Dwayne Johnson has enthusiastically advertised for a film as the impetus for the change in "the order of the DCU".

Dark Adam looks sadly like its predecessors: a tormentor.

A weightless CG punch-a-thon, shot with the same foul visual style of past Snyderverse passages in the DCEU.

A film filled with under-turned, slo-mo action (it's really okay to let this taste go, Warner Bros.).

and over-plotted world-building that conveys more information than sense that the film is fighting on the ground of this world.

The value of sincerely putting resources behind characters.

Characters we often think about (enough to recognize them during the film's numerous tiresome, though sometimes creative, slugfests).

Dark Adam drops the crowd into this rich world with an expansive, surprisingly realistic studio score.

Prologue that sets the ancient history of the land of Teth Adam, a fictional nation known as the Khandak.

It is home to an all-powerful substance called Eternium, which the country's nefarious ruler needs.