This week’s “Black Adam” not only introduces Dwayne Johnson’s titular superhero, it also adds several new characters in the form of the Justice Society of America (JSA) – Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo).
With that number of heroes on screen, it’s no shock to learn that the film has had to give someone short shrift – and you can bet it won’t be Johnson.
Speaking with Collider, producers Beau Flynn and Hiram Garcia revealed the original cut of the film was longer and was trimmed down to 124 minutes by cutting out various Justice Society scenes to keep the focus on Black Adam himself. Flynn says:
“One of the great challenges to make a movie with Black Adam and the Justice Society and really launching them…it was very tricky, particularly in the edit.
Because we shot a lot of footage to figure out the balance between really giving the audience a kind of backstory on the Justice side and not assuming that they know all these characters, of course you know Hawkman and his mythology, but a lot of people don’t.
Same thing with Fate. And we have some incredible scenes between Smasher and Cyclone and some of our favorite scenes in the movie are Hawkman and Dr. Fate. But there are a good handful of scenes that we did have to cut just to make sure we were servicing Black Adam.”
Part of it was also a pacing issue, with Flynn saying: “we wanted this to be a thrill ride from the minute you sit down to the end post-credit scene”. They may regret those cuts though as reviews for the film have been decidedly mixed, while Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan’s Hawkman and Dr. Fate both singled out as the best parts of the film.
So could this mean we’ll see a longer cut on home video with some of those cut scenes restored? Asked if any of the cut scenes were near to being finished, Garcia says they designed the film in a way no significant VFX work would be done in unfinished sections:
“You want to get a lot of those cuts and everything tightened up before you’re starting to get into the full flow of VFX. That’s just being responsible with filmmaking and making sure that we’re always utilizing all of our money the best way. So a lot of those cuts were done before visual effects were done.”
Flynn adds a few sequences did receive significant visual effects work, saying “there were probably two or three scenes that were close to completion. That was it.”
“Black Adam” is now playing in cinemas everywhere.
