#shazam! review

[yellowocaballero]

SHAZAM SHAZAM SHAZAM pls tell us about billy batson. ive only ever seen the movies o great comic knower

Very very very VERY far from comic expert (that's brawltogethernow) but I have read a lot of Shazam. His history is actually really, really fascinating and involves more than one lawsuit that really defined very early comics. I'll focus on one thing, though.

There are two Captain Marvels: One from the 1940s to around 2013, and one from 2013 til now. The Captain Marvel you're familiar with (who is named Shazam) is from 2013. He's a more realistic, grounded character. He was created to be pretty much the polar opposite of his original version. The best summary is to say that the Wizard chose Billy Batman 1940 because he had the purest heart, and the Wizard chose Billy Batson ~2013 because he was there. My personal 'best' Shazam story is the "Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil" graphic novel by the guy who made Bone. It's good because it's for elementary schoolers yet acknowledges this small child as homeless. Which, don't get me wrong, you shouldn't always do. My personal favorite is the 1970s ones.

As some background: Otto Binder was the creator/main writer of the very early Captain Marvel comics. He was by far and away the best writer of the early Superman Silver Age comics, because all of his comics were batshit insane. Shazam has a complicated and legal history with Superman, so the 1970 run was a super fun high camp tongue in cheek reinvention of the best Silver Age stories.

So the 1970 Captain Marvel comics are insane.

I can't even summarize them without sounding crazy. Basically the conceit is that Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr, and Mary Marvel (Billy, Freddy, and Mary) are having 1940s Golden Age Adventures when they get somehow in suspended animation and are basically time travelled to the 1970s. This don't bother them too much. Why would it bother them. Nothing bothers these people. Nothing. I don't think anybody experiences a negative emotion in these comics. Not bc they were twee. Bc they were insane.

Many of the comics basically had three shorter comics inside it: one Billy story, one Mary story, one Freddy story. Interestingly, they all had different art styles, artists, types of story, genre, etc. Billy's stories had a cartoony art style with very over-the-top and silly plotlines that involved supervillain bad dudes. Freddy's art was slightly more realistic and was slighty more grounded, but still had some classic Marvel indescribable scifi that can best be summarized as that one meme panel people have seen where Sivana recites a science equation that lets him walk through walls. Mary's stories were much more realistically drawn and featured the most banal shit, like her starting a club with her friends. Somehow Mary Marvel gets involved in those.

Sometimes they worked together and did superhero things and fought bad guys. The average fight looked like this:

Billy was a twelve year old who lived by himself, in his own apartment, had his own radio show, a full-ass job, a whole thing as Captain Marvel. He paid fucking taxes. Everybody knew this and nobody cared. He's the most affable, good natured kid on the face of the planet. Nothing bothers him. Nothing. Nothing bothers any of these people. Sivana shows up and he's BIG MAD so he's creating another death ray and Captain Marvel shows up like "Oh you rascal! Time to punch this and go back to helping my friend eat his infinite Jello."

He has a friend named Talky Tawny, who is a talking tiger wearing a suit. He also has a friend named Sunny Smiles, a person of indeterminate gender who everybody falls in love with, for unexplained and unknown reasons. Not to be confused with Freddy's friend Gregory Gosharootie, the "World's Dullest Mortal", who is so boring that nobody notices him and he keeps accidentally comitting crime. There is also an old guy named Uncle Marvel who pretends he has superpowers, which they all find funny so they just roll with it. Freddy is a disabled orphan who has to sell papers on the street corner to make a living. Mary lives in a middle class suburban home with loving foster parents. It never once seems to occur to Mary's parents to adopt Billy, for Freddy to live with Billy. Everybody is happiest this way.

I do think this is partly why a good Shazam comic has to be aimed at the 6-12yo demographics. They have to be for small children, because Billy is living a complete and utter power fantasy that only a ten year old would think is a good idea. He's a kid, and he doesn't have drag parents or a lame family, but he can turn into Superman, and he can also do magic, and everybody loves him and thinks he's the nicest person, and his supervillains are Dr. Doofenschmirtz and a worm, and his supporting cast is like okay my sister if she HAS to be involved, but also my best friend who is a paperboy! but cool because he's disabled, and….

