If you told me twelve years ago
back when Chuck first aired that Zackary Levi would go on to be starring in a
movie based on a DC character, I’d have probably laughed aloud. But, after having seen Shazam!, I can say that past me was very much incorrect. While it
isn’t the best film that I’ve seen this year, or even the best film with Djimon
Hounsou in it this year, it’s still a fun film and I’m excited to talk about
it. Let’s get to it, shall we?
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| He's here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and.. oh wait. |
We begin in Upstate New York in 1974.
A young boy named Thaddeus Sivana gets into an argument with his father and
brother. Side note, I find it kind of sad that John Glover keeps getting cast as
an abusive father, he was Lex Luthor’s crappy dad Lionel in Smallville, as the man seems delightful.
Back on task, as the argument reaches its peak, Thad’s magic 8ball starts
flashing weird runes and Thad is transported to a mysterious cave. This place
is the Rock of Eternity, a source of magic in the DC universe. They try to
claim its “the” source, but if comics have taught me anything its that there’s
rarely a single source of anything. Just saying. There, he’s introduced to Djimon
Hounsou… I mean the Wizard. The Wizard is the last surviving member of the
Council of Seven Wizards, a group that was dedicated to protecting the world
from the Seven Deadly Sins. He keeps their petrified bodies in his entryway,
like garden gnomes if they were designed by HP Lovecraft. He offers his power to
Thad, if he’s able to pass a test, to see if he’s ‘pure of heart.’ The Sin’s
start talking to Thad and encourage him to take up a magic object called the
Eye of Sin. He goes for it, fails the test and is kicked out by an irate
Wizard. He gets sent back to his car just before he left. Thad, hyper furious about
being deemed unworthy, freaks out and causes a chain of events that end with a
major car crash. He and his brother are fine, but papa Sivana is thrown from
the car and crippled. Whoops. To his surprise, his magic 8ball flashes a message
of ‘Find us.’ Spooky. Following Thad’s banishment, the Wizard casts a spell to
bring one pure of heart to him, to be the champion. No matter how long it
takes.
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| Bro's for life? Bros for life. |
Flash forward 44 years (whoops) and
we’re in Philadelphia with William “Billy” Batson. Billy is a runaway foster
kid searching for his mother. In a flashback, we learn that Billy and his mother
were separated at a carnival when he was five or six. The only thing he has from
her is a small ball compass that she won for him at the carnival, and the last
name Batson. He’s run from 23 different foster homes while looking for her, and
tracked down close to fifty women with the last name of Batson in the right age
range, but came up empty each time. He’s placed in a group home run by Victor
and Rosa Vazquez, a couple of former fosters that are trying to pay things forward.
They bring Billy home and introduce him to his fellow fosters, Mary Bromfield,
Pedro Pena, Eugene Choi, Darla Dudley, and Freddy Freeman. Fun fact, Mary in
the original comics and most adaptations is in fact Billy’s fraternal twin whom
had been placed in a different foster home following their parent’s death. He’s
rooming with Freddy, whom is a bit of an odd ball and superhero enthusiast. He’s
got some memorabilia like a bat-a-rang and a bullet supposedly fired on
Superman. He kind of freaks Billy out a little, but seems nice enough, as do the
rest of the foster family.
While that’s going on, an adult Dr.
Thaddeus Sivana has become obsessed with finding a way back to Eternity Rock
and has funded a massive experiment on ‘mass hysteria’ to find a way back. He
is basically paying a research team to track down individuals that claim to
have been to the Rock of Eternity like him to try and find a way back. His most
recent case gives him the key, a video that shows how the door to Eternity Rock
is opened. It’s the seven magic runes repeated seven times. Seven is a literal
magic number in most mythology and folk lore, FYI. Thad gets in and is able to get
around a far weaker Wizard to steal the Eye. It implants itself in his head and
he becomes a vessel for the Seven Deadly Sins. He mortally wounds the Wizard
before returning to Earth to enact his revenge.
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| Yes, DC has hit the point where they can make jokes in their movies and they sound natural. I was shocked too. |
Billy, meanwhile, is adjusting to his
new family and new school, a bit. He at least develops enough of an attachment
to Freddy to protect him from some bullies. Side note, how insecure does someone
have to be to pick on a kid with a bum leg? He runs away from the bullies and
gets on a subway car. Symbols start appearing and he’s teleported to the Wizard.
