Well, things have certainly picked up on my blog lately, haven't they! When Shazam got closer, I decided to give the first film and the spin-off. As I am kind of trying to post a little more regularly, I figured these three films could make for an interesting mini-retrospective!
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I admit that, after watching Aquaman, I kind dropped the whole DC Extended Universe. While I understand some good movies got made, I just lost interest and focused on other things. However, now that I'm getting caught up, I find myself in a bit of a strange position. Shazam! got all kinds of rave reviews, but I afraid I really didn't like this movie.
Billy Batson is a troubled teenager who keeps drifting from foster home to foster home, largely because he can't stop running off to try and find his real mother. His latest foster home introduces him to quite a cast of other adopted children, and when one gets bullied over not having a real mom, the Billy briefly sets aside his lone-wolf attitude and helps out. He gets the bullies' attention, runs off, and escapes on a subway car, only to be magically transported to an underground cave to meet with the ancient wizard Shazam. He tells Billy about how he has been looking for a new champion, and despite Billy's protests, gives him incredible power. This compels Billy to reach out to one of his new brothers Freddy (who happens to be fascinated with superheroes) to try and figure out what it means to be a superhero. Meanwhile, Thaddeus Silvana is a man who was once approached by Shazam, but instead chose to go with The Seven Deadly Sins, a set of monsters eager to escape Shazam's prison. Silvana then spends the majority of his life trying to find that cave again, and when one the Sins tells him that Shazam has chosen a new champion, Silvana goes after him as well.
So everything is set up to be a pretty standard bildungsroman of a troubled young man finding the hero within himself to save his new family. The problem I had with the film is that it spends way too much time focusing on Billy and Freddy learning and exploring the champion's powers, often using them for pranks or other shenanigans. The idea is that young kids wouldn't be too responsible with such powers, instead focusing on going viral on the internet, and maybe saving folks as an afterthought, making the lack of heroism feel frustrating more than anything else. It also doesn't help that the rest of Billy's new siblings are just on the wrong side of obnoxious, with Freddy in particular taking the cake. The movie tries to set him up as being Billy's conscience character, but it's done so poorly it's hard not to relate to Billy's desire to be left alone. In the meantime, the villain (played well enough by Mark Strong) just stomps around being Generic Evil McBadGuy #28971. The movie also tries to push itself as a comedy, and while I did like a few of the jokes, most of them just revolve around awkwardness, which is a style of humor I've never liked.
The result is a movie that just feels like it's wasting my time by trying to be kooky and weird, and delaying the superheroics in favor of teenagers being dumb and irresponsible. And when Billy finally does make the turn into stepping up and being the hero, it comes across as so weak and hollow, it's hard to take seriously, especially when the movie wants to keep its sense of humor along for the third act. While I will concede that the ending does have an interesting twist when it comes to Billy's new family, I can't deny that I was happy for it to end, feeling rather exhausted and even a little frustrated at a movie that could have been fun, but instead just meandered about too much for its own good.
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I know I'm skipping a bunch of films in the DCEU by watching this one next, but I knew it was generally related to Shazam, and figured I'd give it a quick watch before getting to the Shazam sequel. Ultimately a spin-off, the movie does a decent job of establishing a new set of lore and creating solid action scenes, but does stumble around a bit with its plotting and pacing.
The story mostly stays in the fictional middle-eastern country of Khandaq, where long ago, Teth-Adam was considered a hero for liberating their people from a tyrant. However, he was sealed away, and in the thousands of years since, the country has continued to live in oppression, currently under the military occupation of Intergang. However, in their mining operations, they get close to the Crown of Sabbac, a magical artifact the old tyrannical king tried to create before Teth-Adam killed him. When some freedom fighters try to steal it to prevent it from getting into Intergang hands, they only lead the villains right to it. However, they also release Teth-Adam as well, and he immediately goes to work on the criminals. Unfortunately, it's not clear whether or not he's a hero, or just crushing whatever is in his path. As such, Amanda Waller sends the Justice Society, mainly Hawkman and Dr. Fate with a few new recruits, to try and bring Black Adam in before he can wreck more havoc.
