.jpg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1 "Cut Black Adam R-Rated Scene Details Revealed By VFX Artist")
Black Adam VFX artists detail one particularly gruesome R-rated scene that had to be cut from the final film. Earning mostly negative reviews from critics but a positive response from audiences, Dwayne Johnson’s debut DCU movie hit theaters this past October. The film sees Johnson take on the role of Teth-Adam, an ancient Egyptian bestowed with god-like powers who is released from his tomb to dish out his ruthless form of justice upon the modern world. Before the movie was even released, it was revealed that Black Adam originally earned an R-rating for violence before being edited down to a PG-13.
Now, VFX artists who worked on the film, including Greg Teegarden and Niko Kalaitzidis, share details to Befores & Afters on one particular R-rated Black Adam scene that had to be cut. The artists go into detail about an arm dismemberment scene from the anti-hero’s fight with a group of mercenaries fairly early on in the film and explain that there was one specific detail that pushed the moment beyond PG-13. Check out the comments from Teegarden and Kalaitzidis below:
Greg Teegarden: “They had a prosthetic arm on set. They must have dropped it 20 or 30 times, and it just always looked like a dummy arm. And so we decided, ‘You know what, we can fix this.’ We already had the merc asset. It wasn’t a big deal to just tear an arm off and just line it up where he was connected to the shoulder and add some ‘tasteful’ gore to it. Then that way when it dropped on the ground, we had complete control over it and it didn’t look like a piece of rubber hitting the ground.
“So, we’re sitting in dailies one day and I said to Nikos, ‘It’d be really funny if, when it hit the ground, it felt like he had a little bit of a last little twitch in his finger.’ Arda, our anim sup, he’s like, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ So he does that and we’re all like, ‘That looks great.’ So we showed it to Bill Westenhofer, who showed it to Jaume, everybody loved it. It was in the movie and then it got MPAA’ed. You can’t have a disembodied hand laying on the ground and the finger just all of a sudden twitching. The thing is, it was great because it was perfectly timed comedically.”
Nikos Kalaitzidis: “In the end, they just cut it short. They took out a few frames.”
Should Black Adam Have Been Rated R?
It’s relatively rare for a superhero movie to earn an R-rating, with the DCU’s most recent attempt being James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, a movie that earned positive reviews but disappointed at the box office. In many ways, Johnson’s debut as Teth-Adam seems like the perfect opportunity to embrace the R-rating once more. Johnson, who worked for years to get Black Adam made, teased for months ahead of its release that his anti-hero would pull no punches and be decidedly more brutal than other DC heroes. Although an R-rated Black Adam is an exciting proposition, keeping the film PG-13 was probably the best decision.
In addition to promoting his hero as being more ruthless than those who came before him, Johnson also teased that Black Adam would essentially kickstart a new era for the DCU. Not only does this manifest itself in the form of the introduction of the Justice Society of America, but the movie’s talked-about post-credits scene finally sees the return of Henry Cavill’s Superman to the DCU after a 5-year absence. By avoiding the R-rating for Black Adam, Johnson’s character can more easily co-exist alongside these other heroes and share the screen with them moving forward without any jarring tonal shifts or changes to the amount of violence. Maintaining a shared PG-13 rating across projects also means DCU movies can tell larger, overarching stories without younger audiences missing out.
Another reason Black Adam is better off having avoided the R-rating, especially in hindsight, is the rating’s potential impact on box office performance. Generally speaking, superhero films are rated PG-13 or below in order to allow a wider variety of audiences to be able to experience the movie, thus making it more likely the film will earn its budget back and be profitable. Although not a flop by any means, Black Adam‘s box office has been somewhat disappointing, an outcome that may have been even worse had the movie been rated R.
Source: Befores & Afters