The grievously wounded wizard explains a bit about his history. Seven wizards
protected man kind from evil, they chose a champion, champion went bonkers, released
the Sins and the eight of them killed six of the Seven Wizards. Can you smell what
Black Adam is cooking!?!?!? Whoops, spoiler, maybe. The Wizard swore to never
let anyone except the one with the purest heart gain his power and be the new
champion. But… given his injuries and time being something of a factor here, he’s
kind of forced to settle for Billy. This is what happens when you’re too picky.
The two place their hands on his wizard staff and Billy is instructed to say
the Wizard’s name… Shazam! He’s instantly transformed into Zachary Levi. Saying
Shazam infuses Billy with 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. No, I don’t know why it’s Mercury
(Roman God) instead of Hermes (Greek God), other than Shazah sounds silly. The
magic also transforms Billy into his physical prime, hence why Asher Angel
became Zachary Levi. Shazam begs Billy to use his power to stop the Sins and
protect the world from evil magic before crumbling to dust. Billy teleports
himself back to the subway and has some… adjusting to do.
Returning home, Billy grabs Freddy
and the two try to figure out the mechanics of Billy’s new powers. They behave like
two teenagers figuring out superpowers would, they post everything online. Facepalm.
Through some experimentation, one sort of stopped mugging and one actually
stopped robbery, they learn that Billy is pretty much invincible, super-fast, super-strong
and can shoot lightning from his hands. They also learn that Billy can change
back and forth by saying Shazam. Things start becoming tense as the two teens
start butting heads, Billy feeling like Freddy is using his powers for attention,
and Freddy feeling like Billy isn’t sharing the glory. Billy starts skipping
school and using his powers to panhandle. Freddy confronts Billy about ditching
him to be a magical street performer, which leads to one of Billy’s lightning
strikes causing a bus crash. Billy saves the people, but that doesn’t really give
Freddy the warm fuzzies. They have another argument, just before Sivana flies in.
He’d recently murdered his family and the board of directors of his father’s
company and had been warned by the Sins of the Wizard’s Champion. Sivana starts
beating on Billy, who is freaking out slightly when he discovers that Sivana can
hurt him. FYI, it takes either magic or Kryptonian level strength to damage Billy’s
Shazam form.
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| 7 Demon powers vs. 6 deity power, who will win? |
Billy is thrown about town by
Sivana, he gets a few licks in and learns that he can fly, but the actual adult
is out for blood and Billy is a terrified fifteen-year-old. Apparently, the
Courage of Achilles is the part of the powers that takes a while to manifest or
something. Sivana wants Billy to transfer the powers of the Wizard to him, but Billy
has no idea how. And I mean, come on, no one would willingly give up
superpowers to a sociopath. He’s able to ditch Sivana by reverting back to
normal Billy, but Sivana sees news footage of Freddy and Billy arguing, and
catches Freddy. How convenient… or inconvenient… I guess it depends on who you
ask.
Back at home, the Vazquez’s have
learned about Billy’s truancy and being a dick and try to set him straight. At the
same time, the other foster kids learn that Billy is the ‘Hero’ everyone is talking
about. This was due to the news footage, arguments that Billy and Freddy had in
front of them, and Billy saying too much to Mary when he saved her from getting
hit by a truck. This is a massive relief to the talkative youngest, Darla, as
she’d seen Billy transform but had been sworn to secrecy. After Billy is done
getting chewed out, the group reveals that they’d found Billy’s parents. Eugene
is a bit of a hacker and he may or may not have hacked into some secure servers
to get this information. He was born in Minnesota (representing!) to C.C. and
Marilyn Batson. His father is doing time in a Florida penitentiary and his mother…
lives in Philadelphia, like 20 minutes from there. Turns out she went back to
using her maiden name sometime after she and Billy were separated. Billy runs
off and the Vazquez’s follow after him. About five minutes before Sivana and Freddy
turn up at the house. Oh damn.
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| SHAZAM!!! |
Billy makes it to his mom’s apartment.
She’s shocked to see him and kind of fills in the blanks from the day at the carnival.
Turns out, she didn’t lose him so much as willingly gave him up. I know, this
is shocking to no one who can look at things objectively, but Billy is still a
kid. She basically buckled under the pressure of being a young single parent
and just walked away after they were separated. She tries to make it sound
nobler, by saying that the cops were ‘taking care of him like she never could.’
