In 1940, superheroes had become the biggest thing in comics, thanks mostly to the huge success National Periodical Publications (what is now DC) had with both Superman and Batman over the previous year or two. So we got lots more superheroes being created in the shadow of a world war in Europe: Timely Comics (what is now Marvel) gave us Captain America and the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch, National also gave us Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern and the Flash, and Fawcett Publications gave us a character originally known as Captain Thunder, later Captain Marvel, who later became a DC character and who these days is known as Shazam because Timely is now called Marvel. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
Created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck, the plan was to have this new superhero star in a comic that would be called either Flash Comics or Thrill Comics (ashcans were created with both titles). After discovering that they couldn’t trademark either of those titles, or “Captain Thunder,” the hero had to have his name changed—first to “Captain Marvelous,” later shortened to Captain Marvel. He debuted in the second issue of Whiz Comics, and became a massive hit.
A homeless orphan newsboy named Billy Batson followed a strange old man into a subway and was given a gift from the gods: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury. When he speaks an acronym of those gods’ names—Shazam—he changes into an adult with all those powers. (For some reason, I had to double check to make sure I got all the attributes right, but if you asked me I can, without hesitation or need to research, what the acronym Shazoom! from Mad Magazine‘s parody Captain Marbles stood for: Strength; Health; Aptitude; Zeal; Ox, Power of; Ox, Power of Another; Money.)
The character became sufficiently popular that he inspired a bunch of secondary related characters—Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Uncle Marvel, etc. Then in 1941, the same year Captain Marvel starred in his own movie serial, National sued Fawcett because they thought Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman. The litigation went on for years, and initially Fawcett won the lawsuit, but on appeal National won, and in 1953 (when the popularity of superheroes was seriously waning in any event), Fawcett ceased publication of all Captain Marvel comics and shut down their comics division.
A British publisher, L. Miller & Sons, was publishing Captain Marvel comics in Britain, and when the supply ran out after the lawsuit, they created a ripoff called Marvelman, which was published through 1963. (It was later revived by Alan Moore in the 1980s, and was renamed Miracleman, to avoid trademark issues with Marvel Comics, an issue that would be faced by Captain Marvel soon enough.)
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When superheroes came back into vogue in the late 1950s and early 1960s with DC’s reviving of their heroes and Marvel taking the world by storm with their new heroes, Fawcett wanted to get back in the game, also—but while they controlled the rights to Captain Marvel, they were legally unable to publish anything with him.
In 1972, DC licensed the rights to all the Captain Marvel characters. However, because Marvel had a Captain Marvel character of their own, established four years earlier and at that point with his own monthly comic, they had the trademark on the name. So, while the character was still called Captain Marvel, the comic he appeared in couldn’t be called that, so it was titled Shazam!
In the mid-1980s, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot of the DC universe, the character was changed to still having the personality of the young (pre-teen or teenage, depending on who was writing him) Billy Batson after transforming.
In 2011, for the “new 52” relaunch of DC’s books, the Marvel family was expanded beyond Freddie Freeman (Captain Marvel Jr.) and Mary Bromfield (Mary Marvel) to include Eugene Choi, Pedro Peña, and Darla Dudley, who all collectively became the Shazam Family (with Uncle Marvel and Talky Tawny the talking tiger both dropped). At this point, the character is called Shazam, partly to avoid confusion with Marvel’s Captain Marvel, partly because everyone thought that the character was called Shazam because that had been the title of his books for forty years.
New Line Cinema got the rights to do a Shazam! movie in the late 1990s, but it remained in development hell for years. (One of the people hired to write a screenplay was William Goldman, and I’d love to live in the alternate reality where that script was filmed.) In particular after the success of The Dark Knight and the commercial failure of Speed Racer in 2008, the movie fell into limbo.
After Man of Steel‘s release in 2013, Warner, in partnership with New Line, announced a new slate of films that included Shazam! along with its other DC properties. The movie went through a bunch of different notions, including Dwayne Johnson co-starring as Black Adam. Eventually, Johnson’s project was spun off into its own thing—a Black Adam film is currently scheduled for December 2021 release—with another of CM’s long-time villains, Doctor Sivana, as the bad guy. David F. Sandberg was tapped to direct off a script by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke.
The movie is cast with a bunch of superhero movie veterans. Zachary Levi (Fandral in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok) was cast as Shazam, with Asher Angel as Billy Batson and David Kohlsmith as the four-year-old Billy. Mark Strong (having played another iconic DC villain, Sinestro, in Green Lantern, and who was also in the two Kingsman movies and Kick-Ass) plays Sivana, with Ethan Pugiotto playing Sivana as a kid. Djimon Honsou (previously in Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel—yes, really!—Constantine, and Aquaman) plays the wizard who gives Billy his powers. John Glover (Dr. Woodrue in Batman & Robin, and also another villain’s father, Lionel Luthor, on Smallville) plays Sivana’s father.
Jack Dylan Grazer plays Freddy Freeman, with Adam Brody as his adult alter-ego; Faithe Herman plays Darla Dudley, with Meagan Good as her adult version; Grace Fulton plays Mary Bromfield, with Michelle Borth as her adult counterpart; Ian Chen plays Eugene Choi, with Ross Butler as his powered adult self; and Jovan Armand plays Pedro Peña, with D.J. Cotrona as his older counterpart.
The rest of the cast includes Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews as Rosa and Victor Vasquez, who run the foster home where all the kids live; Caroline Palmer as Billy’s mother; Wayne Ward and Landon Doak as Sivana’s brother as a teenager and adult, respectively; Lotta Losten as a scientist working for Sivana; Carson MacCormac and Evan Marsh as two bullies at the kids’ school; and Andi Osho as social worker E.B. Glover, a tribute to Osho’s role in Sandberg’s first film, Lights Out. And back from Justice League is the character of Superman, played by Levi’s stunt double Ryan Hadley, as Henry Cavill was unavailable for the cameo.
A sequel is currently in development, with Sandberg, Gayden, and producer Peter Safran all set to come back, and presumably most of the cast of this movie intact.
“Dude, I don’t even know how to pee in this thing!”
Shazam!
Written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke
Directed by David F. Sandberg
Produced by Peter Safran
Original release date: April 5, 2019
In 1974, the Sivana family is driving down a road. The elder Sivana is driving, while his teenaged older son sits in the front seat. In the back is Thaddeus, who is playing with a magic 8-ball. Suddenly, weird characters appear on the 8-ball, the people in the car disappear, the windows ice up, and Thad finds himself in a strange cavernous chamber, confronted by a wizard—this is the Rock of Eternity. Near him are seven statues, which represent the seven deadly sins. The sins tempt him to a glowing globe that will free them, and by succumbing to that temptation, the wizard deems him not worthy, and sends him back to the car. The wizard (who is the last of the seven wizards to survive) casts a spell to find someone worthy to be the new champion.
Sivana tries to get back to the Rock, but his flailing in the car about distracts his father, who eventually stops the car right in the middle of the road after skidding and, rather than get out of the middle of the road, pauses to berate his son. A truck hits them, paralyzing the father, with his brother saying it’s all Sivana’s fault.
In present-day Philadelphia, Billy Batson tricks two cops into a pawn shop that Billy broke into, and closes the gate, which stalls the cops long enough for him to use their car’s computer. He’s been trying to find his mother, but every Marilyn Batson he tries to find is a dead end.
He and his single mother got separated at a carnival. She gave him a compass she won at one of the game stands, and he dropped it and ran off to grab it. The cops searched, but never found his mother, and so he was put into foster care. He’s run away from dozens of other foster homes, but he’s put in with Rosa and Victor Vasquez—a couple who were both raised in foster care. He’s brought to meet his new siblings: Freddy Freeman, who is disabled; Mary Bromfield, who’s applying to Cal Tech; Eugene Choi, who spends all his time playing video games; Pedro Peña, who almost never speaks; and Darla Dudley, who hugs everyone and is very sweet, but also sometimes emotionally distressed.
Billy isn’t interested in getting close to any of them—even though the Vasquezes are, frankly, awesome—though Freddy shows him all his superhero paraphernalia, including an authenticated bullet that bounced off Superman’s chest and a replica batarang.
At school, Darla hugs him goodbye, and Billy says she doesn’t have to do that since she’s not his real sister, and that upsets her greatly. He apologizes weakly for saying that.
Sivana has spent his whole life trying to find his way back to the Rock. He’s bankrolled a study on mass hysteria, which collects people who had similar experiences to Sivana’s own: being brought to a chamber and offered great power if you can avoid temptation. All of their experiences match, including seeing strange symbols. When one actually has video of the symbols (on her digital clock), Sivana interrupts the doctor’s interview of the subject and asks to see the video. His own memory was missing one of the symbols.
