Meet the (anti) heroes of 'Black Adam' - CNN

CNN  — 

Just erstwhile you thought you finally committed astir of the names of the ever-growing Suicide Squad to memory, DC goes and casts a caller unit of antiheroes successful “Black Adam,” its latest bid for container bureau domination.

Meet the Justice Society of America (JSA), a unit of superheroes who privation to tamp down, oregon astatine slightest amended control, the titular antihero Black Adam. You won’t retrieve these folks from films past (save for 1 cameo by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), but they’ve been comic publication stalwarts for decades.

Before you spot “Black Adam,” familiarize yourself with the caller formed of morally ambiguous super-humans. From Doctor Fate to Adam himself, present are the caller faces you’ll conscionable successful “Black Adam.” (“Black Adam” is distributed by Warner Bros., which shares genitor institution Warner Bros. Discovery with CNN.)

Played by: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

Powers: Super velocity and strength, magic, flight, lightning bolts, prolonged life, among galore others

Black Adam is the morally ambiguous predecessor of Shazam, the gangly teen-turned-adult superhero. Adam was calved centuries agone arsenic “Teth-Adam,” a regular feline who becomes the “champion” of a wizard named Shazam, who instills successful him the powerfulness of respective gods, according to DC. Unlike Shazam the superhero (a antithetic feline from the wizard – yes, it’s confusing), Teth-Adam did not usage his newfound powers for good. He’s exiled by the wizard who gave him his powers and fixed a caller sanction that matches his corrupted bosom – Black Adam.

We conscionable Adam erstwhile helium returns from a 5,000-year-long imprisonment. He’s acceptable connected liberating his homeland, a fictional North African state called Kahndaq, Johnson told the New York Times. But Wonder Woman, helium is not – Adam “straight-up murders people” to guardant his cause, said Empire Magazine successful its three-star reappraisal of the film. He believes he’s the “right idiosyncratic to pb humanity,” says DC, and sometimes that means making choices that prioritize the bully of the galore implicit the lives of the few.

Played by: Pierce Brosnan

Powers: Sorcery, uber-intelligence, formation – the works!

Nerd by time and sorcerer by night, Kent Nelson is simply a “kindly academic” who evolves into a formidable leader erstwhile helium wears the aureate “Helmet of Fate,” which is besides imbued with godlike powers, says DC. In an interrogation with the AV Club, Brosnan explained that the helmet is some a “curse and a blessing” that the quality lives with due to the fact that his father, an archaeologist, discovered the artifact.

Doctor Fate helped recovered the Justice Society, a superhero supergroup that, successful the film, is tasked with tamping down Black Adam’s antiheroic antics. Onscreen, Brosnan-as-Fate is the seasoned seasoned of the JSA, keeping the newbs successful enactment portion taking connected Adam – but he’s got secrets of his own, too, Brosnan teased.

Played by: Aldis Hodge

Powers: Flight, ace strength, wide maestro of combat

Add different bird-themed superhero to your intelligence rolodex and conscionable Hodge’s Hawkman, a leader who flies with monolithic aureate wings and dons a aureate helmet implicit with a aureate vertebrate beak – DC describes him arsenic “a fierce warrior without equal.” Good luck, Adam! In the film, Hawkman leads the JSA to halt Adam but inactive leans connected Doctor Fate for fatherly advice.

The quality has “been done truthful much,” Hodge teased successful an interrogation with Vanity Fair, and those experiences person influenced the colorful benignant successful which helium fights. Hawkman, a.k.a. Carter Hall, is besides a foil to Adam, Hodge said, who some crave justness but person different, uncompromising ideas astir however to execute it. Ultimately, helium said, they find a “mutual respect” wrong each different – 2 supers of awesome strength.

He’s besides motivated by emotion – passim his beingness successful DC Comics, he’s been successful a devoted narration with, natch, Hawkgirl.

Played by: Quintessa Swindell

Powers: Controlling wind

It’s 1 happening to beryllium talented powers by an amulet oregon cursed artifact; it’s different to simply harness the elements. Meet Cyclone, a teenage leader whose caput tin manipulate the aerial and weaponize utmost upwind to fend disconnected foes (she received her powers aft being a trial taxable for nefarious scientists). Per DC, she brings a “social justness attitude” to the Justice Society.

Swindell, a nonbinary actor, has said that their quality is influenced by ballet, and portion Cyclone, a.k.a. Maxine Hunkel, is the newest summation to the JSA, she’s unafraid to clasp her truest self: “Very seldom person I seen a relation that paints a young miss successful a mode that gives her the quality to unrecorded authentically and truthfully successful her weirdness,” Swindell said successful an interrogation with Entertainment Weekly.

Played by: Noah Centineo

Powers: Growing into a elephantine astatine volition and past shrinking back

Don’t telephone him Ant-Man: This is Atom Smasher, a young JSA enlistee whose powers you’ll surely admit – he’s a “mass manipulator,” meaning helium tin crook into a Godzilla-sized mentation of himself – but without the size-changing tech. Atom Smasher is simply a “metahuman,” similar Cyclone, and the process of increasing immense is simply a achy one, Centineo told Syfy: His muscles “break and past form,” and past interruption and re-form again erstwhile helium returns to his modular size.

He’s besides a spot of a “nepotism baby”: His grandfather, “forced into villainy,” Centineo said, was the archetypal to person the powers Atom Smasher inherited, truthful adjacent though helium lacks the acquisition of his chap JSA members, helium “comes from this pedigree” that makes him a confident, if arrogant, summation to the group.