While Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam might have come and gone along with the rest of the Synderverse at Warner Bros. DC Studios, the movie and the conversation leading up to its release are still taking some friendly fire in the current year.
Black Adam was a pet project for Johnson, who singlehandedly upcycled his role as Black Adam in the first Shazam! film, which he was cast for during early development back in 2014, into a standalone Black Adam film that he would help oversee. Writing began in 2017, and the film was in production from that point up until its release in 2022 following COVID delays, extra casting, and significant rewrites. Despite this, the film would be met with negative to mixed reviews on release, with many critics pondering why Black Adam failed as an adaptation of the character despite such heavy investment into the project by Johnson himself.
Since the release of Black Adam, the film and its leading man have received a ton of criticism and mockery, Including being thrown under the bus for Shazam 2’s box office failure by many within the industry. While the conversation has since died down, Johnson still managed to catch a stray from one of Warner Bros’ latest offerings. As documented by Comicbook, the WB-centered crossover fighting video game Multiversus has taken a pretty clear shot at Johnson in a character interaction between the playable Black Adam character and the Joker, who was recently added to the game. When the Joker plays against Black Adam in his The Batman Who Laughs costume, one of his voice lines says, “Aren’t you supposed to be ‘rearranging the hierarchy’ or something?” before bursting out in a fit of his trademark laughter.
The line is a reference to Johnson’s statement that “The Hierarchy of Power in the DC Universe is about to change,” a confident prediction that was even featured in the big Black Adam football stadium roof promo. While at the time it seemed like a fitting bit of promotion for the film, it has since become a point of mockery on the internet and one that Johnson probably wants behind him. The entirety of the WB advertising machine bought into this wholesale at the time (which made the film’s fate worse by increasing the break-even amount), and now another one the company’s products is openly making fun of that same sentiment, all but burying the film and the face of that failed franchise.
This is a pretty funny easter egg buried amidst several other pretty unhinged lines about godslaying and dismemberment. However, it does seem pretty mean-spirited coming from another DC property, as the entire thing was a big blow to Johnson’s image and plans for the future. To many people that pay attention to the outcome of public fallouts, Black Adam proved that Dwayne Johnson is no longer a box office draw and marked a major downturn in his career. This might be the case, as the behind the scene influence that gave him the ability to call in a cameo from Henry Cavill’s Superman despite plans to do away with him has certainly been entirely lost in the James Gunn/Peter Safran era.
While Black Adam’s Netflix release beat several DCEU movies and did pretty well on streaming overall, the ridicule hasn’t lessened since the film’s disastrous theatrical run. With Johnson making a return to the WWE and partaking in one of the most popular storylines in that industry’s recent history, it’s unlikely that he’s particularly bothered by all this.