He goes to his office, followed by the doctor, who objects to his inserting himself into the interview like that. But when he draws the symbol on a door in his office (which she hadn’t seen before), the door glows and when the doctor touches it, she’s disintegrated. Sivana opens the door and is back at the Rock of Eternity. He steals the globe, which allows the demonic personifications of the seven deadly sins to roam free. They embed themselves inside Sivana, which gives him powers.
Two bullies at school beat up Freddy, and Billy fights back on his behalf, and the bullies chase him to the subway. As the train pulls out—the bullies swearing vengeance from the platform after they just miss getting on—Billy sees strange symbols on the train’s display, and then the people disappear and the windows freeze.
He winds up at the Rock of Eternity. The wizard, who is very weak at this point, makes Billy his champion, not bothering to test him (not that there’s any temptation to hit him with now anyway). He says “Shazam” and is transformed into an adult in a bright red skintight outfit with a glowy yellow lightning bolt on it. The wizard’s last words are, “With your heart, unlock your greatest power.” This will probably be important later. Then the wizard collapses to dust, leaving his staff behind.
Returned to the subway, Billy tries to adjust to his new height and his apparent strength and possibly other powers. He manages to convince Freddy that he’s Billy—mostly by reminding him of a conversation they’d had earlier—and together they test to see what powers he has.
Sivana goes to his father’s company and interrupts a board meeting, using the seven deadly sins to kill his father, brother, and the rest of the board.
Billy and Freddy return home secretly, as they can’t really let anyone see Billy’s new form. However, Darla does see them. Billy wants to swear her to secrecy, but Darla is spectacularly bad at keeping secrets. When he explains what happened to him, Billy again says Shazam’s name, which changes him back (and also takes out the power in the house when the lightning strike hits). This relieves everyone, as that means he can be himself again. He also tells Darla that the best way for her to be a good sister is to not tell anyone Billy’s secret.
Realizing that as an adult he can buy alcohol now, Billy and Freddy go to a grocery store to buy beer. They foil a robbery along the way—with Billy discovering that he’s bullet proof—and also discover that they don’t actually like beer. They also go to a strip club (well, Billy does) and they also use Billy’s new ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips to steal money from an ATM.
Freddy had uploaded videos of him and Billy testing the latter’s powers online, and they’re hugely successful. Billy gets himself and Freddy out of school by posing as an adult taking them “home,” and then Billy charges people to take selfies with him. He also charges people’s phones.
However, when Freddy tells the bullies that the new hero in Philadelphia is his friend and he’ll come to lunch the next day, Billy gets disgusted and leaves school without Freddy. (The other kids are skeptical. One says that Superman will be there for dessert, right?)
Billy saves Mary from being hit by a truck. She doesn’t recognize him, of course, and is a little freaked out when he calls her by name. She’s gotten into Cal Tech, which Billy thinks is great, but she’s actually hesitating about leaving her family. Billy thinks that’s insane and tells her to look out for herself.
Later, during a photo op, Freddy and Billy are arguing, because Billy didn’t come to lunch, and Freddy is now a laughingstock. Billy accidentally blows out a tire on a bus with a lightning bolt, and barely manages to rescue it from falling from an overpass (he catches the bus when it falls, and it’s a miracle no one was killed). Freddy and Billy get into another argument—Billy thinks it’s cool that he saved the bus, but Freddy points out that he endangered the bus in the first place.
Sivana sees the footage of Billy and challenges him. Sivana has mostly the same powers, though he can fly. He brings Billy to the stratosphere and drops him, and only then does Billy manage to fly (thankfully). However, Sivana is also kicking his ass, and he keeps running away, eventually losing himself in a crowd in a mall and saying, “Shazam.”
However, Sivana sees the news footage of Billy and Freddy arguing at the same time that he sees Freddy looking around the mall trying to find Billy. So Sivana kidnaps him.
Billy goes home, where Mary, Eugene, and Pedro have all deduced that Billy is the hero—and Darla is relieved that they figured it out for themselves, so she’s still a good sister and can talk about it now.
Eugene reveals that he found Billy’s mother—she doesn’t use “Batson,” but instead the name she was born with, which is why Billy never found her. Batson was Billy’s father’s last name. Eugene provides an address, and Billy goes there.
However, it turns out that Marilyn had Billy when she was seventeen and wasn’t ready to be a mother. When she saw that Billy was in police custody at the carnival, she figured that he’d be better off and let him go into the system. She’s now living with someone else (who sounds pretty nasty and abusive), and tells Billy that this isn’t a good time for a reunion.
Devastated, Billy puts on a brave face and says he just wanted her to know he was doing okay. (He also shows her the compass, which he kept all this time, and she has no idea what it is.) He calls Freddy to apologize for being a dick—but Sivana answers. He wants the champion to come to his house or his siblings all die.
Billy goes home and agrees to give Sivana what he wants. Sivana creates a door to the Rock of Eternity and all seven deadly sins leave his body and take their corporeal forms. Freddy then throws his replica batarang at Sivana, who bleeds from it. The sins all come back into him, and a fight ensues, but Billy, after grabbing the wizard’s staff, which was still sitting there on the ground, manages to lead the kids out by concentrating on a particular place. (It winds up being the strip club, to the disgust of the other kids. Except Freddy.) Sivana follows, and they lead him to a carnival.
Remembering the wizard’s final words, Billy tells his siblings to all grab the staff and speak his name. After they all cry out, “BILLY!” he corrects them to say “Shazam,” and then they all become adults with powers also. They fight six of the deadly sins.
Billy notices that envy hasn’t come out to play, and Billy taunts him until he does. That leaves Sivana vulnerable, and Billy manages to extract the globe from Sivana and restore it to its rightful place, trapping the sins in their statue form once again.
The kids are all hailed as heroes, while Sivana is put in an asylum.
Freddy is surprised to see Billy, in Shazam form, come to have lunch with him, and they’re joined by Superman, thus impressing everyone at school.
Meanwhile, in the asylum, a small sentient worm assures Sivana that it’s not over yet, and there’s more work to be done.
“Oh, snap, you’re, like, a bad guy, right?”
On the one hand, this is a perfect Shazam! movie. It brings in elements from his entire history, including two of his three major villains in Dr. Sivana and, at the very end, Mr. Mind (that’s the worm that talks to Sivana in the asylum), with Black Adam set to come in his own movie, all the iterations of the Marvel family (with at least references to Talky Tawny in two mentions of a stuffed tiger prize at a carnival and with Darla having the same last name as Uncle Dudley, a.k.a. Uncle Marvel), his predilection for the interjection “Holy moley!” and an update to his origin that makes it less creepy. (I mean, seriously, an old man tells a homeless kid to join him in the subway to give him a present. It’s not an origin that has aged well…)
On the other hand, while I love that they leaned into the 1980s reboot where Billy retains his little-kid personality after transforming, I wish they’d done a better job of having Shazam actually have Billy’s personality.
Zachary Levi does a phenomenal job playing a teenager who finds himself thrust into an adult body. The problem is, the teenager he’s playing bears absolutely no resemblance to the teenager being played by Asher Angel for the rest of the movie. Angel’s Billy Batson is a bitter, closed-off, cynical kid who has a lot of emotional walls that need taking down. Levi’s Shazam sounds precisely nothing like the kid Angel is playing—in fact, he sounds more like Jack Dylan Grazer’s magnificently nerdy Freddy than he does Billy.
It’s a failure of scripting, directing, and acting, as the character voice for Shazam doesn’t match the character voice for Billy. Normally, when you’re doing a superhero—particularly one who has a secret identity of some sort—having the secret ID and the hero have different voices is a good thing. You don’t (necessarily) want Bruce Wayne to sound like Batman or Clark Kent to sound like Superman.
But Billy and Shazam are the same person, and he’s brand-new to it. While Shazam’s attempts to sound adult are hilariously labored, they don’t sound like Billy, who is actually pretty good at communicating with adults when he locks two cops in a pawn shop or talks with the social worker.
This disconnect spoils the movie some, but doesn’t ruin it, mostly because, while they don’t sound like the same person, both Levi and Angel are doing excellent work—especially Angel, who gives Billy a gravitas that makes his journey from selfish brat, to a kid who has has his cherished dream stomped on when he finally finds his mother and discovers that she’s an even more selfish brat than her son, to a hero who realizes his greatest strength isn’t the hope that he’ll find the woman who gave birth to him, but rather the family he’s found in the Vasquez home.
