Tenshot – SHAZAM!

Oscar Gordon

A Navy Turbine Tech who learned to spin wrenches on old cars, Oscar has since been trained as an Engineer & Software Developer & now writes tools for other engineers. When not in his shop or at work, he can be found spending time with his family, gardening, hiking, kayaking, gaming, or whatever strikes his fancy & fits in the budget.

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15 Responses

  1. pillsy says:

    I’m really looking forward to this one, so I’m glad to hear you liked it.

    Also, re: Keanu and Constantine, I thought that was a perfectly solid movie, but also a terrible adaptation of Hellblazer.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to pillsy says:

      Yes, Call it “Keanu’s Really Bad, Awful, No Good Day” and it’s a fine effort.

      And the Constantine show that only ran for a season had problems being a Hellblazer adaptation, but IMHO, Matt Ryan nailed the character.Report

  2. Marchmaine says:

    I’ll probably repeat this when there’s a ten-shot or a post about the new Shazam movie… but my very strong reaction and counter-intuitive thought for the day: Not every Super-hero movie needs a Super-villain.

    Shazam is ruined for not understanding this.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

      The villain in the movie wasn’t really that important to the story. Honestly, for the bulk of the movie, Shazam’s worst enemy is himself, because he’s a 14 year old kid given the powers of a multitude of gods.

      ETA: The purpose of the Villain was two fold: To make Shazam afraid and uncertain of himself; and to threaten his family, so he could complete the Hero’s Journey.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Where I think DC failed was slavishly copying the Superhero playbook by introducing a Supervillain.

        The first half of the movie is above average… Billy/Shazam/Fred is more than enough to carry entire movie using “training” villains for a much better story and pay-off… speculating that they could have mined the Shazam/Big themes a for couple/few more movies with increasingly more complex/powerful villains over time.

        As you say, the villain isn’t that important to the story… except that he’s the very embodiment of the villain SHAZAM is incarnated to face… he should have been introduced and could have lurked in the movie… but abandoning the solid foundation of the Billy/Shazam/Fred dynamic to stampede off to some sort of forced climax is really just bad storytelling and bad movie making.

        DC hasn’t “learned” anything, they just bought a new paint by number kit.

        Shorter: they superimposed a really bad DC movie onto what might have been an interesting Shazam movie.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

          I still think it was a good movie. I think it could have been a much better movie if, as you say, Sivana had been kept to the background, and Shazam was dealing with the effects of the Seven Sins running free (going from Sins making people act badly, to Sins granting people power, to confronting the Sins directly, etc.).

          I think they shied away from that because Capt. Marvel was a risk, and if the movie fell flat, this way they don’t some grand setup that remains unfinished.

          ETA: I am curious how they intend to introduce Black Adam.
          https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6443346/Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Sure… who knows whether it could have tent-poled a whole franchise (probably not) but from the risk calculus, its hard to see how a really good origin story isn’t a sufficient end in itself.

            At the risk of beating the mortuated equine, the first half of the movie had so much more going on in terms of story, character, physics and metaphysics that the final (I don’t know) 45 minutes is just one big boring car chase. Totally dialed it in compared to the material they had to work with in the beginning. That’s why my disappointment is pretty strong… they had to willfully turn away from good material to do what they did in the second half. Someone did that on purpose.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

              Reminds me of the early Hulk movies.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                You mean its happened before???

                Oh the humanity. Why do I even leave my house?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

                You’d think, given how much money they make, movie execs would not be dumb enough to repeat the mistakes of the competition.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                The problem with the early Hulk movies is that the television production values have not aged well, though Bill Bixby does a great job of communicating the humanity of David Banner… better than any of the middle Hulk movies managed to do.

                (And the Ang Lee movie? I appreciate needing the Hulk to overcome himself but, seriously, that’s a “third movie in the franchise” kinda thing. You should start with something more like “If Brute Force Does Not Work, You’re Not Using Enough” and have The Hulk hit something until the movie ends.)Report

  3. PD Shaw says:

    Does this mean that the Captain Marvel character is referred to as “Shazam” in the movie? My understanding is DC can call the character “Captain Marvel,” but can’t advertise it as a “Captain Marvel” movie. And curiously enough, Marvel has its Captain Marvel movie out at the same time.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to PD Shaw says:

      Better, one of the better lines shouts out “Billy!” as his iconic superhero name.

      But I don’t recall even a nod to Captain Marvel? Maybe I missed it though… I think they steered clear of the marketing confusion and doubled down on Shazam. Wouldn’t surprise me though if there’s a big easter egg or somethin.Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to PD Shaw says:

      The publisher of the original Captain Marvel stopped in like the 50s. After an appropriate length of time, Marvel trademarked the name for their own alien super hero comic book. DC licensed the character from the original publisher, but because of the trademark couldn’t call the comic Captain Marvel and chose “Shazam!” instead. They also couldn’t call TV shows or any other media Captain Marvel. DC eventually decided it was too confusing and just started calling the character Shazam everywhere.Report