Black Adam star Noah Centineo explained how Atom Smasher is different in the film than he is in the comic books. Black Adam is set to release on October 21 and will be the next installment in the DC Extended Universe. The film is a spin-off of the 2019 film Shazam! and serves as an origin story for the anti-hero Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson). Black Adam follows Teth-Adam, a man who was chosen to be the wizard Shazam's champion and bestowed with the power of the Egyptian gods. However, he was subsequently imprisoned for 5,000 years for corruption. Now, after serving his sentence, he is free once more and ready for the world to know him.
In addition to marking the live-action debut of Black Adam, the film will also feature the Justice Society of America (JSA). The members of the JSA in Black Adam will include Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), and Atom Smasher (Centineo). The JSA was one of DC's first superhero teams, making its debut long before the Justice League. It is unknown what exactly Black Adam's relations with the JSA will be like in the film. In the Black Adam trailer, he is fighting the JSA, but he may later join them, considering he did so in the comic books.
During the Warner Bros. Press Line at SDCC, Centineo explained to Screen Rant how Atom Smasher is different in the film than in the comics. Centineo discussed that the major difference is in age and experience. In the comics, Atom Smasher is a man and a fully developed superhero. In Black Adam, Atom Smasher is still a young man who is only just getting his first taste of what it means to be a superhero. Hence, audiences really get to see him transition from a young metahuman to the superhero they know him as in the comics. Check out Centineo's statement below:
In this movie! In the comic books, he's a fully formed superhero, right? He's an adult. In this movie, though, he's kind of a young man. He's a young metahuman that gets to, for the first time, take that first step into what it means to be a superhero. He comes from a pedigree of superheroes, and his grandfather was actually a super villain, but not by choice. He was kind of forced into it, and he did rectify it in the end.
With all of that familial history, he feels a driving force to prove himself; to find his way and his path and to do good and establish himself as a good person and a superhero. You get to really see that transitional phase, which I don't think you get to see often. And it's the same with Maxine Hunkel, who is played by Quintessa.
While Atom Smasher's depiction in Black Adam will be a little different from the comics, the film will still be drawing from his comic book material, too. Centineo went on to mention Atom Smasher's grandfather Cyclotron who was a reluctant superhero in the comics and passed on his metahuman powers to Atom Smasher. The film will touch on this comic book history and will attempt to examine it further by seeing how it impacts Atom Smasher as he attempts to forge his own path as a hero despite his family's history.
Choosing to track Atom Smasher's transitional period into a superhero is certainly an interesting angle and could give him much more depth than simply debuting him as a full-fledged hero from the onset. Centineo indicated that Black Adam will follow a similar direction to Swindell's Cyclone. Taking this direction with the JSA certainly seems in line with what Black Adam's story could be. After 5,000 years of imprisonment, Black Adam is deciding who he really is, with his powers keeping him torn between being the destroyer of the world, or its savior. With Black Adam examining the lines between being a hero and a villain, Atom Smasher's complicated history and his development into a hero will fit well into the film.
Source: SDCC