That home is the best part of the movie. Marta Milans and especially Cooper Andrews are both superb as Rosa and Victor, and the script and their performances create a lovely home. It’s not perfect, but they’re doing their best, and they’re charming and fun and supportive. The kids are all superb, but I have to give the biggest props to the supremely adorable Faithe Herman, who gives Darla serious depth beyond “moppet who hugs people,” as she’s very invested in being a good sister, and is obviously scared to death that people won’t love her, so she overcompensates by being cute as hell. And the rest of them are wonderful, too, though there are a bit too many of them to all really create enough of an impression—as an example, the movie doesn’t have the storytelling space to make Eugene or Pedro much more than stereotypes.
Mark Strong is also superb as ever. He embodies the theme of the movie, which is how you deal with your childhood traumas, and also how important family is—but it doesn’t have to be biological family. In fact, the biological families in this movie are awful. The Sivanas are total shits and Billy’s mother is a disaster. And in fact, the terrible families that they are saddled with are why Shazam is a terrible hero for most of the movie and why Sivana is such a nasty villain.
Not that the most powerful surrogate father the movie gives us is much better. The old wizard kidnaps children, promises them great power, then takes it away from them and tells them they’re not worthy because they—like any kid would—reach for a shiny thing. And when he does finally get a champion, it’s Billy, to whom he gives no instruction or guidance, just thrusts tremendous power into the hands of a cynical fourteen-year-old. What could possibly go wrong?
Director David F. Sanders, Angel, and Caroline Palmer do amazing work making the reunion with Billy’s mother land emotionally. It’s a tour de force by all concerned, especially Angel. Billy’s entire existence has been tied up in finding his mother, and when he does, it’s so crushingly disappointing, and it’s utterly heartbreaking.
But where Billy finds his strength isn’t in his ability to heft a bus, it’s the family he’s been given. And they defeat Sivana and the seven deadly sins as a team.
The movie is tremendous fun. The banter among the folks in the Vasquez house is delightful, Levi is obviously having a grand old time doing his Tom Hanks-in-Big-but-with-powers impersonation, Grazer is having even more fun as Freddy, there are tons of great lines, and the themes are very nicely and maturely done. This could’ve been a complete goof of a movie, but it actually deals with some very important themes amidst the hero action and CGI climax and overall silliness.
I just wish Levi and Angel worked a little more closely together on sounding like each other.
Next week, David Harbour takes over from Ron Perlman in a reboot of Hellboy.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a story in the new anthology Across the Universe: Tales of Alternate Beatles, edited by Michael A. Ventrella & Randee Dawn, and which features a bunch of stories showing alternate versions of the Fab Four. His story “Used To Be” has them as adventurers in an epic fantasy setting. Check it out!
I did generally enjoy this one when I finally got around to seeing it.
One thing that made me do a genuine double take (well, or at least rewind the movie so that I could make sure I had seen what I thought I saw): When Sivana goes to his father’s company, there’s a brief establishing shot of a city skyline, and that city skyline is very definitely Minneapolis, Minnesota, just with Sivana’s name CGI’ed onto the IDS Tower. Given that the movie is actually set in Philadelphia, I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to pretend that was the Philly skyline, or just assume that the corporate headquarters were in other unnamed midwestern metropolitan area.
(And speaking of that scene, I thought it got awfully dark, especially compared to the rest of the movie, what with Sivana chucking random corporate types out of a 50th floor window.)
No mention of the live-action Saturday morning show shared with Isis? That was my introduction to the character. :(
Also, looking at that list of gods — Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury — that is a very weird & mismatched assortment.
Earlier incarnations also included the 1970’s live action TV series, my first formal introduction to the character, and the 1980’s cartoon shorts that were the only worthwhile thing about the Kid Super Power Hour…Have always been a fan of the Marvels, though like other comics largely unfamiliar with post 80s interpretations, and was caught off guard by the tone of the film I saw in trailers, and never got around to seeing it…
I only recently saw this one on DVD. I thought it was okay but imperfect. I’m glad this movie waited until DC/WB had learned from Zack Snyder’s mistakes and realized not every superhero movie has to be Batman-dark, but at the same time, a lot of the humor didn’t work for me. Mainly because Billy/Shazam spends most of the movie as a complete jerk, using his powers for personal gain and even criminal acts and almost getting people killed through his sheer negligence. It makes him very unsympathetic. Besides, we’ve already seen the story where a teenager gets superpowers, abuses them for personal gain, and learns from his mistakes that he needs to use them selflessly and heroically, but it was a whole lot more effective when Peter Parker did it, largely because he didn’t spend two whole acts of the movie before he learned the hard way about great responsibility.
Also, I don’t get the appeal of Zachary Levi. Part of the reason Shazam comes off as a jerk is because Levi comes off as a jerk. Even in the behind-the-scenes features when he was out of character, I found him overbearing, obnoxious, and not remotely as funny as he thought he was.
Mark Strong is a very effective villain, but I think I prefer Sivana as a mad scientist. Fighting Shazam/CM’s magic and brawn with science and brains makes for a nice contrast. Giving them identical power sets takes that away. Although it was interesting how they took the iconic “Seven Deadly Enemies of Man” (as they were euphemistically called in the comics) and made them integral to the story. Still, having them be yet another group of swirly gray CGI smoke monsters didn’t work in their favor.
It’s also a bit silly that the film never actually gives its heroes names. On one level, the inability of Billy and Freddy to pick a name is an amusing wink at the decades of legal wrangling over the character’s name, but ultimately it’s clumsy that these characters end up just being billed as “Super Hero Freddy” etc.
One thing I liked was how effectively the film used the idea of the shared universe it occupied. The earlier DCEU films have done a clumsy, inconsistent job of trying to build a shared superhero continuity, but this was the first movie in the series that really succeeded in creating the sense that there’s a larger world of superheroes that the characters inhabit. That’s because it approaches it from the perspective of civilians (at least initially) and shows how that world looks to them as they live within it, giving it a sense of perspective it hasn’t had before.
Also, Darla is terrific. No argument there. I wish they’d left in her deleted tea party scene.
Honestly, I liked the movie, but I felt a little like the intent was originally to create the film on the cheap and that it got rewritten when the DC/WB machine decided to shovel a little more money in its direction.
Also, count me among those who pretty much consistently hates everything DC has done with the Marvel Family since a little bit before the New 52 era. Most especially the name change. Honestly, I could have dealt with them calling him something like “Captain Shazam” rather than just Shazam. ALSO, having Freddy and Mary also age when they transformed felt wrong to me.
Still, my kids like the movie and it’s not a total bust.
A friend of mine pointed out in a Facebook chat that it felt like they were trying to have it both ways here — that they were doing both the original mode of Captain Marvel/Shazam having a different personality from Billy Batson and the post-1985 notion of him still being a kid, just in an adult body. They failed, mind you, but it’s an interesting point.
No, I didn’t mention Shazam/Isis, did I? I grew up with that, too. Sigh.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
To any other parahuman fans out here, anyone else think that Darla is totally Kenzie? Loved that character. Other than that, I thought the tone was weird, going from silly antics to really creepy monsters and violence, then back to more cartoon-like violence. Had fun with the movie, but I wasn’t sure who the target audience was supposed to be.
Given that they now say his magical powers are electrical, I really think DC missed an opportunity to change him from Captain Marvel to Captain DC, for direct current. DC even had a back-of-the-issue news feature once called “Direct Currents.”
I adored this movie beyond measure or reason.
I’ve heard many people make the complaint about the difference between Angel’s and Levi’s performances, but honestly, it doesn’t feel like that much of a disconnect to me. I don’t find it hard to accept that a vulnerable, hurt, scared kid like Billy would feel exhilarated and liberated in this crazy circumstance, and that he would shed some of his defensive insularity as a result.
Joey: It went beyond that, though. His speaking patterns and word choices were different. It wasn’t so much the attitude change — that part made sense — it was the wholesale shift in personality and style.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Saw this for the first time recently and enjoyed it quite a lot. I liked the comedy bits of a teenager not knowing what to do with his powers (of course he would get beer and a nudie show from it!), and Levi handles the progression from that to a genuine superhero well. Oh, and all the kid actors were impressive, too. And nobody ever went wrong casting Mark Strong as the baddie.
Shortly after this post went live, I saw this news story on The Beat, which confirmed that Shazam! 2 is scheduled for release on 1 April 2022 (very fitting to release a Shazam! movie on the 1st of April, methinks…). That’s after Black Adam, so there’s a better than even chance that we’ll see Zachary Levi et al go up against Dwayne Johnson’s bad guy…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
We rented this recently and my kids enjoyed it (although I agree the tone sometimes shifted a bit – the board room scene was particularly dark). Asher Angel did a really great job with young Billy and if anything, I wish we spent more time on the Vasquez family.
