What Gamera Can Teach Black Adam

Ok, so I was originally going to write about how Godzilla movies and the Heisei era Gamera trilogy approach violence differently. I admit part of why I wanted to write this was for the oddball pairing, hoping it would get readers that way. Turns out, though, I can write the same article about Black Adam. If anything, the comparison is more apt because what Gamera does differently is the answer to the exact fatal flaw Black Adam suffers as a film.

To start, here’s why I generally don’t like Black Adam. It is a fun, entertaining action movie, and I enjoyed that. I didn’t go in expecting to like it much at all, because I don’t like Black Adam or the weird little fan cult he has, but the movie does a lot more to make him sympathetic and interesting than I thought possible. And the JSA are show stealers; love everything about them, and very glad the world is their oyster now. Though they went with the surface level depiction of Kahndaq as a reductionist Western view of the Middle East, it was framed about as well as it could have been. That said, the film does a lot of work setting up the question of violence and justice, only to abandon it and revel in how cool Black Adam is for murdering people. It’s really disappointing and kills everything the movie has going for it, pun intended, except the action scenes and the chemistry of the JSA.

With that critique in mind, let’s look at the Heisei era Gamera trilogy. For the purposes of this argument, there are two things these movies do in regards to violence worth noting. The first is that it’s gross. The monsters aren’t depicted with the smooth, clean-cut suits of their Toho counterparts of the era. They’re rough, have realistic, jerky motion, and often look wet to the touch. When Gamera hits a Gyaos with a fireball, it blows up and spews blood and chunks of flesh everywhere. When Gamera gets hurt, he spews green blood on his surroundings, and is visibly hobbled. It’s everything you want in a monster movie, with gore and intense, animalistic violence. It’s very satisfying. In this way, these movies share a lot in common with Black Adam, which also revels in the violence and death it depicts.

The second thing is that they don’t take violence as a given. I remember a key scene in the first movie, where for a moment, we see a TV broadcast of the Prime Minister explaining why it’s ok to use the self-defense forces against Gamera. They also only act in limited ways, rather than going in with all the guns blazing. The use of violence and militarism isn’t a given. Unlike Black Adam, Gamera and the other monsters aren’t immune to human weaponry, so the impact of these choices has actual weight. When the Gyaos show up, the environmental minister wants to catch them for study; when the Legion are discovered, people wonder if coexistence is possible before solemnly concluding that they have to eradicate them; Iris’s entire origin is premised as the direct consequence of Gamera’s wanton, unthinking violence for the cause. We can revel in the gore and struggle of these movies because we know what fighting means, and who’s lives are at stake, and we (albeit imperfectly) follow the consequences of it to their conclusion. Black Adam does none of these things. Intergang and Sabac are just evil for the sake of being evil, with no backstory worth exploring or questioning. Violence against them, and against Black Adam by the JSA, is a given because we decided they’re bad, and so must be killed. Because it’s decided that Black Adam’s enemies are evil, there’s no moral complexity to his murdering them. It’s all spectacle, with little narrative or emotional beat that comes with every punch.

That’s really what’s missing, and it’s notable that they had a bit of similar framing that makes Gamera successful. Unlike the Godzilla movies, where the viewpoint characters are often in or related to members of the government and military, Gamera’s viewpoint characters are an ornithologist, the daughter of an insurance agent, and an astronomer, all women. They are reluctant to see the fighting but follow along when it becomes clear that these larger than life threats will only respond to physical force. They hope Gamera can save them, but they also fear for the destruction he causes along the way. There’s a similar figure in Black Adam, Adrianna Tomaz. She’s an archaeologist (I wanna say) and rebel, looking to overthrow Intergang. When she sees Black Adam, she’s happy that he saved her and thinks there’s something noble inside him, but she also condemns his lethality and pushes him to be a real hero instead of a blunt weapon. At the beginning. Then, when the JSA arrives, she switches to saying he’s a hero just for helping them and stands by his side every step of the way. The movie ends with her and the “heroic mentor” Dr. Fate concluding that Black Adam murdering people is what makes him better than the JSA, with no real founding. There’s literally no reason he couldn’t end the fight by ripping off the crown and destroying it. What they needed was raw power, literally the only thing Black Adam has going for him, not lethality.

Gamera makes a similar sort of misstep in the conclusion of the trilogy, but even there can teach Black Adam a lesson. Iris was formed when the egg of the ultimate monster bonded with a girl who hates Gamera for killing her parents and cat while fighting Super Gyaos in the first movie. It’s a concentrated dose of the responsibility that Gamera is unable, let alone unwilling, to accept. Because Gamera is a massive, blunt weapon programmed to kill every threat to the Earth, he’ll rush in without thought, crushing people and buildings on his way to blow up or dismember an enemy, leaving their bodies littered on the streets of Japan. The main characters have come to trust that he has the best intentions, and is the only force capable of stopping the spread of the Gyaos, which will consume humanity till extinction. Iris, being a vessel for revenge and violence, is far worse, and represents the young woman’s descent into darkness, becoming similarly uncaring in what Iris does. The heroes at the end conclude that she’s right to be upset, and that Gamera is imperfect as a protector of humanity, and sympathize with her cause. However, they also conclude that they have to accept Gamera’s role, and that he ultimately does more good than harm. It’s a sloppy way to end the story by saying he’s a hero still, and in another light is a tragic acceptance that we’re too small and fragile to contend with these forces of nature and should instead orient ourselves within the situation. At the very least, it acknowledges that Gamera isn’t exactly a heroic figure and has moral failings that we have to contend with in his stead.

Black Adam does none of that. Gamera’s ending isn’t perfect, but it does contend with the moral issues in a substantive way, and the real kicker? The argument holds up because he’s a huge, genetically engineered turtle possessed by mystic Earth energy to track down and kill pests. Black Adam is a person who knows better and is capable of learning. Any statement that Black Adam is somehow morally righteous because bad guys suck is a cop out; it’s a cowardly excuse not to face the actual moral implications of killing people. It’s a juvenile retreat into the mindset that we like punishing bad people, and since we don’t want to die, killing is a punishment. But just as nothing asks to live, nothing asks to die. These are simply things that happen. Genital up and face the inner turmoil about what life is, its value, and how we should best respond to tragedy and misdeeds. It’s not a discussion that calls exclusively for nonviolence, as there are those who have successfully argued that using the tools of violence is at times necessary to prevent harm and bring about a just conclusion. Make that argument and come back to me.

Of course, that won’t happen. The fantasy of Black Adam is power without responsibility; even the Rock, movie star and champion of this film in the best possible light, said that the only reason to make a Black Adam movie is to have him fight, and presumably beat, Superman. And like, who cares? Let Black Adam be stronger, it literally doesn’t matter. “Do good unto others, and every man can be a Superman.” Gamera, being a giant turtle monster, can’t really grapple with the responsibility of his power, and we shouldn’t expect it. Black Adam’s die hard fans could, but specifically don’t want to. And that’s the real lesson the Gamera movies have to teach. Maybe they’re not really set up well for answering the question, but they’re willing to grapple with the issues and follow them to a conclusion. It’d be nice if any stale superheroic metaphor for American militarism and violence did the same.