WWE legend The Rock starred ‘Black Adam’ recently hit the big screens. ‘The Great One’ had a successful stint in the WWE, which ended on a third heel turn followed by Hollywood fame. Speaking to Polygon, Rock was recently asked if he looked back to his days as The Rock for inspiration for his Black Adam character.
The Rock responds
He was questioned if he specifically drew inspiration from his legendary 1998 heel turn, which teamed him up with Vince McMahon and morphed his persona into the “Corporate Champion. He mentioned that the Attitude Era could not exist and return today sadly. He cracked a bit and said:
“Man, I love that you said that.”
It’s been nearly 20 years since Johnson was in the wrestling industry full time, but his WWE character is still a role he finds worth reflecting on. “The Rock,” he said that he played an important role in steering Black Adam away from what he could have been in 2007 — and, perhaps, closer to what fans of the DC universe and Johnson’s are truly looking for:
“When I was a heel, and when I made that heel turn… people may not have agreed with my ‘why,’ and they may not have agreed with the things that I would do. At that time, wrestling was a lot different. The Attitude Era was much more violent. We got away with a lot of shit that you could not get away with today. While people may not have agreed with the heel Rock, they all understood why he was doing what he was doing because I had the opportunity to talk about it — and talk shit in that way that The Rock did. So there were a lot of parallels there. The connection to Black Adam is that while you may not agree and you may interpret him as a supervillain, antihero, protector, even a superhero… you may not agree with his philosophy, but everyone understands.”
Getting Black Adam to screen involved a combination of muscle and big talk. From the decision to make a stand-alone Black Adam movie in the first place, to the inclusion of the Justice Society and other recognizable DC Comics faces, Johnson says it took his team years to push their vision to screen.
“We fought for a long time, and we weren’t gonna take ‘no’ for an answer,” Johnson says. “And here we are.”