I don’t get the love for this stinker at all. Is it a kid’s movie? Then why the ultraviolence with heads literally being bitten off leaving a bloody corpse and a man being thrown out the top floor window of a high rise to scream as he falls? Is it an adult movie? When it isn’t a bloody mess it plays like a Saturday morning cereal commercial. A very stupid one.
Is Levy’s portrayal a complete rip off of Tom Hank’s in Big? Well, yes. I was looking for the silly string and the piano mat.
For as much as I enjoyed this movie, his power set left me a bit confused. I thought his powers were supposed to have a 1:1 correlation with the SHAZAM acronym, and his strength, speed, and electricity seem to line up with Hercules, Mercury, and Zeus, respectively, but is his invulnerability the Stamina of Atlas or the Courage of Achilles? And which one was flight supposed to be?
And the Marvel Family ending was neat, but I thought that when they did that at the same time, the 6 powers were supposed to be split up among them, so why does Billy seem to still have all the powers when everyone else just got one?
@16/LazerWulf: The character was created for a 1940 comic book where he had a talking tiger for a sidekick and a small worm with a radio around his neck for a mortal enemy, and he once fought the anthropomorphized planet Earth, who’d gotten sick of humans making a nuisance of themselves and tried to get rid of us, by picking up its continents and dropping them on it. Logic and consistency were not a priority. Captain Marvel had whatever powers were cool and Superman-like, and the acronym was just a flimsy justification for a cool-sounding magic word, hence the incongruous mixing of Greek and Roman mythological names plus a Biblical king thrown in.
That said, though, I’d assume flight correlates with Mercury, who had the winged sandals and all. And while invulnerability would render courage irrelevant, it would presumably be associated with Achilles. Stamina is more about what you can do rather than what you can withstand being done to you.
It was good enough to keep my attention ’till the end, but maybe it was released 5 years too late?
markmaverik: I’m confused as to why you think the movie should’ve been released in 2014 instead of 2019, and why that’s such a fatal choice….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@18/markmaverik: I’m with Keith on this. As I said above, it’s good that it came out now instead of 5 years earlier, because if it had come out while Snyder was still running the DC movies, then it would’ve been forced to be dark and gritty and cynical and it would’ve been a disaster as a Shazam! story. I didn’t care for all of the humor here and I agree with the comments that it had an oddly inconsistent tone, but it was right overall to do it as a lighthearted movie, and Warner Bros. in 2014 was not in a place where they were capable of understanding that a DC superhero movie could be lighthearted.
@17: It did just dawn on me that all of those deities represent empires that at least had some kind of footprint in Egypt. So maybe the power set isn’t as disparate as it would seem
KRAD, another well written essay. I took my two youngest nephews (6 & 8 yrs) to see this movie when it first hit the theaters. Frankly, I was shocked at the graphic carnage. My nephews were visibly upset with some of the scenes. However, overall the boys enjoyed the movie.
Definitely loves this one – it’s a darned good superhero movie to start with (not to mention a rather touching family drama), but then it gives us CROCODILE MEN IN SUITS and Mister Mind THE WICKEDEST WORM ALIVE!
What more could an easygoing nerd like myself ask for?
@23. Ed: “CROCODILE MEN IN SUITS”?
Did I miss an end credits scene?
Darla’s actress, Faithe Herman, is indeed a natural. Supposedly she’s good on This Is Us (which I don’t watch) and she was very good recently on Watchmen as a young Angel Abar.
@23: The crocodile gangsters showed up briefly when Billy and the others opened the wrong door when they were trying to escape from the Rock of Eternity. I’m pretty sure they were a teaser for the Monster Society of Evil.
I really liked this movie. As regards the disparity in personality between Billy and Shazam, that fades in comparison to David Banner and the Hulk. What’s going on THERE? It’s hard to believe it’s the same man, given their totally different personalities: David Banner is so gentle and polite whereas the Hulk is so angry most of the time.
@24 & 25: According to the DVD bonus features, the Crocodile-Men were actually practical animatronic costumes — or rather, one costume shot four separate times and composited together digitally, with the director himself inside the suit. So they went to enormous lengths (and considerable physical discomfort for the director) for an Easter-egg shot that lasted mere seconds. (The director also voiced Mister Mind.)
@26/Aonghus Fallon: Since the ’80s or so, the comics have adopted the idea that Bruce Banner has multiple personalities that are physically manifested through his Hulk metamorphoses. But the concept has evolved over time. In the first couple of issues, it was more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde duality, with the Hulk being Banner’s evil side (although this was a guy who built weapons of mass destruction for a living, so was he ever really good?). Then for a while, the Hulk was basically Banner with his filters removed, his angry and uninhibited side that he usually kept repressed. Over time, the longer he spent in Hulk form, the more his emotions overrode his intellect and the dumber he got, to the point that he forgot that “puny Banner” wasn’t a separate person. Eventually the dumb Hulk became the default way the character was written and he became more separate from Banner, which is what later writers rationalized by establishing his dissociative identity disorder.
In the Bill Bixby TV series, they established that David Banner had always had anger-control issues and an impulsive streak, which was why he undertook the reckless experiment that mutated him. There, the Hulk was basically David with his intellect completely suppressed and the more primitive parts of his brain taking control. Still, the Hulk consistently had the same motivations and priorities as David — he was mad at the people or things that had angered or threatened David to trigger the Hulk-out, and he was kind and protective toward the people David liked.
1) not mentioned yet: since when did Solomon become a god?
2) I grew up before Ms Marvel and the current Captain Marvel; to me Captain Marvel has always been Billy Batson.
@28/Dr.T: Solomon is no god and neither are Atlas (a titan), Hercules (a demigod) and Achilles ( a demigod). The goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology was Athena and her equivalent in Roman mythology was Minerva.
@28/Dr. Thanatos: Achilles isn’t a god either, and Hercules is only a demigod. So only three of the six are gods, from separate pantheons (a Titan, an Olympian god, and a Roman god). Like I said, I think Bill Parker and C.C. Beck cared more about making the acronym work than any deeper logic or consistency.
Although the debut story did call them “six great gods” (and it’s surprising how faithful the movie version is to that version in some ways), I found a panel from a later retelling (can’t determine the source) calling them “six mighty heroes” instead. Which doesn’t really work any better. The ’73 TV series called them the Elders (although the main titles call them “the immortal Elders” and “the immortals”).
@29/Paladin Burke: The Titans were gods, just the previous generation of gods before the Olympians. After all, they were the parents of the Olympians, so they kinda have to be the same “species,” as it were.
27: I guess my point is that I think the director’s intention was that Shazam was Billy’s inner, more exuberant self, just as the Hulk is meant to represent Banner’s repressed anger. In that context, Billy is meant to be slightly depressive, which is how Asher Angel plays him. Whether this works or not is a matter of opinion. As has already been pointed out, they don’t even bother to establish any similarity between Billy Batson and Captain Marvel in the old b&w, and it’s fine (although the characterisation is pretty minimal throughout).
@30/CLB: You are correct about Atlas’s godhood.
Hercules was born a demigod, lived a full life as a hero and after his death was promoted to full godhood and married to a goddess, Hebe. Achilles was not a good but he was venerated as a Hero which is the next best thing. Solomon was a good Jew who would have nothing to do with pagan divinities and certainly was not a god in any sense of the word. I remember being mildly offended by his inclusion way back when I was watching the Shazam/She-Ra Power Hour.
@33/P: According to the biblical Book of 1 Kings, Solomon lapsed into idolatry and “his heart was not entirely with the Lord , his God, as the heart of his father David had been.” 1 Kings 11:4 (New American Bible).
True. It was the result of tolerating the worship of his foreign wives. But he started out a good Jew.
Since no one’s brought it up so far, I absolutely love Benjamin Wallfisch’s score for this film. Before this, Wonder Woman was my favorite of the DC Extended Universe scores, but I think he did a good job of channeling John Williams at his Superman peak for a very Eighties Adventure-esque music tone — especially with the main theme.
I remember, way back in the early 70’s, I had a friend who had an authentic Whiz Comics #2. It had been his dad’s. My friend let me read it. Even at the tender age of 9, I realized it was infantile. I don’t think I ever read another Captain Marvel comic after that. Did they get better with time?
