His role in movies also reflects this as he’s very rarely, if at all, shown with a villainous side. You can’t even root against him in his role in Red Notice, which, by the way, became the biggest Netflix film ever with at least two sequels confirmed. However, what many seem to forget is that the former WWE superstar and future Hall of Famer played the role of a heel to great effect in 1998.
More than two decades later, The Rock dug deep into one of his few rare instances of villainy to give justice to his role as Teth-Adam, the vengeful and scorned former champion of Shazam!. To no one’s surprise, Johnson’s still got that edge. After years of playing characters that are seemingly indestructible, The Rock finally gets in costume as a superhero that very few can match in terms of raw power and strength and he’s killing it, both figuratively and literally. Do you want to see The Rock fly alongside fighter jets and punch a plane? Black Adam has that. Do you want to see The Rock throw a man from the ground up to the clouds above? Black Adam has that too. Black Adam even has The Rock catching a rocket with his bare hands and holding it as it explodes, walking away presumably unscathed. Black Adam has The Rock doing a bunch of things that only a superhero can do, except, he’s not one. As made abundantly clear in the first official Black Adam trailer, Johnson’s titular anti-hero is not afraid to do away with the superhero label in the name of his own justice. Suffice to say, the first look at Black Adam has silenced doubters, but it’s how these things work. Trailers are supposed to sell audiences on a good time and this one has clearly done that. The more pressing matter is, will Black Adam deliver? Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a while to find out more. Black Adam isn’t scheduled to hit theaters until October 21 after an initial delay that thinned out the DCEU’s upcoming slate of films this 2022.
