Dwayne Johnson Calls Out Zachary Levi’s Shazam
Dwayne Johnson is talking some serious smack about Zachary Levi's Shazam!
Dwayne Johnson is getting fans excited for his introduction to the DC Extended Universe as Black Adam by doing what the former professional wrestler does best — talking some serious smack. The 49-year-old actor took to Twitter on Tuesday to respond to a fan that was particularly hyped after seeing the first footage from his long-awaited standalone movie as the DC Comics anti-hero, Black Adam. The user put a photo of Zachary Levi’s Shazam looking somewhat scared next to a still of Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam straight up murdering some soldier without even making eye contact. When the fan asked what Shazam is going to do about his new antagonist, Dwayne Johnson responded: “Not a fucking thing.”
In the comic book, Shazam and Black Adam are very closely linked in that their respective powers come from roughly the same source. However, Black Adam is a much more ancient being who was corrupted by the immense power that he received while Shazam (formerly known as Captain Marvel) is more of the hero type. Because Zachary Levi’s Shazam is on his way to a sequel and Dwayne Johnson is finishing up post-production on a Black Adam origin story, many have speculated that it won’t be long before the two cross paths. In fact, Collider reports that Shazam 2 director David F. Sandberg has hinted that Black Adam shows up in some capacity in the upcoming film, currently slated to debut in 2023.
Dwayne Johnson gave fans their first look at the anti-hero in action during DC FanDome earlier this month where he was joined in a brief teaser that not only debuted the first-ever footage of his character in action, but it showed some of the principal cast including Aldis Hodge, Quintessa Swindell, Noah Centineo and Pierce Brosnan introducing themselves and their respective characters, Hawkman, Cyclone, Atom Smasher and Doctor Fate.
In addition, they spend a lot of the time hyping up both the movie and its lead actor Dwayne Johnson, before the man himself takes the stage to introduce the clip and explain how long he’s been waiting to get this project off the ground. Indeed the actor lobbied hard to play the character for many years before he was finally given the green light to take on the role by DC Comics and Warner Bros.
While Dwayne Johnson is typically associated with heroes in his movies, Black Adam is a bit more of a complicated role than he’s used to. At first, the wizard Shazam gave him the power because he thought he would do good things with it. However, that level of power and responsibility ended up corrupting him. Deadline previously reported that the film will follow a bit of the comic book’s storyline and see Shazam banish him thousands of years before Billy Batson gets his powers, forcing him to spend the time since flying back to Earth from space. When he comes back, he’s reportedly seen the error of his ways. However, knowing that you want to do good and doing good are two different things.
Then again, it’s possible that the Black Adam movie will ditch all that subtlety and focus more on having the physically imposing Dwayne Johnson simply murdering people with his immense strength and the powers of Shazam like he does the solider in the clip. Based on Dwayne Johnson’s Twitter smack-talk, though, one would probably lose money betting that Black Adam and Shazam will be buddies any time soon.