@37/Paladin Burke: From what I’ve seen, the original Fawcett run of Captain Marvel had a pretty consistent kid-friendly, absurd tone, and you kind of have to be receptive to that Golden Age silliness to appreciate it. As Keith said, that series ended in 1953, and it was another two decades before DC revived it under the title Shazam! (the character was still called Captain Marvel then, but they couldn’t use that name in the title due to Marvel’s trademark). While DC’s ’70s series was done as a direct continuation of the Fawcett series, I’m sure its tone was more in keeping with the era when it came out. Then it was rebooted post-Crisis to incorporate CM into the mainstream DC Universe, and I believe it took a more serious tone like most stuff did post-Crisis.
So did it change over time? Pretty much, yeah, though perhaps not so much within the original incarnation. Which versions are better or worse depend on what you’re looking for.
Whoever was paying the SHAZAM pantheon to give their powers needs to get a refund from Solomon, because he was just goofing off for the whole movie. Starting with the wizard who spends decades not realizing that he’s trying to hold people to an impossible standard, and then continuing through the hero who spends most of the movie acting like a fool. (He’s a fool in understandable kid-like ways, but he’s still being foolish.)
I mean, I enjoyed the movie, but this supposed “wisdom of Solomon” has been a pet peeve of mine for decades. (I think I can remember it being actually used in the comics exactly once: it’s my pick for least-used superpower of all time.)
Also, while the dialogue where the other kids got their powers was fun:
“Say my name!”
“BILLY!”
“No, not my name. His name! The name of the guy whose name I say to be like this!”
…by simple logic, I think that the other kids in fact ought to have now had “Billy” be their transformation word. There’s precedent for the magic word being something other than “Shazam”, after all.
Of course, the big problem with having Shazam be the hero’s actual name these days is that he can’t introduce himself without transforming back. Then again, Captain Marvel Jr. (Freddy) always had that problem, because his trigger phrase was “Captain Marvel.”
I read that some comics writer introduced the idea that saying “Shazam” would only transform him if he said it with intent, if he meant to use it as his transformation call rather than just his name.
@40 / CLB:
I read that some comics writer introduced the idea that saying “Shazam” would only transform him if he said it with intent, if he meant to use it as his transformation call rather than just his name.
Yeah, that was one of the tweaks Geoff Johns and Gary Frank made during the Curse of Shazam! revamp of Billy’s mythology back in 2012.
@41/Mr. Magic: How about this instead: Saying “Shazam!” only transforms him if he says it in Gomer Pyle’s accent. “Sha-zah-yam!” :D
Glad I read this. I was avoiding this movie because I’m completely old school Captain Marvel having grown up reading all those DC reprints in the 70’s, and I see this movie has a lot of issues beyond just the “Billy isn’t Cap, they’re partners” that has been annoying me. That Billy is not only no longer pure of heart but is stealing, both before and after getting his powers, is just messing him up too much. I prefer the old Wizard having watched for a really good kid and brought him to get powers over a wizard who just randomly tests kids rather badly trying to find a good one, then even more randomly gives the powers to a little thief without even giving him the dumb test. I hope this wizard isn’t a spirit who can be summoned by lighting a brazier at the Rock of Eternity, because I think any advice this guy might give would be pretty bad.
Think I’ll just go on ignoring this movie even as a library checkout now.
@43. I took the movie’s moral to be that “no one starts out pure of heart; pureness of heart is something that you have to grow into,” which Billy does as he grows out of his childish egoism into selflessness (and starts using the wisdom of Solomon, like when he lured Envy out of Zivana –and when he changed the rules of the battle by sharing his power with his family, something that neither Sivana nor the Wizard would even have considered).
A kindhearted, entirely benevolent, pure-of-heart orphan in the foster system is the kind of fantasy that only exists in the minds of sheltered probably-childless adults who have completely repressed their own memories whatever sh*t they lived through as children.
@44/Cybersnark: That’s a fair point here, but I am a little tired of the way so much modern superhero fiction tends to assume that the default setting for any character is selfishness and altruism has to be learned. That’s a pretty cynical take on human nature if you think about it. I kind of miss the days when a person would get superpowers and wouldn’t even hesitate before deciding to use them for good, just because they’re decent people in the first place. Is basic altruism really so rare in modern society that audiences need a whole detailed explanation for why someone isn’t a selfish jerk?
That’s one thing that makes Captain America: The First Avenger so effective. The only explanation Steve Rogers needs for his drive to heroism is “I don’t like bullies.” It’s old school and it works.
@CLB: “Is basic altruism really so rare in modern society…”
Unfortunately, decency and civility seem to be a in short supply these days, at least in the public sphere. When so many of our leaders are venal and display unadulterated selfishness, one would almost wish purehearted superheroes were real.
@46/Sunspear: “Unfortunately, decency and civility seem to be a in short supply these days, at least in the public sphere.”
Which is all the more reason for fiction to become more idealistic in response.
I especially appreciate these reviews if the movie is one that I have absolutely no interest in sitting through. It satisfies my curiosity, without me having to actually take the time and, uh, sit through it.
@CLB: meta question: Does such fiction then ignore reality? It’s a response to ugliness in the outside world, but is it also a retreat from problems or issues that should be faced head on?
I just finished watching Superman and the Mole Men (1951)–a movie with more heart than Man of Steel and Shazam combined.
@49/Sunspear: No, it doesn’t ignore reality, because reality is not monolithic. It may seem that altruism is uncommon today, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Hell, my whole point is that it’s unrealistic to assume that every single person defaults to being a self-centered jerk unless they have some dramatic epiphany to teach them altruism. There are bound to be people who’ve already learned to care about other people before they get superpowers, just because they were raised well by their parents and community, or because they experienced pain and loss in childhood and learned to empathize with people that way.
And idealism absolutely does not mean ignoring the problems in life. It means believing that we can fix them if we have the courage and commitment to keep trying, rather than cynically throwing up our hands and assuming it’s not worth bothering because we’re all doomed. As Robert Hewitt Wolfe once wrote, “Pessimism is not a survival trait.”
@CLB: “There are bound to be people who’ve already learned to care about other people before they get superpowers”
Who, besides Superman and Captain America, can we put on that list? Most of the popular franchises currently running seem to feature dark heroes, rogues, vigilantes, or anti-heroes who are just a shade away from villainy themselves.
Seems natural to me for the origin story to be about Billy learning how to be an altruistic superhero. A teenager initially using his great powers in an immature manner, playing with lightning bolts like they’re fireworks, should surprise no one. It would be an overwhelming experience, and I thought it tied in nicely with his biological mother having been overwhelmed as a young parent. It’s a realization for him.
@52/Sunspear: My whole point is that we should have more altruistic heroes than we do. Pointing out the existing status quo is useless as a counterpoint to the statement that the status quo should change.
@53/Kowalski: As I already said, though, that’s basically Spider-Man’s origin story, so this movie was rehashing familiar ground. And it dragged out his irresponsible phase too long to the point that he became obnoxious.
-54
Either way, whether he’s naturally altruistic like Captain America or has to learn it like Spider-Man, it’s rehashing familiar ground. The paths for origin stories seem quite limited now, which is why I’m usually not a fan of them. But there was enough good-natured comedy here for me to enjoy it.
@54/CLB: Agreed. We need more altruistic heroes in fiction and the real world.
@CLB: should and could are different things. Point being that the current cultural environment seems near impossible ground for any altruistic/idealistic hero to rise. Such a character would likely be viewed as naive.
@52. In at least some versions of her constantly-rebooted origin, Wonder Woman qualifies; she sees that Man’s World is a near-dystopian mess and chooses to leave the safety of Themyscira to help simply because she knows the world can be better.
If they want to make movies about flawed, criminal characters learning to become selfless heroes, why haven’t they done a movie about Plastic Man yet? He was a hardened criminal before getting his powers through chemicals splashed on a bullet wound as he escaped the police, and learns kindness and selflessness from a monk who finds and takes care of him. If they wanted humor, the more modern take on the character has been pretty bizarre.
Can you imagine how his powers would look on live action though. But yeah, he’s a Great character
“Point being that the current cultural environment seems near impossible ground for any altruistic/idealistic hero to rise. Such a character would likely be viewed as naive.”
@57, That’s a very skewed view of the world as it is. I see so many reports of selfless people doing small and large acts of kindness for their fellow humans (and other species) that it gives me heart these days, even in the face of dark aspects of some other parts of society. Even children have been shown in studies to be kinder and more empathetic than they ever have been. All of those good people are already heroes/heroines, and giving them powers would certainly result in many of them becoming altruistic superheroes. There’s nothing naive about that.
