Film ...God, is this how my dad felt watching The Dark Knight Trilogy?
So let's get this out of the way right now: I hated the first two acts of this movie. It absolutely boggles my mind that any of the people who whine ceaselessly about how bad Man of Steel supposedly was could somehow enjoy this movie, which commits a worse hatchet job on Captain Marvel than that film ever did on Superman, and that they could ever have found the main character "relatable" says volumes about not only their sense of priorities and taste, but, given they "related" to him, themselves as human beings.
So, from a purely technical perspective, it's not all bad. The effects are pretty standard superhero movie fare, with plenty of bright cheery colors and particles sparking about. And the very last act of the movie actually does manage to pull everything together pretty well, into a final climax I quite unironically enjoyed.
And, I will give credit where it's due: Captain Marvel has got a lot of superpowers, and the script, which leaves him figuring them out a bit at a time, manages to introduce them to the audience in dribs and drabs. That's a genuinely clever idea, and it even manages to play to some (sometimes) effective humor. Also, Sivana's one of the better DC movie villains outside of Aquaman. His motivations and characterization work fairly well, so much that before he was vaporizing people in his first adult scene, I kind of sympathized much more with him than the hero.
Unfortunately, it's not all lightning bolts and laughs. There's a great deal of tonal dissonance between the creepy horror movie scenes of Sivana unleashing his gargoyle henchmen to devour men and women alive and the wacky montages where Billy does "relatable" social media videos and the occasional genuinely funny antic. Childish antics for the kids are juxtaposed with unnecessarily adult and sexual gags for the grown ups.
Which, as I carefully laid out in the opening, and then danced around until this point so you'd know that I do have opinions outside of my fanboy rage, brings us to this film's major failing: Billy Batson, the kid who could look Superman in the eye and be secure in the moral high ground, is just an awful little turd of a human being from his very first scene in the film, where he tricks some well-meaning cops, taunts and mocks them as he traps them in a building, and then steals one of their lunches once he's gotten some plot-relevant information from a cop car, just to be a dick. And while I don't pretend that wanting to reunite with his missing mom isn't a human urge, he spends the whole first two acts of the film establishing that he hasn't been failed by the system; that his previous and present foster parents and foster brothers and sisters are kind and loving people, as he smugly bats away their attempts at connection. He even steals from a handicapped kid, just to be a dick.
"Oh," people say, "but it gives him a character arc!" Alright. So did Batman in Batman v Superman, and you hated that. And at least Batman was physically and mentally worn down as he cracked and went bad in that film. Billy only gets worse when he gets his powers, immediately abusing them to steal things, to become, as his foster brother puts it, "a bully and a dick."
And that's just what makes him too unlikable to root for for most of the film. In context, namely, as an adaptation of a classic comic book character, it's a travesty. How could this kid have possibly been the right choice to bear Shazam's power over literally any of his other family members? Also, maybe don't establish he's got the Wisdom of Solomon in this incarnation in the very first introduction to all his powers and then spend the rest of the movie having him act like kind of a stupid and rudderless buffoon?
I won't pretend he's like that all movie, and, again, the last act really pulls it all together. I especially liked the little mythology gag of him handing that tiger to the little girl he's calming down, or that one spoiler I'm tiptoeing around which only serves to prove my point about the first two thirds of the film. But this is not only a flawed and imperfect film because of its unlikable protagonist and schizophrenic tone, it's, yes I'll say it, a slap in the face to one of the oldest superhero institutions of all time, and that's true no matter how lovely and charming that last act might be.
Film A Great Hero and a Paragon Done Right
Having seen this movie on opening weekend, I can say that it is a fantastic movie and honestly the best Superman movie in decades. There are a lot of great things about this movie like the humor that feels authentic, the villain who isn't a joke, and the foster family. However, I would say that this movie's true accomplishment is giving us a hero who can be petty and selfish yet ultimately all-loving and idealistic.
At a glance, Billy Batson seems a lot like Clark Kent in the DCEU. They are glum and aloof in their civilian guises and they end up causing property damage. Yet the main difference is that Billy's flaws make sense and he grows as a character. It makes sense that he starts out selfish and petty because he is a foster teen who doesn't have the experience or parental guidance to be a real hero. Yes, he abuses his powers, but he actually learns from his mistakes and grows into the selfless hero we all know in love. Most importantly, he learns to use his intelligence and becomes more altruistic to win the day, showing how much he has grown.
In the end, Shazam! is a terrific film that wins thanks to its character. This character manages to be both fallible yet admirable, juvenile yet mature, and dumb yet smart. If you want a modernized Superman who is both relatable and inspiring, here's your movie.
