Hollywood Reporter: With ‘Black Adam,’ Dwayne Johnson Puts His “Franchise Viagra” Reputation to the Test

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In 2015, the cast of Saturday Night Live crooned about Dwayne Johnson being “franchise Viagra” during the actor’s opening monologue. Seven years later, the $142.9 million global debut for Black Adam suggests that, in a time of transition for DC, Johnson is indeed the boost the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned comic brand needs.

Even if Black Adam won’t hit the $1 billion box office heights of Aquaman, and even if it doesn’t achieve the artistic triumphs of James Gunn and Matt Reeves’ DC ventures, Johnson gives DC the opportunity to expand its reach beyond its core fans. Not everyone knows Black Adam or the Justice Society, but they all know the Rock.

Ever the salesman, the wrestler turned actor, producer and entrepreneur has always excelled at selling one thing above all else: himself. While his presence hasn’t always resulted in the billion-dollar box office blockbusters Hollywood studios are constantly chasing, the addition of Johnson has led to a string of solid hits and just a few misses due to his global appeal.

Most franchises he’s joined have been lifted by his face on the poster, including The Mummy, The Fast and the Furious and Jumanji. Even G.I. Joe: Retaliation, something of a dud, made $375.7 million worldwide, more than the first installment. The same goes for Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which topped its Brendan Fraser-led predecessor. And as far as solo projects are concerned, San Andreas (2015) and Rampage (2018) both crossed $400 million worldwide. Additionally, his team-up with Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot in Red Notice (2021) became Netflix’s most streamed movie, according to the service.

There is also a likability factor at play with Johnson. He’s a positive face for a DC franchise currently beset by stars with legal drama and a reluctance — see: Henry Cavill, until very recently — to commit to this universe long-term. Johnson’s recent comments about not wanting to chase Marvel, but to push DC to do its own thing, was the perfect capsule of optimism for fans, even if the Warner Bros. Discovery suits surely have one jealous eye cast the way of Marvel Studios.

According to sources with access to the polling, 43 percent of moviegoers told analytics firm PostTrack that Johnson was the primary reason they went to see Black Adam, while 40 percent went because of the genre.

So, beyond a Black Adam sequel, what could Johnson’s presence add to the DC Extended Universe? A Black Adam vs Superman film seems too simplistic to entertain, and even Johnson has cast doubt on the idea coming anytime soon (after pumping it up in the press). It’s possible Black Adam could join the Justice League, as he did in a recent comic run by writer Brian Michael Bendis. But with the Justice Society getting introduced, and being one of the strongest elements in the film, it seems more likely we’ll see Black Adam continue to pal around with their growing roster, even if he’s reluctant to officially join them.

If a third Shazam! film happens, perhaps audiences will get the long-awaited and much-delayed showdown between Adam and Shazam! that originally formed the basis of the first movie before it was rewritten.

But Johnson seems focused on making Black Adam A-list and not just an antagonist to the Shazam! family. Johnson certainly has a lot of A-list friends and pull in Hollywood (who else could convince Emily Blunt to star in Jungle Cruise?) and Warners’ new leadership seems specifically focused on star power that justifies theatrical-only distribution.

So what does a Rock-sized pull of A-listers in the DCEU look like? Perhaps a Justice League/Justice Society film that sees the two superteams at odds, and then later united against a common threat. Maybe that threat could even be Darkseid, if Warners doesn’t want to scrap what it has already set up over the years.

For audiences, there is a comforting consistency that comes with seeing a Johnson movie. Is Black Adam the most original superhero movie? No. Does it pull from stories we’ve seen before? Yes. Black Adam isn’t risky, but maybe at this point, that’s exactly what the DCEU needs.

There’s a reason why a film like Avatar, which no one is claiming to be a very original story, is the biggest film of all time: because it successfully marries spectacle with familiarity and themes that, while familiar, transcend borders. On principle, Black Adam manages to do the same thing, and while most critics weren’t high on the film, there’s something to be said about its international numbers. Those numbers are particularly telling in places like Latin America and South East Asia, where audiences and critics don’t seem to have as many hang-ups about originality as we do stateside.

None of this is to say that Black Adam excels in every area. There’s some clunky exposition and pacing issues, but it’s fun and entertaining, and yes, if we think back on the history of blockbuster movies, sometimes that’s enough. For all the critical complaints about its lack of risk-taking and generic world-building, I’d argue that Black Adam takes a stance that we’ve seen very few superhero movies take: It portrays superpowered individuals who come to dole out their brand of justice in foreign countries as invaders.

As Black Adam tells Hawkman in one scene where the latter attempts to save a kidnapped boy his own way, “He’s not your son, and this is not your country.” Johnson manages to successfully shake off any attempts to tether Adam to the ground as a generic hero, and instead he emerges as someone who, while not entirely accurate to the comic book depiction, feels cut from the cloth of pulp heroes that inspired superheroes, along with so many of Johnson’s onscreen roles.

One of the biggest surprises of Black Adam is how pro-uprising it is. It challenges the line between good and evil by asking the viewer to take a look at who’s drawing that line. And not only that, the film takes the Justice Society to task for being an absent presence in Khandaq for the 75 years of the team’s existence and the country’s continued oppression. Amidst recent comments from former comic scribe Alan Moore about superhero movies being precursors to fascism, I couldn’t help but notice how anti-fascist Black Adam is.

And now, Dwayne Johnson, the People’s Champ, as he was known in the wrestling world, has naturally transitioned to becoming Kahndaq’s champ, and maybe, just maybe the DCEU’s champ, as Black Adam.

As Johnson reconfigures Black Adam from a Shazam! adversary to a Superman antagonist, while also using Black Adam to pull together the DCEU’s various threads from The Suicide Squad to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, all while introducing the Justice Society, one can’t help but wonder if the second biggest tool in the Warners utility belt after Batman is Dwayne Johnson.

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