtle backhanded diss at the film's dialogue, saying "BLACK ADAM has it all!!! Actors, opening (and closing!) credits, sound, dialogue (some)..." On the other hand, Forbes' Scott Mendelson found the dialogue to be "amusing," referring to the film as a whole as "Refreshingly unassuming and, divorced from the discourse, just a fun three-star tentpole." @Osu16Bit was incredibly fond of Pierce Brosnan's Doctor Fate dialogue, specifically, while another user said "Best dialogue was Dr Fate and Black Adam. I'm sure they took multiple takes for their scenes." Fans can make up their own minds by checking out "Black Adam," which is now available in theaters.