Look, you could engage with that seriously. You could go "holy shit this is a homeless child". That's fine. That's what they do these days, and that's what they did in the movies. Nothing wrong with that. Take the story more seriously.

But also they don't give a worm the electric chair in those stories, so.

To actually give some commentary on these comics: these comics really love people. I've never seen comics that were so entrenched in their community. The kids just know everybody they meet on the street. Freddy delivers paper up and down every block, so an average story for him is just talking to a butcher or baker or old man or grumpy housewife and helping them out with some batshit problem. Mary's a sweet girl who's always starting clubs with her friends and taking on neighborhood projects. Many Billy stories involve one of his many friends falling into some trouble and Captain Marvel helping them out - or just exploring some fun with Billy hanging out with Sunny Smiles, who is a person of indeterminate gender who for some reason has magic love brainwashing powers -

This isn't the biggest #Shazam take, but I think a good Shazam story stays grounded in that. These are poor street kids who love Fawcett City so damn much. They love fighting their supervillains, but they love helping out the random guy off the street with their problems even more. Way more so than Spider-Man or a lot of other guys, I think of the Marvel family as the friendly neighborhood superheroes. They're both larger than life and street level. They're Superman level powers but they just use the powers for wrapping up their hijinks. Isn't that nice? Aren't you tired of going apeshit? Don't you just want to be nice?

[capncarrot]

SHAZAM! #12

[arunneronthird]

"honestly one of the best dceu movies out there" is not the compliment u think it is

[watchingeverydcmovie]

Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941)

I am watching every movie based on a DC publication in release order, for more information, see my pinned post.

First movie, Adventures of Captain Marvel from 1941.

Release Date: 3/28/1941 (This is the offical release date but also confusingly not the date the film was released, but instead the date that the sixth chapter was made available to film exchanges.) IMDB Rating: 7.2 Age Rating: Passed Runtime: 3 Hours, 36 Minutes/12 Chapters

GENERAL -

Adventures of Captain Marvel is considered the first comic book character adaptation ever. Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam) was not owned by DC at the time of this serials released.

In general, the plot is about Billy Batson going on an archological expodition with a team, meeting a wizard, gaining superpowers, and then his team steals this artifact and then they're hunted down by a masked villan called the Scorpian who they very quickly realize is a member of their own group.

MY REVIEW -

Is this movie good? Questionable.

It has not aged well, and I wasn't expecting it to have, but oh boy, is there a lot of rascim in this thing. Otherwise, it's engaging enough, if repetative, and it's very often uninentionally funny. The format that serials of the time used means that every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, which often leads to unnecessary drama being added that you can guess the resolution to before watching the next part. This also didn't need to be as long as it is, and there are often plot points that were definitely added just to add runtime.

That being said, I think Frank Coghlan, Jr. as Billy is an extremely likeable lead. He's generally sweet and charasmatic, and I like the movie most when Billy, the female lead Betty, and their friend Whitey are together.

I think the action scenes are well choreographed if a little silly, and all of the actors are pretty good overall.

Final Rating: 4.5/10

Would I watch this again? No. Maybe if it was shorter.

RANDOM THOUGHTS -

Billy Batson spends this entire movie getting knocked unconcious. In fact, all of the characters do. There is so much head trauma in this movie, it's unreasonable, but extremely unintentinally funny. I wish I had coutned how many scenes end with or contain a character just getting knocked on the head and going unconcious, it has to be upward of twenty. Also, when Billy wakes up, he's always gaged, even if other charcters who are with him aren't. This makes sense considered that he has to say the word "Shazam" in order to turn into Captain Marvel. However, it absolutely *doesn't* make sense when you add the knowlege that absolutely nobody knows he's Captain Marvel or that Captain Marvel needs to speak to use his superpowers.

