Saw Shazam on Friday with Bug and the Cousins. So here goes…
- Overall, good popcorn fare. The kids enjoyed it, and so did the adults.
- Saw Aquaman for the first time a couple of days before this, and Shazam was better. Both were moving away from the Dark & Brooding DC*, and working towards the fun side of super heroes (the trend Wonder Woman started), but while Aquaman suffered from just some awful writing and so many tropes I’m still ticking them off in my head, Shazam didn’t.
- Good casting. Really, especially the kids. Yes, Zachary Levi, Djimon Hounsou, and Mark Strong were the big names, but the kids were very good.
- Yes, the Shazam suit was a bit campy. The puffy muscles… honestly, I didn’t mind, because while they were a bit silly, so was the whole movie. It was good to see a DC movie not take itself too seriously.
- Trigger warning: The movie deals with foster kids, and growing up in the foster system, and it has a few hard moments. Not for me, but one of my cousins is a rather new cousin, who spent almost 5 years in the foster system before being adopted into our family. Those scenes had a visible impact on her. Nothing too bad, but if you are going with someone who grew up like that, they might need a hand to hold, or a shoulder.
- Shades of Spider-Man. Marc Strong is a Big, Serious Villain, and Zach Levi was playing the goof. Villains just hate it when no one takes them seriously.
- The part with all the other foster kids, at the end…I don’t recall that being part of the canon, but then, I was never a huge reader of those comics.
- SHAZAM is the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, etc…You clearly saw all the physical attributes, but the wisdom, that you had to watch for, because it was done very subtle. As wisdom should be.
- Speaking of subtle, some of the jokes are sneaky one-liners. Many are obvious like you see in the trailers, but pay attention.
- Finally, the screenwriters do remember what it’s like being a young teenage boy, and it shows. Shazam may have the wisdom of Solomon, but he is still a 14 year old boy.
*Really, something that should be reserved for John Constantine movies. Preferably ones with Matt Ryan in them, because he was a much better Constantine than Keanu Reeves (and I like Keanu Reeves, it was just a bad fit for him).
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
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
But Tilda in Constantine the flick was amazing. Oh and I adored their version of Lucifer.Report
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
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
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
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
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
Reminds me of the early Hulk movies.Report
You mean its happened before???
Oh the humanity. Why do I even leave my house?Report
You’d think, given how much money they make, movie execs would not be dumb enough to repeat the mistakes of the competition.Report
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
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
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
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