The Rock’s concept of Black Adam battling Superman needs to happen sooner or later, and the best director to tackle that might well be the one most associated with DC fan campaigns. Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam debuted in theaters with the promise of changing the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe with the titular anti-hero. Black Adam also finally brought Henry Cavill’s Superman off the bench and back into the DCEU, with the Rock promising an epic battle between Black Adam and the Man of Steel.
Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. Discovery merger and the formation of DC Studios led to a radical shift in plans for DC cinematically, with the DCU being launched under James Gunn’s leadership and the DCEU being left to the side, along with The Rock’s envisioned Black Adam-Superman showdown. However, a great idea like that of two supremely powerful metahumans in Black Adam and Superman, going toe-to-toe should never go to waste. And with countless DC fans around the world continuing to push for the completion of Zack Snyder’s intended Justice League story, he could be just the director who could do Black Adam vs. Superman justice.
Black Adam vs. Superman Is Way Too Cool An Idea Not To Make Happen
The Rock spent years hyping up a showdown between his Black Adam and Henry Cavill’s Superman, long before Black Adam itself even entered production. Purely from the standpoint of superhero action, Black Adam and Superman coming head-to-head would be a thunderous showdown in the abstract, but an especially powerful one with Dwayne Johnson and Henry Cavill’s versions of the characters. The superpowered fight scenes in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and Black Adam are some of the most intense and epic in modern superhero cinema, and vividly exemplify what an unforgettable smackdown between beings as powerful as Superman and Black Adam would be.
Dwayne Johnson and Henry Cavill also both understand fight choreography like their back of their hands, as exemplified in their respective action-oriented roles and Johnson’s own pro-wrestling background. Just as relevant to the conversation, the world already has a pretty good idea of just how enthralling a Black Adam vs. Superman battle would be.
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We’ve Already Seen One Black Adam Vs. Superman Showdown (And It Delivered)
The 2010 animated movie Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam pits its two titular heroes against Black Adam in a wild, incredible battle of metahumans. While Johnson’s determination to pit Black Adam against Superman drew some criticism, as opposed to his more traditional enemy of Shazam, the fact of the matter is that there is also plenty of precedent for Black Adam as a Superman antagonist long before Johnson took on the role. The Return of Black Adam is one such example, along with numerous instances of Black Adam and Superman duking it out in the comics.
More importantly, the only major non-comic book example to date of Superman facing off with Black Adam delivered in spades in The Return of Black Adam. Some of the fight choreography itself also evidently takes quite an influence from Scott Adkins’ first big break in Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, a loving homage indeed that places the moves of The Most Complete Fighter in the World into a superhero beatdown. With Black Adam vs. Superman being too much of an action-packed superhero smackdown to leave on ice forever, Zack Snyder’s potential role in it could make it even better.
Zack Snyder Is On Record Saying Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam Could Work In His Universe
While Zack Snyder himself was largely uninvolved in Henry Cavill’s Black Adam cameo (beyond commending him as “the greatest Superman” during Cavill’s post-Black Adam interview with Josh Horowitz), he also hasn’t been silent on the idea of his Superman and Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam meeting. During an interview with YouTuber Tyrone Magnus shortly after the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Snyder commented on Johnson’s hyping of Black Adam battling Superman, stating “Yeah no, I mean, I think he could fit in the world, so it’s interesting.” While Black Adam as both a movie and a character was never part of Snyder’s original conception of the DCEU, enough time has passed that any continuation or restoration of the Snyderverse would also require some degree of modification to the conclusion of Snyder’s planned story.
Snyder himself has recognized this in the release of his whiteboard outline for his planned story for Justice League 2 and Justice League 3, with Snyder having made clear during the Zack Snyder’s Justice League press tour that they represent the initial conception of the two films, with Snyder’s updated version of the story remaining unrevealed. That opens a lot of grand possibilities for how Snyder may have tweaked the story, and how certain elements or characters might be able to be more readily integrated into the story than before. In turn, that also makes Zack Snyder himself arguably the most qualified man for the job of one day realizing Dwayne Johnson’s envisioned battle of Black Adam and Superman.
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How Black Adam vs. Superman Could Finally Happen
The most obvious roadblock to making the Black Adam-Superman showdown happen lies in getting the Snyderverse band back together – easier said than done, obviously, but as recent superhero comebacks in The Flash, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Deadpool & Wolverine have shown, hardly the impossibility it’s often portrayed as. Presuming that first step were to actually come to pass, the question is what form it would take, and Snyder’s own Justice League sequel outline might provide the perfect space for it to happen in the Knightmare timeline.
Snyder’s Knightmare future seen in Batman v Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League shows a world brought to its knees by Darkseid, with Superman under Darkseid’s control via the Anti-Life Equation. A number of surviving members of the Justice League and a few villains, led by Ben Affleck’s Batman, form a resistance in the Knightmare to undo this future by sending The Flash back in time. Black Adam could be a perfect candidate to be integrated into the Knightmare, fighting alongside Batman’s resistance to stop Darkseid, with Batman hand-picking Black Adam as the perfect heavy hitter to handle Superman while the resistance plots the rewrite history and erase the Knightmare for good.
Black Adam and Superman battling could also take place in a more contemporary context, with the Man of Steel facing Black Adam before Darkseid’s invasion as one of the enemies the League faces in Snyder’s Justice League 2 outline (which lays out the League fighting the Lex Luthor-led Legion of Doom individually). In fact, integrating the Black Adam-Superman showdown into Snyder’s plans could even make use of both scenarios, with the two facing off in their first skirmish prior to Darkseid’s invasion, and again in the Knightmare with their hero-antagonist roles completely flipped. That could even set up a possibility for Superman and Black Adam going from rivals to allies in Earth’s final stand against Darkseid and Apolokips, as outlined in Snyder’s plan for Justice League 3.
The possibility of seeing Zack Snyder’s Justice League sequels one day realized continues to capture the imagination of millions of DC fans, but The Rock’s vision of Black Adam and Superman facing off is just as cool a prospect. Hopefully, both eventually get the greenlight under DC Studios, with the DC Elseworlds corner providing a nice home for them, and combining both into one under Zack Snyder’s stewardship might well be the best way to truly put a bow on both Snyder and The Rock’s respective DCEU visions.
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Tell us, do you want to see a Black Adam vs Superman movie directed by Zack Snyder?
I’d definitely want to see this despite how DC studio is going another direction.