'Black Adam' Behind-The-Scenes Image Gives Us A Closer Look At Dwayne Johnson's Costume

Dwayne Johnson has been attached to play the DC Comics antihero Black Adam since 2007, and it's clear this is a role he's devoted an awful lot of time to getting right. Now that the film is finally in production, the costume department is working hard to make sure the character has a distinct look, and Johnson has shared a new photo that teases the fruits of their labor.

Johnson took to Instagram to share this photo, which he says "gives you a tactile sense of the absolute massive scale and size of our movie." But while the inclination might be to focus on what he calls the "enormous and appropriate destruction" present in the image, he also wants to draw your eye to "the intricate and beautiful textured detail of Black Adam's body suit." According to Johnson, "this is not your typical DC or Marvel padded muscle suit."

I've been lucky enough to examine several Marvel costumes up close during set visits, and I must admit that from this angle, I'm not entirely certain what makes this particular costume stand out from its contemporaries. If you look at close-ups of Thor or Mysterio's costumes, you'll see intricate stitching and symbols woven into the fabric that enhance the characters who wear them, so this costume doesn't appear to be breaking new ground in that regard. Perhaps the front of the suit makes the distinctions more clear.

Later in Johnson's caption, he writes, "As we all know, superheroes have a code of justice and don't kill the bad guys. But, Black Adam does."

I'll admit that my first thought reading that was, "Here we go again, Zack Snyder's 'dark' and 'edgy' influence continues to leak into future DC movies." But historically, Black Adam has been a character who walks the fine line between being a villain and a hero. Depending on the storyline, he's either united with DC heroes or clashing with them, and he has killed people in the past. The violence and tension at the center of this character is what makes him such a good foil for Zachary Levi's bubbly Shazam!, who is innocent at heart and will almost certainly not condone Black Adam's extreme methods. I have not seen any footage from Black Adam yet, so I don't know if director Jaume Collet-Serra is taking any aesthetic cues from Snyder's films, but there's precedent in the comics for this approach to the character.

Black Adam is slated to hit theaters on July 29, 2022.