#44-#58: It’s not that altruism is in critically short supply; local news these days does a lot of stories about “everyday heroes”, of the sort who go above and beyond as teachers, runners of soup kitchens, animal-rescue volunteers, caregivers of various kinds, et cetera. It’s that there’s a fundamental mismatch between the narrative forms — the altruistic story typically involves very little if any serious conflict, whereas the superhero story as a genre is rooted very deeply not just in conflict, but in violent conflict. And even when an altruistic protagonist gets involved in conflict, it’s usually paper-based conflict — citizen vs. bureaucracy, mostly, in which very few traditional superpowers are going to be of much use.
And if you give the average real-world altruist superpowers, they’re not likely to put on a cape and costume and go out hunting supervillains. The guy who runs the soup kitchen is likely to just use them to make more soup, and the eccentric cat lady is likely to set up a bigger cat shelter/adoption operation (assuming they can figure out how to use whatever powers they’ve been given to advance their pre-existing causes).
Possibly the most relevant case in point is Black Lightning, who’s a traditional superhero not because he’s a teacher, but because he’s a teacher in a horrifically corrupt high-crime neighborhood. Give those same superpowers to a teacher in a small-town MIdwest high school with no serious crime problems, and that teacher will volunteer to power the floodlights at the local stadium for Friday night football games, so the district can save on its electric bill.
Or, turning back to Shazam! proper, let’s suppose that the wizard is using rather different search criteria, skips over the Sivanas entirely, and gives the powers to Rosa and Victor. Different movie entirely…and if one were writing that one realistically, probably not anything remotely like a traditional superhero movie.
@60/Kate: Yes. I think it’s just the older generations that cling to that cynical, me-first view of the world. I see today’s young people as more activist, more inclusive, more motivated to make things better.
@61/John: “the altruistic story typically involves very little if any serious conflict”
Where in the world did you get that idea? Of course there’s plenty of conflict in such stories — just look at any Star Trek or Supergirl episode. The only conflict it doesn’t have is an initially selfish or amoral protagonist having to “learn” to care about other people. That’s a trope that can be used well, but it’s simply being overused these days, even when it’s inappropriate to the character (e.g. Zack Snyder’s professed, rather sick notion that Superman could only develop a code against killing if he tried it first and decided he didn’t like it).
And an altrustic hero doesn’t have to be a one-dimensional one, or a superficial one. One of the few things I liked about the first season of Gotham (though I don’t know if it lasted beyond that) was that it got young Bruce Wayne right — his starting position was the desire to help others, because he’d been through a tragic loss himself and wanted to do what he could to spare others that pain. Also because his parents had been good people and he’d learned from their example. Bruce Wayne is committed to altruism long before he becomes Batman. He doesn’t have to learn it after the fact, because it’s the result of his childhood experiences, both positive and negative. But nobody would say a Batman story lacks conflict or pain. It’s just that Batman doesn’t have to start out as a jerk before learning to care about people. He’s always cared, and that innate compassion is why he reacted to his childhood trauma by becoming a hero rather than using it as an excuse for cruelty and violence like so many of his foes.
To perform one’s duty (whether legal or moral) is not altruism. Altruism goes beyond duty. It is bestowing a benefit* upon another that is neither legally or morally required. And, that’s what makes a hero a hero.
*Or, removing a detriment.
Shazam! is the defining example of how trailers can be misleading. I had very low expectations from this based on the initial teaser, which portrayed the comedy aspect, but none of the pathos. To my surprise, this was the most joyful DCEU film to date. It was delightful, poignant and entertaining (and surprisingly funny too).
At times, it feels like a relic from the 1990’s. It doesn’t have the production values or visual flair compared to other DCEU entries. It’s also completely devoid of the Snyder aesthetic. And yet it ranks up there with Wonder Woman as a high point for this particular universe.
It works because the movie invests time into the most relevant story, which is of course Billy Batson’s search for a family. It absolutely delivers on that regard. You feel the pain in him as he confronts the nasty reality that he was in fact abandoned that day in his infancy, and yet it feels exhilirating when he comes to accept just how supportive and caring his adoptive family can be.
Kudos to the casting department for finding amazing young actors to portray these adoptive siblings. To be able to find such competent actors able to carry that range of emotion is no small feat. Every single one of them rises to the story. It’s a credit to Sandberg that he takes the story and these young characters as seriously as they deserve. That’s why Shazam! works.
The fact that Billy and Shazam had such distinct personalities to the point where it came across as a storytelling fault for @krad, now that’s something I didn’t even realize until this rewatch. I was so caught up in the film that I never even noticed. But he has a point. There could have been more integration, but it doesn’t really hurt the overall story and the emotions it ultimately evokes.
It all comes together in what I consider to be a superb distillation of a hero’s journey, with a complete fulfilling arc. Batson is realistically flawed and fights an uphill battle to overcome his own fears and become someone capable of trusting others and caring. If only the rest of the DCEU was this committed to these essential basic building blocks of superhero storytelling (Wonder Woman excepted, of course).
Looking very much forward to the sequel.
@63/Paladin: Yes, but my point is about how stories choose to portray how someone becomes a hero. As I said, I dislike the assumption implicit in many of these origin stories that the default human state is selfishness and that empathy is something that has to be learned through exceptional experiences. Certainly a story about a flawed character learning to be better is worth telling, but when that becomes the standard, default origin story template, it comes off as rather cynical.
An alternative way to have conflict in an origin story is to have a character who starts out wanting to be altruistic when others don’t want them to. This is something that actually kind of worked in Man of Steel, at least in the first two acts — Clark instinctively wanted to use his power to help others, but he was hampered by the most awful version of Pa Kent in screen history, a father who tried to convince him to hide his power instead of using it. So the conflict was that Clark had to become a hero despite Pa Kent’s teachings, rather than because of them as in the usual origin. He had to learn to stand up for what he knew was right rather than succumb to Jonathan’s pessimistic worldview.
To bring it back to Shazam!, I think the movie could’ve managed a fair amount of the same kind of conflict and humor if Billy hadn’t been a selfish delinquent — if he’d believed that having superpowers obligated him to help people like his Justice League role models, but just wasn’t very good at it and kept screwing things up due to lack of control or judgment, and maybe came to doubt whether he was worthy of the powers he’d been given. That could’ve tied into his sense of abandonment, his fear that he wasn’t worthy of his mother’s love. Plenty of drama and emotion there without requiring him to be a reckless jerk who uses his powers for profit and almost kills a busload of people through gross negligence.
@65/CLB: IMO there are three main categories of ethical behavior for any given set of circumstances: 1. shirking one’s moral or legal duty (negligence); 2. performing one’s moral or legal duty (righteousness); and 3. going above and beyond one’s moral or legal duty (altruism). Most humans, most of the time, fall into the first two categories. IMO most people confuse category 2 behavior with category 3 behavior.
Btw I agree with most of what you wrote, supra.
@66/Paladin: Uh, okay, but that’s not the topic I’m addressing. I’m not defining gradations of morality, I’m talking about the overuse of a specific origin-story trope and why I think its use in Shazam! weakened the movie.
#66CLB: Agreed as to your analysis of Shazam.
@60. Kate: the key words there are “cultural environment,” as in media representation. I’m not referring to everyday people in the news, but to any current show, film, cultural artifact that presents a paragon of virtue, with traits like altruism and generosity. It’s tough to find any.
Only thing that springs to mind at the moment is possibly Tom Hanks’ Mister Rogers film, which I haven’t seen.
It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but I don’t remember Billy as being a selfish delinquent; just as somebody with abandonment issues who refused to commit, the result being antisocial behaviour, a refusal to engage with his new family (for fear of getting hurt again) and a rejection of his role as superhero (expressed by a refusal to take it seriously). Learning to commit and care for others was the character’s arc, which I think is fair enough.
@70/Aonghus: That would be more convincing if he hadn’t used his powers to rob an ATM. Not to mention almost killing a busload of people because he was showing off with incredibly dangerous powers. At least when the 2005 Fantastic Four film had its heroes cause traffic chaos on a bridge, it was purely by accident. But in general I’m not fond of movie scenes where the heroes’ big early rescues are from crises they created in the first place.
@71/CLB: I also had problems with how Shazam’s so-called heroism was portrayed in the movie. Also, I cannot stand movies where the hero’s negligence or recklessness creates the very disaster he rescues others from.
@65 – ” So the conflict was that Clark had to become a hero despite Pa Kent’s teachings, rather than because of them as in the usual origin. He had to learn to stand up for what he knew was right rather than succumb to Jonathan’s pessimistic worldview.”
Ma Kent in BvsS isn’t any better.
” You don’t owe this world a thing, you never did.”
