I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not claiming first hand knowledge. It looks like the Black Adam movie is a dumb fun comic action flick. I liked Aquaman, and it looks to be in that same realm. It did well enough to beat a few Disney films on it's opening day.
But now it's claimed to be a failure. Even though it has a profit and has paid off it's debts, the websites are claiming it's a failure.
So, here's my question, is this true? I have seen Sony lie about sales number directly. Disney paid websites to promote their latest movies. The Captain Marvel movie with empty seats, but claims to be sold out have been discussed here. Warner Bros and DC are major competitors to Disney and Marvel. Would Disney be willing to pay websites to make it sound like DC is a failure? Especially when James Gunn is canning so many films and stories.
Since we know websites lie for those they like, would this be something they were willing to do?
I'm not claiming to know if the film is good or not. I hated the first Wonder Woman movie, and watch the animated films more often. It just seems weird that there is so much push to claim the movie is a failure when it's not.
The Rock is one of the closest things we have to a movie star, but he ain't a movie star, more like a very savvy marketer. The only actor who is still big enough to have their own gravitational field is Tom Cruise.
See, I don't like Tom Cruise movies. He always plays this cocky guy I don't like. So he's not big in my mind.
Well, yeah, but lots of times in his movies, he pays for his cockiness and has to grow up a bit to fix it. A few examples:
In Top Gun, he loses. Iceman wins.
In Rain Man, he alienates his girlfriend.
In Vanilla Sky, he loses everything.
In Cocktail, he loses the girl.
He might be kind of typecast, but at least he works with competent story writers.
And as an actual movie star, he has had my respect ever since the knife scene in (IIRC) Mission Impossible 2. That would take balls of steel. I don't even care about the Scientology stuff (even though it's a weird, controlling cult) because it's at least less bad than the woke cult that runs the rest of Hollywood, and I don't care about his stance on drugs because, well, he's probably right.
The guy likes to make movies to entertain people, not to right the wrongs of the past or fix the world. In today's movie landscape, I'll take it.
I think it was War of the Worlds when I realized how cookie cutter his characters are. I respect his work ethic, and have heard tons of compliments for his willingness to do stuff. I just don't like the character.