A few weeks back, DC's Black Adam released in cinemas alongside action roleplaying game Gotham Knights. It looked like dark day for the franchise with generally unfavourable critic response to the film, and mixed but quite savage reviews for the game from several major publications.

Today on Rotten Tomatoes, Black Adam sports a 40% critic and 90% viewer score. Only half a world between those.

At the box office it has raked in $252.2 million worldwide.

For some films that would be impressive but against a $200 million budget and in comparison to other superhero films, it's quite modest.

Is it a great film whose ticket sales were hurt by critic reception?

Or were the only people who saw it avid DC fans who would be more inclined to score it favourably?

Can't say yet - we've not had an opportunity to see it - but we were keen to see this one anway and now there's added curiosity factor.

Even with those savage reviews, Gotham Knights fared better with critics, earning a 69 (out of 100) rating on Metacritic.

Metacritic's user score is 4.6 out of 10 - though the site makes no attempt to verify that scores comes from people who've played the game and many of the comments attached to low scores make it clear that they haven't.

On Steam - which only allows users to review games they own and have played - it sports a healthier 72% positive rating.

Saleswise we don't have figures for the game yet, but it occupied and 8th and 10th positions (regular and deluxe editions respectively) on Steam's sales charts and in the UK, launched in 2nd place for physical sales.

Unlike Black Adam, we have had the opportunity to get our hands on Gotham Knights and we'd say it's quite good.

Not deserving of scores in the region of 4 or 5 out of 10.

It is in this divisive superhero landscape that film director James Gunn today assumed co-leadership of DC Studios (film, television and animation) with Peter Safran.

[ Main Image: Superman comic. Credit: DC via Twitter. ]

References

Gunn, James [@JamesGunn] (November 2, 2022). First day, new job. Twitter.

Kit, Borys and Couch, Aaron (October 25, 2022). DC Shocker: James Gunn, Peter Safran to Lead Film, TV and Animation Division (Exclusive). The Hollywood Reporter.

Metacritic. Gotham Knights. (viewed November 2, 2022)

Partis, Danielle (October 26, 2022). Gotham Knights takes No.2 in week of fresh releases | UK Physical Charts. GamesIndustry.biz.

Rotten Tomatoes. Black Adam. (viewed November 2, 2022)

Steam. Gotham Knights. Warner Bros. Games. (viewed November 2, 2022)

SteamDB. Steam Weekly Global Top Sellers for the week ending October 23, 2022.

Wikipedia. Black Adam. (viewed November 2, 2022)