The biggest problem I have with the DC movies is that, for the most part, they’re based on either Geoff Johns or, in the case of BvsS, rank Miller. It’s almost as if DC is embarrassed by their characters history and only want to use the most recent stories for source material. Green Lantern being a prime example. The whole Parallax story is from Johns GL Rebirth storyline, and ignores the long history or GL and the Corps. How can you take something with the scope and breadth of the Green Lantern Corps and make a bad movie about it? By turning the main character into a goof off who then manages to defeat a threat that it previously took the Corp to defeat. First mission, BEST GREEN LANTERN EVER!.
Sheesh.
Shazam! showed that it’s willing to embrace the silliness of crocodile men and a talking, hyper intelligent worm. Would a talking tiger really be too far out?
@73/KK: “You don’t owe this world a thing, you never did.” Martha Kent is right! Clark has no duty to use his awesome powers to help anyone except, perhaps, his family members. However, he does have a duty to use his powers in a reasonable and prudent manner so as not harm others. Clark or anyone else acts heroically or altruistically when they help someone they are not duty bound to help. My point: always doing what you are obligated to do does not make you a hero; it makes you a decent person.
@74/Paladin: I don’t agree with that Martha quote at all — it’s just more of Snyder’s cynicism and misunderstanding of the character. “This world” took in the refugee Kal-El as an infant and gave him a home, a family, and a community — as well as yellow sunlight to give him superpowers. He owes virtually everything he has to this world. So of course he’d love the Earth and be grateful to it, and of course he’d want to do everything he could to protect it.
@75/CLB: There is no question that Snyder’s version of Superman/Clark Kent has a cynical bent. But, I still maintain that merely performing one’s duties does not a hero make. A hero must do more. For me, Superman or Shazam or Batman act heroically anytime they help someone they are not duty bound to help. Whether a duty exists given a particular set of circumstances is the difficult question.
@76: Paladin: “But, I still maintain that merely performing one’s duties does not a hero make.”
I’d say that depends on what those duties are and why you’re performing them. If they’re something beyond your control — e.g. the duty to pay taxes or serve on juries — or if they’re just ordinary job duties like paperwork and being on time, then you have a point. But if you choose to become something like a firefighter or a paramedic, if you voluntarily take on a set of duties that entail helping others and possibly risking your own well-being to do so, then that choice to take on those duties is itself heroic.
Coming into this late, but I agree with you, CLB, as it pertains to this: “Which is all the more reason for fiction to become more idealistic in response.” and “It may seem that altruism is uncommon today, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” and the nature of idealism.
Although I don’t mind Billy as much since his progression seemed to take a natural path and what could be expected for an orphaned teen. Although yes, I did find the bus scene to be a bit much because I also dislike those kind of careless uses of power (and have a general phobia of automotive related incidents).
@57 – my understanding of the cultural mileau that the original Star Wars were released was very similar (I was not alive then, so I couldn’t tell you), and that’s part of why it resonated. George Lucas wanted an antidote to that. This is exactly why we needed it. In fact, I think maybe we’ve had discussions on this in other threads regarding Star Wars, but that’s honestly part of why I didn’t love The Force Awakens. Yes, it took a realistic direction, but it’s not the only path reality could have taken. (Somewhat contradictorily, I actually really enjoy The Last Jedi and what it does within the context of the already established story, even if on a meta level, Luke’s arc makes me sad.) For me it’s kind of a similar sticking point – the idea that the of course all heroes will end up not just making mistakes and failing, but brought so utterly low that even their friendships have all dissolved is just…I mean, it’s really good drama but not satisfying on a different type of level.
Interestingly, regarding Superman, I would agree that in a technical sense, no, he doesn’t ‘owe’ the world anything (I don’t believe in the idea that you can have a claim on somebody like that) – but that’s WHY he’s a hero. Aside from stuff that’s happening in his vicinity, I don’t think he would be morally at fault if he didn’t go out of his way to save people – but it’s the fact that he goes above and beyond, and uses his powers for more than just what basic morality would demand, that is an example of ‘heroic virtue’.
@78/Lisamarie: I think it would be impossible for Superman not to be altruistic and dedicated to others. I mean, he could kill humans as easily as I could pop soap bubbles. Simply interacting with people on an everyday basis would require a constant, reflexive concern for others’ safety and a rigorous degree of self-control. Nobody on the planet would need to be more constantly aware and protective of other people’s well-being than Clark Kent (or Kara Zor-El). It would have to be second nature.
When it comes to the nature of our altruistic superheroes, it’s really a matter of when we meet them, isn’t it? If we met Shazam long into his career, we might assume he’s always been this good. Superman wasn’t born good or bad, I don’t think. He’s not good and altruistic because he’s from another planet. He’s good and altruistic largely because of who raised him (in the classic version of the character, not the Snyder nonsense).
Billy Batson didn’t have the stability that young Clark Kent had. So it makes sense that a kid who was lost/abandoned and bounced from foster home to foster home and grew up in a tough city might have some issues to work out. If he’s already good when we meet him, there’s not a lot of room for the character to go (in his origin story). Not a lot of room for the actors either.
@79 – very true. But I think as a hero he goes above and beyond just being conscientious of those around him.
@80/Kowalski: “When it comes to the nature of our altruistic superheroes, it’s really a matter of when we meet them, isn’t it?”
No, because I reject the thesis that the original, default state for every human being is to be a selfish jerk, that empathy is something that doesn’t exist naturally and has to be learned. That’s a fundamental and deeply cynical misunderstanding of human psychology. Empathy is fundamental to our nature. We are a social species, shaped that way by our evolution. Cooperation is our primary survival skill. We have a fundamental need for physical contact and human interaction in childhood in order to have healthy brain development. Our mirror neurons fire in response to others’ emotional states the exact same way they fire in response to our own. Empathy for others is literally hardwired into our brains. We only lack empathy if something goes wrong with us, if we’re born with a neurological defect or develop damage as a result of childhood neglect, abuse, or trauma.
So a person who has a normal, healthy upbringing will already care about other people. That’s the default position. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain how a person “learns” to give a damn about people beyond themselves, because that’s getting the defaults reversed. Yes, there’s merit in a story about a screwed-up, damaged person who finds a path to redemption, but it shouldn’t be presumed to be the way every origin story has to happen. Realistically, for every self-absorbed jerk who has to learn empathy, there should be plenty of other people who already have it innately. That’s why Bruce Wayne dedicated himself in childhood to fighting all crime rather than just seeking revenge on Joe Chill. That’s why Ben Grimm, despite his anguish at his mutation, unhesitatingly said “We understand! We’ve gotta use that power to help mankind, right?” Empathy is natural. As long as it’s nurtured from the start, it remains even after trauma.
If anything, people who are deficient in empathy when something traumatic happens to them or they gain superpowers are more likely to react toxically and become supervillains than to have some moral awakening and discover their responsibility to others. So it’s unrealistic if most superheroes start out deficient in empathy.
@82/CLB “So a person who has a normal, healthy upbringing will already care about other people.” Except Billy didn’t have a normal, healthy upbringing. He had a mother who was negligent at best and got shuffled around the foster system, running away from all his families. So I’d say it makes perfect sense for him to be messed up emotionallu
One of my many brothers is a firefighter who has saved many lives and homes over the past 30 years. However, he does not consider himself a hero. He understands that he has a paid legal duty to put out fires and save lives. As my brother put it: “A hero is a person who acts to help others when he has no legal or moral duty to do so and expects no benefit in return.” Now, a person who acts above and beyond the call of duty may be hero or a fool depending on the circumstances.
Also, I think our culture has lowered it’s moral standards. What was once called “performing one’s duty” is now called heroism. It is never heroic to do one’s duty, but in some circumstances (like firefighting), it is certainly admirable.
‘Yes, there’s merit in a story about a screwed-up, damaged person who finds a path to redemption, but it shouldn’t be presumed to be the way every origin story has to happen.’
Well, it’s pretty much how every story works, and not just origin stories! The only variation being how screwed up and how big the pay-off – it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about ‘Pride & Prejudice’, ‘The Iliad’ or some superhero. Otherwise you have a character who is dramatically inert. One of my favourite examples of the three-act structure (mainly because it follows the format so closely) is the STNG episode (starring Barclay) ‘Realm of Fear’.
@83/spoonfan: How many times have I already said that I’m not talking about a single movie, I’m talking about the overuse of this particular type of story across superhero origins in general? A given trope can work fine in any individual case, but it’s the lack of alternatives that’s the problem. I am really getting tired of having to repeat myself.