There's one scene where Captain Marvel rescues Betty from a group that kidnapped her and then turns back to Billy before she wakes up. Before she got kidnapped, she was attempting to get to a certain location before the bad guys, and Billy assures that he'll get there faster on his plane, and then brushes her off when she attempts to go with him. I saw this and was thinking "Ah, yes, Billy Batson, who is Captain Marvel, who can fly, does not actually own a plane, and will instead turn into Captain Marvel and simply fly there with his superpowers." Imagine my surprise, when Billy then goes to airport and gets into an actual fucking airplane. Why did that do that?? What was the point??????? The man can FLY.

I think I am far to used to modern superhero comics and movies where, like, "should the hero kill the villain" is posed as a tough moral quandry and the answer is usually "absolutely not", because Captain Marvel kills SO MANY PEOPLE. And not even the main villain, someone else kills the main villain, Billy just throws a henchman off the roof of a parking garage at some point. He gets his powers and immidiately goes lethal.

I'm also extremely used to the Captain Marvel/Shazam narrative of "very young boy gets superpowers and looks like an adult", which means that this movie's "young adult man gets superpowers and turns into a just slightly older but different man" is very funny.

FUN FACTS -

To achieve the special effect of Captain Marvel's transformation, the production team apparently put a trough of flash powder in front of Frank Coghlan, Jr. who played Billy and ignited it, which apparently lead to Frank Coghlan, Jr. losing a few eyebrows if the wind was particularly unfavorable.

Frank Coghlan, Jr. also apparently did not know who Captain Marvel or Billy Batson were before getting the role.

They used a paper mache dummy to achieve the flying effects from far away. It is incredibly obvious when they do this and also very funny.

[moomoocowmaid]

I hate Shazam two—I’m going to throw my tv out the window and I’m not even halfway done.

[thecomicsnexus]

SUPERMAN #19 / THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #442

July 1988

By John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, John Beatty, Andy Kubert, Petra Scotese, Anthony Tollin, John Costanza, and Albert DeGuzman.

When Superman makes contact with a scout spaceship, he starts losing his powers one by one, and ends up asking other superheroes for help against Dreadnaught.

SCORE: 10

While this story is a two-parter, the first issue introduces Thaddeus Killgrave. It's more of a throwaway appearance really, but he takes on the role of mad scientist that is ironically absent in the superbooks.

Speaking of mad scientists that are not...

And that's not all!

The plot around Jimmy's father thickens!

But the main attraction of this two-parter is the big fight penciled by Jerry Ordway and inked by Andy Kubert.

Oh, and "Supergirl" meeting Lana Lang.

But mostly the super-heroes.

Of course Clark Kent saving the day and Lois being worried for him completely worked on his favor.

A lot happens in this issue, and while I growing up, I always thought that Psi-Phon was considering joining the invasion to Earth that would take place a few months after. But I don't think it was meant to be the same invasion.

You know Earth, such a popular invasion destination.

[magnificent-nerd]

Great news on Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Character Pedro Peña (and 'Super Pedro'!) is confirmed as gay in the sequel, something which was hinted at in Shazam (2019).

I somehow missed these articles leading up to the sequel's release this month (March 2023) so seeing it in the movie itself was a pleasant surprise.

It felt genuine, cute, and heart warming.

(Side note: I know reviews are mixed for this movie, so I'll throw my hat in as a positive review for Shazam Fury of the Gods; I enjoyed it, I had a great time watching it.)

Pedro was indeed a real plus point.

Great job, Shazamily!

[kindadingo]

just finished shazam and damn that was a lot better than i was expecting

[marcspectrr]

The way that not even the studio seems to be supporting the release of Shazam fotg is gross. Instead of pointing out the lack of marketing and blaming its performance on every other thing except for the movie itself, Twitter could easily be promoting it, but no, it's letting it drown. People are openly admitting to not having seen the movie on their 1/2 star reviews littering the internet, often leaning onto irrelevant reasons (hating other superhero movies including Quantumania, etc.) to paint it in a bad light. People will point at the cgi and immediately rage online about it without mentioning a single plot point.

