Much has been made about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s first turn as a villain in DC’s latest Black Adam, but is he really a villain? That’s the big question at the center of the movie, which introduces DC film fans to the country of Kahndaq and its titular legendary champion. Kahndaq is a fictional Middle Eastern country that’s rich in a powerful, magical mineral called Eternium, meaning it has since been taken over by a foreign military so they can mine all the Eternium they can. The people of Kahndaq take comfort in an ancient story of when a slave rose up against a tyrannical king and was given magical powers that turned him into the country’s ultimate champion, known then as Teth Adam. Teth Adam (renamed later in the movie as Black Adam) is awakened early on and immediately starts killing people, and the debate begins: Is he actually Kahndaq’s champion, or is he a terrifying force of nature that needs to be destroyed?

Naturally, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) thinks the latter. She sends several members of the Justice Society of America—Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) to take care of this new threat, but even these formidable heroes are unprepared for just how powerful and morality-free Black Adam is. Hawkman in particular is convinced that Adam can’t possibly be anyone’s hero, despite the people of Kahndaq seeing him as the champion in their legend. It’s a question whose answer remains complicated at the end of the movie, but GameSpot had a chance to sit down with the cast to see what their takes are.

“That question, I think, is really the whole point of the film,” said Centineo. “I personally don’t think that he’s a villain.”

Sarah Shahi, who plays resistance fighter Adriana, the woman responsible for waking Adam up, said the debate was one of the things she enjoyed most about the script. “You have what would typically be a DC superhero movie and instead, Black Adam is the antihero. He’s really blurring the line between good and evil, and everything that comes between is what this movie is sort of exploring,” she says. “So for me, it felt like it was also kind of a comment on real life and people and how layered we all are. We’re not 100 percent saints, we’re not 100 percent sinners. There’s all this room in between.”

“I was uncertain of him, quite frankly,” added Mohammed Amer, who plays Adriana’s brother Karim. “I was with it because it’s my sister and she knows what she’s doing, but I’m like, are you sure? You brought this crazy person back into existence? Is he a hero? Is he not? But I trusted my sister, the hero of the movie.”

And both Shahi and her character Adriana do not see Black Adam as a villain. “I think the thing the comics do, as does the movie, is they really give you the backstory. They explain how he was a slave, he was killed, his family was taken away from him, and he was reborn a god,” Shahi explained. “I feel like the movie really does have a beautiful way of explaining why he is the way he is.”

Swindell, however, thinks the movie’s argument is subjective. “It’s great because it’s open for interpretation, and I think that’s the most interesting thing about the film. It shows you everyone. It shows you people changing, it shows people resting in their views, and I think that’s really cool.”

“I think it’s a very human question we’re asking here,” said Amer. “It’s like, you’re at a fork in the road. Somebody who’s gone through so much in his life, and now he’s given all these superpowers to use them for good or use them for evil. This is like the classic test of a human being. Are you going to go with your ego, or are you going to tame your ego, control yourself, and find that consciousness within yourself? So you can go a lot of different ways with this, and I think it’s really rich with so much humanity and spirituality. It’s just a beautiful story.”

Based on the trailers for the movie, you might not think “beautiful” is the right word to describe it, but even legendary actor (and former James Bond) Pierce Brosnan said it’s “the most beautiful film” that he’s been a part of for a long time, and Centineo described it as a “good important story and massive story to be told,” with heroes of all sorts. Adriana, Shahi pointed out, is a hero in her own right, even without superpowers, and the movie is about more than just one unstoppable guy. That unstoppable guy also represents a country full of people in desperate need of someone to fight alongside them. “I think the people we represent, we’re the citizens of Kahndaq and I feel like we need more stuff like that in artistic form,” she said. “We represent the strife. We are the hardworking people on the battlegrounds fighting for justice, that are fighting against oppression.”

As for the man himself, Black Adam has been a passion project for Johnson for years, and he’s firmly in the antihero camp. “I love Black Adam,” he said. “I’ve always loved Black Adam, and I feel like if we make this movie right, then there should be a lot of people around the world who hopefully would not only love Black Adam, but also see themselves in Black Adam in the attitude that he has in his philosophy that he has when it comes to taking care of things, and doing it in his way.”

Black Adam is in theaters on October 21, 2022.