Black Adam star Quintessa Swindell recently teased Cyclone's comics-accurate origin story in the upcoming DC Extended Universe blockbuster.
Swindell outlined a backstory for the big screen version of Maxine Hunkel that closely matches that of her comic book counterpart during an interview with Total Film. "[Cyclone] has the power to harness and manipulate the wind," they said. "Her powers weren't something that she really had within her, it was something that was forced upon her by a scientist, and so she also has this aspect of her where she can control nanobots, and she has that technology as well. [The costume is] like if Vivienne Westwood was a superhero. It's very circus-y and very theatrical and very cool, and kind of punk at the same time."
By contrast, director Jaume Collet-Serra previously revealed that Black Adam will streamline the notoriously complicated history associated with Cyclone's Justice Society of America teammate Hawkman. Collet-Serra confirmed that the movie won't include explicit references to Hawkman's numerous reincarnations, insisting that this would confuse viewers unfamiliar with the comics. He went on to say that establishing the rules around how this aspect of the winged superhero's power set works before the character himself was fully developed on screen would be a mistake.
Black Adam isn't Another DCEU Origin Story Movie
In the same interview, Collett-Serra also said that Black Adam won't follow the standard superhero origin story template where its titular anti-hero is concerned, either. "It’s not your typical superhero movie where a guy wants to be a superhero and gets the powers, and then you spend 50 minutes trying to figure out how the powers work," he said. "This is a movie where you introduce Black Adam right away, and then throughout the movie you slowly peel back the onion and reveal what happened."
This approach was made possible in part thanks to the efforts of Black Adam himself, Dwayne Johnson. The star recently reiterated that he "fought hard" early on to convince Warner Bros. to abandon its original plans to introduce Black Adam and his comic book nemesis Shazam in the same movie. Johnson explained that he believed squeezing both characters' origin stories into the same movie would have done a "disservice" to them both, and also felt that he needed to "protect Black Adam's ruthless [and] extremely violent tone as we built out [the DCEU]."
Black Adam arrives in theaters on Oct. 21.
Source: Total Film