Making 'hating superhero movies' a trend is honestly also gross and getting really old. YES, there are some recent movies that scream all sorts of things that warrant shitty reviews (blatant lack of creativity bc they're made for money and not as labors of love as they should be, etc). Trust me, I have my fair share of ones that I despise and I don't disagree with the consensus on the direction of superhero movies.

But if you don't like the superhero genre, don't watch superhero movies. Simple as that.

[freddyfreebat]

Just went to see Shazam! Fury of the Gods and I have thoughts ⚡️

First off, I found it overall a really fun, action-packed and heartfelt movie. OFC MY BOY JACK STOLE THE SHOW!!! Just as he did in the first one. He also made me tear up twice, and his acting as ever was 👌 My only real criticism is that Asher was criminally underused (the few scenes he had he nailed tho) and honestly Zachary is kinda redundant as Asher is so buff now 💪🏻 And overall, the powered-up heroes gave weaker performances than their younger versions. Smartly, they found a way to give Jack more screen time, and every time he was on screen I was captivated, he just raised the whole movie. We also got a little bit of gay rep, some badass unicorns and some really exciting and emotional scenes.

Overall, definitely not quite as good as the original, but worth seeing and a very enjoyable, fun movie for sure.

[eddiescorner]

Saw “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” today

It’s ok. Liked the first one better.

Feels like they increased the humor but this time there is nothing as serious as Billy’s reunion with his mother in the previous movie.

I liked how they are not afraid of including some silly elements. We see a bunch of kids riding unicorns into battle or a living pen that is the center of some funny scenes. 

There are two scenes during the credits that vaguely tease some future plots, but who knows how much of the Shazam family will still be around after the reboot of the DC universe.

If you liked the first one, I think this one should be a fun (if forgettable) time.

[fandomnerd9602]

How was Shazam 2?

Honestly I had a blast. I was smiling from start to finish. Even my buddy who’s always grumpy at movies was laughing.

Fun story, fun characters, just a rollicking good time.

I’d highly recommend it! Go see it in theaters, grab a popcorn, smuggle in a couple candies and have a great time!

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ out of 5

[capncarrot]

SHAZAM! #15

[yeahthatsinteresting]

I'm not sure of what i just did here, but i'm kinda proud of if lol specially the rotoscopio SHAZAM! (2019)

[allthingsheardandseen]

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Directed by: David F. Sandberg

Written by: Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and language.

Movie Synopsis: Billy Batson and his adoptive brothers Freddy, Mary, Pedro, Eugene, and Darla, also endowed with superpowers, have to face the three daughters of Atlas: Hespera, Kalypso, and Anthea.

Review 4 stars

Incredibly fun! It genuinely made me laugh alongside the other viewers in the cinema. I entered the theater hoping it would be as good as the first one and let me tell you... it exceeded expectations. Shazam! The Fury of the Gods (2023) is the perfect mix of action and comedy with just the right amount of darkness this sequel needed. It stays true to the original's nature and builds upon those already established connections and relationships. Although the villans aren't as menacing as others in the DC Universe and there could've been more development in the caracthers, it feels like a breath of fresh air in the hero movie department. It will definitely not disappoint.

Trailer

Watch it at: Cinemas near you.

Sources

Pictures: Pinterest

Synopsis: Google

[earthboundguythatlikesmother1]

Welp, with The Flash coming out and it being like swan song to the DCEU, I couldn't help but take a look back at some of the other DC movies and i was like, "why not just rank them and with my stupid opinions!"

Aight so this is the part where I explain why, originally i considered making a post of each movie like how i did it with marvel movies and shows on Twitter at some point but decided not because I'm not a poignant person with the most creative writing nor could i often keep the same attention span for it for awhile so here is the best way to review em all in a few words or less.