The result is a pretty predictable superhero story. Essentially, it boils down to seeing theses heroes and Black Adam beat each other around until the true villain shows up to give the title character a chance to be a hero. Naturally, there's more about Teth-Adam's backstory that slowly gets revealed, showing that his anti-hero mentality has some merit, and for what it's worth, Dwayne Johnson does a decent job of it. However, it's Pierce Brosnan who really steals the show as Dr. Fate, as he's a lot of fun in the scenes, and giving the character in interesting sense of weight, despite being the obvious mentor for the movie. I should also note that the special effects are pretty cool, and they do a great job of showing how powerful a super-powered being can really be if he knows how to use his powers.
The problems mostly lie in the fact that the story isn't particularly deep, as it mostly focuses on fight scenes that stumble about until something important happens, and it's hard not to feel like the stuff in-between isn't just filler. There's also another kid side-kick character, just like in Shazam, trying to teach Black Adam how to be a superhero by focusing on naming, branding, and catchphrases. Fortunately, it doesn't last long, as eye-rollingly bad as it is. Also, this interpretation of Hawkman is a little tiring, as his stark attitude and cocky swagger get old after a while, but I suppose he serves as a perfect foil/parallel to smash heads against Black Adam. Finally, it leans a little hard on the trope of making an anti-hero look good by having a villain who is just a bigger jerk than him.
Still, compared to Shazam, I felt this one at least had a better idea of what it wanted to be, and doesn't get too lost in its pretentions, despite what one might expect with the drab Snyder-esque visuals. While the story is largely forgettable, the action scenes are decent (if a bit too much style-over-substance), and it could have set up some interesting ideas for the future. However, given what's recently happened with the DCEU, now that James Gunn and Peter Safran are in charge, it's hard to know how much of this will matter in the future.
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So after being annoyed with the first film and moderately-whelmed by the spin-off, how is the sequel? Not too bad, actually. Picking up right after the first film, this one ends up doing a much better job at balancing its different elements, making for a satisfying follow-up.
Now that Billy Batson has started to embrace his new family, and become the leader of a team of superheroes, he's done a bit of a 180, and has become a bit too clingy, making his siblings resent him for being a team coach they never really asked for. At the same time, due to a small act Shazam did at the end of the first film, the three daughters of Atlas have been released from their sealed realm, and they are eager to get the powers that were taken from their father by the wizard Shazam, and those powers happen to be in the bodies of Billy and his Shazamily. As the heroes learn more about the origins of their powers, the villains are going about be dastardly, eventually kidnapping Freddy, planting a massive tree in Philadelphia, and unleashing a bevy of classic monsters from Greek mythology onto the helpless citizens.
The movie goes in a rather predictable path, but with a confidence that makes the formula feel comfortable rather than annoying. The story and scenes are much more focused on the crazy magic and apocalyptic stakes, with the family stuff working as background tension that gets to build with the superheroics instead of despite them. The special effects are decent enough, especially with one of the Atlas daughter's powers that feels like Dr. Strange on steroids. The acting is decent, with Helen Mirren doing a great job of playing the stone-faced villain who has no patience for the hero's cocky attitude. If there are any problems with the movie, they would largely be nitpicks about pacing, and maybe being a little too complacent in what it's doing, but there is something to be said for a movie that's content on being nothing more than what it is.
Of course, a lot of this is hamstrung by the fact that the DCEU will effectively be over by the end of this year. James Gunn and Peter Safran has stated that they're interested in carrying over some folks from these movies into the future (including Zachary Levi as Shazam), but given with what's been announced, it may be a while before we return to any of these characters, despite what the post-credits scenes to these movies may imply. Overall, it's a bit of a mixed mess trio of movies, but at the same time, not every superhero movie needs to be The Avengers or The Dark Knight.
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