Black Adam kills so many bad guys that it was nearly rated R

DC went out of its way in 2013 to establish its reputation as “not your daddy’s superhero movies.” Superman didn’t snap General Zod’s neck so that we could all hold hands and bask in the best parts of humanity. He did it because that’s what heroes do: They kill people. Lots of people.

So when it came time to bring the iconic anti-hero ‌Black Adam to the screen, the film’s producers knew two things: This guy had to kill people, and the movie needed a young audience. But, unfortunately, the MPA saw things differently and thought Black Adam’s body count deserved a decidedly adult one. In the end, it took four rounds to get the movie down to a PG-13, which was really important to the filmmakers.

“We really wanted to make sure that we honored the character of Black Adam,” producer Hiram Garcia told Collider (via Deadline). “One of the things he’s known for is his aggression and violence, and to do a Black Adam movie that didn’t have that just wouldn’t have been authentic. So we always went into this knowing that we were going to push it as far as we did.”

Garcia explained that this was a “collaborative process with the MPA to finally get it to where we were able to get that rating.” Who knows how many faceless victims were cut from the film to fulfill Black Adam’s destiny of playing before 13-year-old boys. “It was really important for us to do that,” Garcia continued. “And that’s something Dwayne was very committed to as well.”

“This is raw. It’s raw and hardy,” Aldis Hodge, Black Adam’s Hawkman, told Collider. “Black Adam does kill openly a lot of bad guys. I think it’s important to know he’s killing bad guys for the sake of the people that he’s protecting and for his moral compass. But along with that, it really is a backdrop to the real conversation that we’re having in terms of what is good and evil? What is right and wrong? And to what extent do you go, to what lengths do you reach to accomplish what you believe is actual justice? What is the definition of true justice when it means different things to all people?”

That is something that Black Adam is constantly asking. It was essential to the filmmakers that this movie was violent but not so violent that it prohibited a target demographic. Garcia admits that “they had to make a lot of edits,” cutting “some personal moments that we really love, but we had to let them go. But we never compromised; we never had to cut a scene.” Every scene stayed in the picture, including “some great moments when Black Adam is in the fly bike-chase sequence and drops one of the intergang soldiers” or [SPOILERS] “this great moment where the truck bounces over the body.”

Black Adam opens on Friday.