Black Adam is too violent, so it needed a lot of changes to avoid an adult rating

According to his co-star Mo Amer, Dwayne Johnson's lead character in Black Adam has a line: "Just kill them." The comedian said he was surprised that Johnson played a completely different role in the film than the decent tough guy he plays in many other movies.

“It took me a little while to get used to it again, and then I was like, ‘Wow, this is going to be really good,’ ” Amer recently told Collider.

"He's completely — he's still got the muscular body, obviously, but you don't see 'The Rock' at all. You see Black Adam, literally."

According to the producers, both the film and the characters are darker and more ruthless, which was the goal of the film, but this caused some friction between the film and the film classification association MPA.

Producer Beau Flynn told Collider: "We went through four rounds (with the MPA) and it was only given a PG-13 (teen) rating, I think, about five weeks ago."

While an R rating isn’t as taboo or box-office demise as it once was for comic book superhero movies—as Deadpool and Logan have proven—theatrical releases that turn away large numbers of teenagers could mean missing out on the huge revenue opportunities that Dwayne Johnson and one of DC’s most popular characters could create.

But producer Hiram Garcia said a commitment to a darker tone was essential to doing justice to the roots of the Black Adam IP. "We really wanted to make sure we honored the character of Black Adam," he said. "One of the things he's most famous for is his aggression and his violence, and to make a Black Adam movie without that wouldn't have felt authentic. So we always knew we were going to push it as far as we could. We knew it was going to be a process with the MPA, and at the end of the day we pushed as far as we could to get that rating, but we were able to accomplish our goal. But it was really important to us. And it was something that Johnson was very committed to as well."

However, Black Adam's own unique definition of justice still caused controversy among the ratings board.

“We did have to do a lot of editing, actually,” Flynn admitted. “There were some individual moments that we really loved that we had to let go. But we never compromised; we never had to cut a scene. We had some really cool moments, if you notice, there were some great moments where Black Adam drops a gang member in the motorcycle chase sequence. And then there’s a cool shot of a truck being catapulted by a body. But… you can’t play it safe, you have to go for it. I think we had four or five. At one point we had about 10, and we were able to come to some compromise with MPA on that.”

Although the film ultimately received a PG-13 rating, the altered scenes may still see the light of day in the future.

“When we release it on home theaters and streaming, there will be clips included,” Flynn promised.