You can tell Dwayne Johnson has absorbed some personality traits from his Black Adam character by the way he’s already starting to trash-talk Superman. Black Adam is the nemesis of Shazam in comics lore, but Johnson seems to enjoy picking fights with those who loom even larger. “When you pull Black Adam out of the pantheon of superheroes in the DC Universe, he is blessed with these incredible superpowers from the gods that rival Superman,” the actor says. “The difference is, well, a few things. Number one, Superman’s greatest weakness is magic, and one of Black Adam’s greatest superpowers is magic.”
Black Adam can fly, bullets bounce off his skin, and explosions would merely muss his hair (if he had any). He can rip through stone walls and bend steel. Instead of shooting heat rays from his eyes, he channels lightning blasts from his fists. But unlike Superman, he doesn’t have any soft spots like mercy, empathy, or compassion.
“Superman won’t kill anybody. There’s a code that he lives by and he honors,” Johnson says. “Black Adam has a unique code of ethics too. He will not hesitate—and I like to have a little fun when I’m explaining this—to rip somebody in half.” Does that mean the actor is…kidding? “Literally, he’ll grab someone by the neck and by the thigh and then rip them up, tear them apart,” Johnson clarifies.
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