'Fate does not make mistakes': Dwayne Johnson finally brings 'Black Adam' to the big screen

After a sigh and a moment deep in thought, a big grin appears on Dwayne Johnson’s face when he's asked which superhero he would have loved to see his father, the late pro wrestler Rocky Johnson, play in a movie.

“The Rock” knows it's not the answer people might expect – his choice isn't Batman or Superman, Captain America or Spider-Man. “When I was a little boy, especially 10, 11, 12 years old, when my old man was in his heyday and he was tag-teaming with Tony Atlas, I always thought my dad would make a bada-- Green Lantern,” Johnson says. “He would've been good.”

But for Johnson, 50, there was only one comic-book character to portray on screen. Which is why he stuck to his guns for more than a decade with his choice of Black Adam, even when Warner Bros. opened up the DC Comics pantheon and gave him the chance to play any superpowered good guy or evildoer. Now he stars as the title antihero of director Jaume Collet-Serra's action-packed star vehicle (in theaters Friday).

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The wrestler-turned-actor takes Black Adam from longtime villain on the page to star attraction by exploring his mythology in the DC movie universe: A champion of the fictional Middle East kingdom of Kahndaq, Teth Adam is an enslaved man with god-like abilities, imprisoned for 5,000 years, who escapes into our modern world. He’s seen first as a threat by the Justice Society – including superheroes Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) – but then reluctantly teams up with them when a bigger threat surfaces.

“I have been with this character for such a long time,” Johnson says. “Admittedly, I grew up a DC boy – and I'm still a DC boy. I haven't grown up yet. The very first time I saw a Black Adam comic book, he (had) his brown skin, he had the body and the face of a pro wrestler. I loved pro wrestling growing up and still do, so immediately I was identifying with him.”

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Black Adam, with his powers and tragic history of seeing his family wiped out, was filled with intensity, brutality and rage, and “I ran toward all those characteristics, man,” Johnson says of getting into an antiheroic mindset. “I also knew that this was a real departure from anything that I'd played in the past.” What helped him most was tapping back into his "heel" Rock wrestling persona from WWE’s “Attitude Era” of the late ‘90s and early 2000s: “It was a violent time, but it was also very over the top.”

Johnson’s “a great guy, great sense of humor,” says his “Black Adam” co-star Hodge, “but we do see this full immersion where he's very much different than the Dwayne Johnson that we know from other films.

“For all of the grandiosity around DJ, from his history as a wrestler to being a megastar in the film world, we see this sort of magnate on a worldwide scale. We oftentimes may miss the fact that when it comes down to it, he's still an actor. He is who he is because he understands performance and he understands where those values are.”

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“Black Adam” has also proved a filmmaking journey for Johnson, a producer on the superhero epic. He wanted to play the character 10 years ago, but in 2014, “the writing became very apparent on the wall” that he wasn’t a top priority for Warner Bros.: The studio had a Superman and Batman in place with Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck, respectively, and was more concerned with launching a “Justice League” that paired them with Flash (Ezra Miller), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa).

“The want really turned into a need in that moment, and I became even more steadfast,” Johnson says. “I put my blinders on and became really intensely focused, and I would not let it go.” Ultimately, the studio made all the movies it wanted to, and “Black Adam” came to fruition. “It’s all happened in the way that it's meant to happen. As Doctor Fate says in the movie, ‘Fate does not make mistakes.’ So here we are, brother.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Black Adam': Dwayne Johnson channeled his WWE heel for new DC movie