Billy offers her the compass, but she doesn’t recognize it. So… you abandoned
your son because of stress, gave him an abandonment complex and don’t even have
the decency to remember the last gift you gave him?!?!?!? Marilyn is a bitch.
Sorry, sorry, fictional character, but errr! As Billy is walking away, he gets
a call from Freddy… well, Sivana using Freddy’s phone and is told to come back
to the house. He runs to the roof, shouts SHAZAM and flies to the rescue.
Okay, so the good first. This was a
very fun movie. DC films to date have all been rather dark, tonally as well as
literally. This is the first movie that I’ve seen of the DCEU that used bright
colors and was relatively lighthearted. It’s mostly a story about a kid learning
about his powers and what a family really is. Ie, they’re the ones that you
love, regardless of genetic connection. I liked the bonds between Jack Dylan
Grazer and both forms of Billy, Asher Angel and Zachary Levi respectively. Even
when Billy is in his Zachary Levi form it feels like a relationship that’s very
true to close brothers. Mark Strong was a good, if somewhat limited, villain.
He’s a Syndrome style bad guy, a potential mentor scarred him deeply as a child
by acting like he wasn’t good enough so he became a monster. That old story. He
doesn’t feel as flushed out as Syndrome, though. Still, I like Strong best when
he’s being a seething, mildly intimidating baddie, and he’s exactly that in
this film. It’s like his comfort zone. I was surprised and yet entertained by
the fact that Djimon Hounsou was Shazam. The Beninese actor has been in several
Marvel and DC films already, but the fact he was also a minor character in Captain Marvel earlier this year just
puts a smile on my face. The effects were top notch. I especially liked the transformation
sequence from just before the climax, with Billy leaping into the air before
transforming. It was really well done.
The bad is minimal but still there.
While the testing of Billy’s various powers is fun, it does eat up a lot of
screen time. I think there was almost a solid half hour of Billy just doing
stuff to show off his powers that were then put into the YouTube videos. It could
have been streamlined is all I’m saying. That and the ensemble cast of foster
kids were somewhat wasted. Freddy and Darla (Faithe Herman) get a fair amount
of screen time, but Mary (Grace Fulton), Pedro (Jovan Armand) and Eugene (Ian Chen)
barely get any time at all. We know that Mary is torn about going to college across
country, Eugene’s a gamer and a hacker and Pedro… gets an F on a test. That’s about
it… Well… okay so there’s a scene that might give us a little more. There’s a
bit within the climax where Billy uses his powers to teleport the group away
from an enraged Sivana. They end up at a place he was thinking about… a local ‘gentlemen’s
club.’ Wes, if you’re reading this, ask your mom what that is. Love ya, Amy!
Sorry, just trying to give a shout out to my nephew, and annoy my sister. Anyway,
group comes out of the club and Pedro mentions its ‘not his thing.’ Now, that
could have a ton of different meanings behind it, but as a former fifteen-year-old
I can think of only one reason why one wasn’t ogling the… staff that that sort
of establishment. Just saying. Ultimately the group does help out in defeating
Sivana and the Sins, but it doesn’t feel like they did that much. Which,
considering Mary’s former status as Billy’s biological sibling does feel
somewhat odd. But yeah, aside from not really using the ensemble cast to the
best of their ability, and a slightly overlong power montage, there really isn’t
much to complain about.
This isn’t necessarily bad, but
there was a point that disappointed me. When the Wizard Shazam described the
fall of the Seven Wizard Council, it was done with magic CGI balls of light. I
can’t be the only one that wanted to see The Rock in his full Black Adam gear
destroying an ancient city, right? I know, it would have been hard to squeeze
that in too, but dang it, I’m still saying missed opportunity.
Overall, I give this one a B+.
While there were a few bumps here and there, the overall product is a fun ride
with a unique hero at its heart. The whole thing about Shazam being a kid in an
adult’s body is one of the more unique ideas to appear in comics and this film
captures all the highs and lows such a situation could bring. Honestly, it makes
me wish they’d do another Shazam focused TV show like they had back in the 70s.
A Netflix style long format TV show with all of the same elements as this movie
probably would have solved 90% of my complaints. Just saying. But, again, this
is a good movie and I’m happy I saw it. Shame they didn’t schedule the release
slightly better as Endgame comes out this week and is going to obliterate the
box office. Speaking of, I guess I should probably formulate my thoughts on
that one too.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/26386829
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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