Film My favorite DC Extended movie so far, I rate it 9 out of 10.
I wrote this review on Rotten Tomatoes before, but here it is again for TV Tropes.
SHAZAM! is easily DC Extended Universe's best movie yet, I love the idea of Tom Hanks' BIG being redone as a superhero movie - it was funny and heartwarming at the same time especially of a superhero adult and a teenage boy hanging out together, except Shazam isn't very bright (I mean intellectually, he's very bright in terms of light). Then whenever Shazam tries doing something heroic, he messes up doing even more damage than had he done nothing and so Freddie (who is about 20 years younger than his adult superhero body) keeps pointing it out. A kid having to parent an adult and tell him off for being naive, talk about irony. I thought it was clever the message the movie cranked out that superpowers doesn't bring as much as happiness to you as financial independence (Billy hates orphanages, he wants his own house) or the emotional affection that you receive from your mother and your friends. I mean the first thing that comes to Shazam's mind with superpowers is hacking ATMs and buying video games. Without the love of his own mother and the fact that his own best friend Freddy is starting to think he's an arrogant jerk who wants to show off his superpowers all the time, Billy / Shazam feels unhappy even with the incredible gifts he's received from the old wizard. Then it takes the arrival of the Bald Bad Guy that after a long and hard fight, he becomes more serious and more mature in his adult body and he finally does become an actual superhero who can put his powers to good use. All in all, great story of an adult superhero with the mind of a child caring more about video games and looking for his mother mentally grows to become more like an actual superhero and does develop an adult mind.
My only problem with the movie was that I think the final fight of the movie was less exciting than the entirety of the movie that came before it. We were introduced to ALL of the superpowers, superheroes and supervillains that nothing new or refreshing comes up in the finale where SHAZAM finally saves the day and defeats the Bald Bad Guy and the Seven Sin Demons. In fact, Shazam and Bald Bad Guy already had a long and rough fight around the middle of the movie which trashed the shopping mall (that's where Shazam stepped on the giant floor keyboard), I felt the final fight was just a rehash of the shopping mall fight only in the dark at nighttime and with Shazam being a lot more chatty and less scared this time.
Mr. Mind's sudden appearance helped trigger my memory of the Baron O' Beef Dip prank Eddy played on Ed back in Ed, Edd n' Eddy. Except Mr. Mind didn't tell Sivana to eat his mattress.
Film A movie with a bit of an identity crisis
I liked this movie. I think. It's a little hard to say, because I certainly didn't enjoy going to see it. And I definitely don't like it's marketing. Which seems like a cop out, so let's explain what I mean.
If you read the tropes pages for this film, you'll see it's consistently described as lighter and fluffier than the other DC films. And the commercials make it seems light and goofy romp of a movie. Having seen the film, it has it's goofy moments. But lighter and fluffier is not the same as light and fluffy. Grey is lighter than black, but that doesn't make it white. You get a pretty good illustration of this when a guy gets thrown out of a window. Light and fluffy that moment was not.
However, thanks to a marketing campaign that made this film seem like the old Batman series, there was a kid sitting in front of me who was around five. A kid who was upset by the movie and whose parents apparently were unwilling to eat the cost of the movie tickets, because they handed him a cell phone and threw a coat over his head so no one would notice. We noticed.
It's hard to figure out how you feel about a movie when you spend most of it annoyed at the people in front of you. But it's also hard to figure out how to feel about a movie that can't seem to decide what it wants to be. Shazam! felt like two different movies. It is perhaps best summed up by the seen of the villain monologuing a serious and sinister threat suited to the overall tone of the DC movies, while Billy,too far away to hear, treats the audience to a joke.
Film Best DCEU movie there is
I’m honestly hard pressed to find anything I didn’t love about this movie. It is a magnificent film. The AffectionateParody of superhero movies is hilarious. But the BigBad Dr. Sivana is a genuinely frightening antagonist with a good TragicVillain backstory. But the scene wherein Billy realizes that his mother hadn’t been accidentally separated from him but that it was ParentalAbadonment was heart-wrenching. I like how his GenreSavvy Sidekick is a flawed character and that the reasons for him being that way make sense. I also like Billy Batson in terms of both how he starts off quite flawed but undergoes serious CharacterDevelopment. I even like the ending wherein Superman appears alongside Shazam to visit Freddy’s cafeteria. I don’t care about how over the top TheBully characters were, it made sense in the context of Freddy’s arc. I even like the generally LighterandSofter tone it has than the other DC movies. I found very little not to love about this movie.