@84/Paladin: True heroes rarely consider themselves heroes. It’s not supposed to be about your opinion of yourself, it’s about the impact you have on others, how you’re seen by the rest of the world and by history. (Which is why I’m a little annoyed by the trope in superhero fiction of superheroes calling themselves heroes. It feels a little self-congratulatory.)
@85/Aonghus: No, it’s just lazy writing to assume there’s only one viable template for telling a certain kind of story. Some stories are about a character undergoing a fundamental change or growth, but others are more about them reaffirming who they already are, or helping someone else achieve a change. Part of the reason Captain America: The First Adventure works is because it’s not just a copy of the Iron Man template. Steve Rogers starts out heroic and never changes in the way he thinks and feels. The only change he goes through is finding a way to achieve what he always aspired to. His arc is about how he proves himself to others and convinces them to believe in him.
For that matter, Scott Lang in Ant-Man is altruistic from the start. The crime he was convicted for was hacking his employer’s systems to return the money that they’d embezzled from their customers. He’s a guy who wants to be a good man and a good father but has gotten screwed over by circumstance.
I figured you’d bring up ‘Captain America’! And yeah, it works (largely because of the likability of its lead) but ask yourself: how often can that particular template be used? There are very few genuinely original and interesting ways to portray a nice guy, but numerous ways to depict somebody as an ordinary, fallible human being.
I’d be more ambivalent about ‘Ant Man’ because I think the character comes across as an adrenalin junkie, who could very easily get a kick out of being a professional thief (whatever his reasons for the crime with which he’s ultimately charged) – I mean, he agrees to break into Michael Douglas’s house, right?
@87/Aonghus: “how often can that particular template be used?”
How often can the other one be used? My whole point, for the fifty billionth time, is that no single approach should be used too often.
@86/CLB I agree with you at large, but I don’t see why you’re seemingly criticizing Shazam for this, given that you seem to agree it’s realistic for Billy to be emotionally stunted. In your original comment, you directly said that “Mainly because Billy/Shazam spends most of the movie as a complete jerk, using his powers for personal gain and even criminal acts and almost getting people killed through his sheer negligence. It makes him very unsympathetic.” like it’s a big problem you had with the movie. So it’s clearly a problem you had, and I’m completely justified to argue about it in Shazam.
@CLB: “I am really getting tired of having to repeat myself.”
You know you have a choice there, right?
@89/spoonfan: “I agree with you at large, but I don’t see why you’re seemingly criticizing Shazam for this, given that you seem to agree it’s realistic for Billy to be emotionally stunted.”
I’ve explained my reasoning and my feelings in depth already. I’ve even proposed a better alternative path they could’ve used for the character, one that would’ve made him more sympathetic and given him a less cliched arc.
While I didn’t really like the selfish parts where Billy-as-Shazam was being a jerk, I got through it because the payoff was him learning and growing up, both as a person with powers and as a teenager with a chance at a family that wasn’t his birth family. And while I may not watch all of the movie repeatedly, I’ll watch the ending repeatedly. It wouldn’t have had the same impact if he’d just been goofily trying on new powers, and was altruistic. It was the character growth that was what I liked.
The original Billy Batson of the comics wasn’t a jerk. He got the “upgrade” thanks to Geoff Johns deciding that would be the best way to being the character into the present.
Personally, I’d rather that DC used the Jerry Ordway version of Billy/Captain Marvel. And there’s no reason that DC can’t continue to refer to the character as Captain marvel. They just can’t use the name as the title. Another bad decision by Johns.
@92/CLB I think we’ll have to agree to disagree here.
-82
Uh, I didn’t say the default setting for humans is to be a selfish jerk. Nothing of the sort. I think the default setting is neutral, and both the capacity for empathy and selfishness are already there. It’s our experiences that shape which of those are brought to the forefront in our personalities.
(Or so that’s been my experience observing people. Your mileage may vary).
We should also keep in mind this is a fish-out-of-water comedy, and characters in those are rarely well-behaved; character flaws and misunderstandings are the highlights. Pair that with the whole Shazam concept’s inherent silliness and it seems natural for the movie to take a comedic or “obnoxious” path.
Just finished watching this one on streaming cable today and…not bad! I enjoyed this being a lighter-toned comic book movie compared to the general status quo for superhero movies nowadays.
That said, I felt there were some pretty big flaws. One as many others have pointed out was the tonal switch where we’d get some scenes that were particularly gruesome for a lighter, family-friendly superhero movie, most notably the boardroom scene. I thought the film ran way too long, which I get can happen with an origin flick, but like ChristopherLBennett mentioned, it’s themes have similarly been done before by the Spider-Man movies and much better at that. So I feel like a lot of the superpower discovery scenes and Shazam going on and on being obnoxious and immature could have been trimmed down. Mark Strong is a good actor but I found his villain to be rather boring and one-dimensional. And his 7 Deadly Sins cohorts didn’t do it for me either because they’re CGI and like usual, I find those digital creations wholly unbelievable and take me right out of the movie. Finally, I agree with Krad that Shazam and Billy feel like two completely different characters and not the same person as they should be. Oh, and while the Superman “cameo” at the end was cool, it would have landed so much more effectively if it was actually Henry Cavill that made the appearance.
So what I did like was the overall light/cute tone of the movie, some good performances by Levi and a lot of the child actors, a few actual funny moments (loved the reference to “Big” with the big piano); and my favorite part: when Billy’s adoptive siblings all become superheroes too. I genuinely did not see that coming (I’m unfamiliar with the Shazam/Captain Marvel comic book series) so it was a delightful surprise, especially as it was a wish-fulfillment for Freddie. That kicked the movie into high-gear for me. In fact, it makes me look forward to seeing the pending sequel(s) that much more because I don’t feel like we’ve gotten a successful adaptation of a superhero family yet – I’m not counting superhero teams, but actual family members (who live with each other no less) so I think this will be really cool and fun to see more of in the future.
Just saw this movie. I don’t think Billy was that much of a jerk before, and his behavior makes sense when you consider his past. We’re talking about a kid who grew up in a bad family, with a father that has been in jail for the last 10 years (and was probably abusive), a mother who wasn’t prepared to have him, snapped at him when she ran out ot patience and abandoned him when the opportunity arrived and didn’t look back. This kid would probably constantly ask himself why his mom didn’t come back to him, and could try to shun all other attempts at affection. This is when we meet Billy. If his mother didn’t like him, then he’s unlikeable, then he behaves like that and every time a foster family gives up on him he confirms why his mother abandoned him. A very damaged kid, that still tries to do good, like fight back against those who bully his disabled foster brother.
Billy is in one way better than Spider Man, in that whenever he sees a crime or a disaster he helps. Spider man at first uses his powers to win fights and not to stop an ongoing robbery because he felt underpaid. Billy saves Mary from being run over and stops robberies. When he doesn’t find criminals or accidents, he goofs around and tries to get money like a street performer. Yes, he robs a dr pepper and an atm, but then uses the money to try to buy a lair. That’s a very immature crime, and we don’t even know if that was his idea or Freddie’s (since Freddy is the one who’s obsessed with Superheroes).
@97/Ryamano: “Billy is in one way better than Spider Man, in that whenever he sees a crime or a disaster he helps.”
That’s true enough, but as you say, he also actively committed crimes of his own — and he almost killed a busload of people through his own negligent actions. Peter was only guilty of sins of omission, not helping people when he could have. He did less good, but he also did less harm. It kind of cancels out.
Indeed, my whole point is that the two characters have basically the same story arc, a teenager getting superpowers, using them recklessly and selfishly, and learning to be selfless and heroic. So not only is it a story we’ve seen before, but the Spider-Man movies tell it better, because they don’t take so long lingering on the irresponsible phase before getting around to the hero stuff, and because the consequences of Peter’s mistakes are more personal and wrenching than the consequences of Billy’s mistakes.
Years later and I still look back on this film with fondness (I may idly speculate on what a SHAZAM! film with Mr Dwayne Johnson as the Big Red Cheese and Mr Mark Strong as Black Adam – possibly even with Mr John Glover as Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, THE WORLD’S WICKEDEST SCIENTIST! – might have looked like, but I wouldn’t trade the film we got for worlds); I still think the moment it went from “This movie is quite fun” to “This movie, this movie knows how to have a Good Time” was the brief instants where we glimpse those Crocodile Men in the Rock of Eternity, but Heaven knows that cameo from Mister Mind really is the cherry atop a very tasty cake.
Any film that can make anything as inherently absurd as a talking worm an eerie prospect full of villainous relish is a film which has already sold one ticket to it’s sequel (I just hope that they’ll have the cast iron nerve to introduce Mister Tawky Tawny at some point).