Will be doing it in the order they were released in.

1. Man Of Steel

7.5/10.

I actually like this movie, it's definitely has non-stop action and i can't help but think maybe I just enjoy that because I have a peanut for a brain. It definitely tries to be more grounded to see how humanity would react to Superman existing our world. I do like Henry Cavill as Superman i just wish we got more scenes of him being more warmer and more scenes of him helping and saving people. I can definitely understand why others disagree and really dislike this one.

2. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice

3.5/10

This movie exists and is what set off panic triggers at Warner Bros. & Prettyyyyyyy much ruined the perception of Superman and Batman to a bunch of "certain" people. It crams in way too many storylines, tries to set up way too much, some miscasting, kills off superman in his like 2nd appearance, wonder woman got spoiled in the trailers and whatnot.

Ben Affleck as Batman was cool and the warehouse fight scene was cool. I'm sad that it was Dick Grayson the one who got killed.

The Ultimate Edition of this one is just a 6/10, while it does give more context and more scenes that I do like, it still has the same problems so no, it doesn't fix everything.

3. Suicide Squad

2/10

Nobody likes this movie, also nobody likes me.

I remember thinking that the comic con trailer was the coolest shit to ever exist. Then I saw the movie and remember feeling lied to and deceived.

Everything sucks, everything happens too much at the same time, characters barely feel like character at times, etc. Really deserving of that Oscar!!!!!!!

I did like Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller, and Captain Boomerang (even if he barely did anything)

4. Wonder Woman

8.5/10 Wonder Woman

Really love this movie, Wonder Woman is great, i love the characters, the chemistry, the action and her helping people.

It does stumble abit towards the end however but even then, it still felt like a great movie 👍

5. Justice League (2017)

5.5/10

This movie pretty much is the reason why the DCEU became a wild rabid animal that needed to be put down immediately.

Movie is just mediocre, humor is just "Not funny. Didn't laugh." , Action is lame, backstories are rushed, Flash is annoying, Aquaman is a dickhead for no reason, cyborg doesn't even get a backstory, they really take their time saving people, dumb Russian family subplot.

I liked the after credits scene of Superman and Flash racing. So while the movie is not extremely awful and not a bad waste of your time, it's also not a good waste of your time.

6. Aquaman

7.5/10

Really like Aquaman, love how cheesy it was, Black Manta was cool.

While i love the cheesiness in this movie, this movie does also get abit stupid at times but still a fun time where you can go off with, with a pal or smth.

7. Shazam!

8/10

I thought the movie was a fun time, nothing outrageous but nothing bad as well, just a movie i can have a good time watching.

8. Birds Of Prey

6.5/10

Cassandra Cain is not even Cassandra Cain and that still pisses me off to this day. Overall, it's definitely a Harley Quinn movie and NOT a Birds Of Prey movie. Black Mask was a cool villain. This movie felt like it was trying too hard to be like Deadpool ngl.

9. Wonder Woman 1984

4/10

It's like being asked out by someone you like so you get excited and say yes and later show up to the date all ready and stuff, only to find out it was a prank just to see if you were gullible enough to fall for it.

10. Zack Snyder's Justice League

6.5/10

Welp, i now wish the movie never got released so the people who are like #restorethesnyderverse never got the satisfaction and got to comfortable enough to become a bunch of crybabies believing they are the top of the world.

Movie is just okay, cool action, good characters for the most part but holy shit is it way too long with really unnecessary scenes. If you can't release a movie without making it 4 hours long thinking it'll make things more cohesive, well i got some news for ya pal.

Welp turns out i ran to a limit with the images so lemme make another post about it to keep sharing my thoughts on the DCEU Movies, ig this is a part 1 of 2 post.

But for now, what did you think of my thoughts? Do you agree or disagree to the point that you wanna break into my house to beat me up, kill me and burn my house to the ground.

Lmk what you think or want to hear more thoughts for me to specify.

Thanks for reading, losing your braincells along the way and have a nice day.