SHAZAM [My name is SPOILER]

[Corvinus85]

I'm pretty sure this is the first movie I've seen that has Christmas in it, but wasn't released during the Holidays season. Was it supposed to be released late last year?

I thought it was fine, and I'd say there's still hope for the DCEU.

Zachary Levi was great. The humor was pretty good, and on point. I also enjoyed the DCEU references. As superhero movies go, it had quite a solid final act, with the distribution of the powers among the other kids, and how they reacted to that.

It had a good theme about family; the foster parents were great, and most of the kids, too. 

The plot was very generic, and not that interesting. I felt the first act took too long in setting things up; I kept waiting for the movie to reach the humorous parts. You could also tell it had way lower budget than other superhero movies. Also, the seven deadly sins, really? And they're just these grey monsters that literally eat people. 

I liked the symbolism of the scene with the little kid dropping the Superman and Batman toys when he sees the fight outside his window. 

Not knowing anything about Shazam and his stories, I've no idea who the caterpillar creature is supposed to be.

[Slurktan]

12 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I'm pretty sure this is the first movie I've seen that has Christmas in it, but wasn't released during the Holidays season. Was it supposed to be released late last year?

I thought it was fine, and I'd say there's still hope for the DCEU.

Zachary Levi was great. The humor was pretty good, and on point. I also enjoyed the DCEU references. As superhero movies go, it had quite a solid final act, with the distribution of the powers among the other kids, and how they reacted to that.

It had a good theme about family; the foster parents were great, and most of the kids, too. 

The plot was very generic, and not that interesting. I felt the first act took too long in setting things up; I kept waiting for the movie to reach the humorous parts. You could also tell it had way lower budget than other superhero movies. Also, the seven deadly sins, really? And they're just these grey monsters that literally eat people. 

I liked the symbolism of the scene with the little kid dropping the Superman and Batman toys when he sees the fight outside his window. 

Not knowing anything about Shazam and his stories, I've no idea who the caterpillar creature is supposed to be.

I thought it was a weak first third and last third propped up by a really enjoyable second bit.  I'm also not a Shazam person so I had no idea what this nonsense was but the Wizard seemed incredibly lazy.  Like in 40 years of desperately searching he randomnly searches like 20 people and then settles for some douchebag kid?  Like why not give the powers to those foster parents who were absolutely pure of heart and generally just awesome?

[Corvinus85]

30 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I thought it was a weak first third and last third propped up by a really enjoyable second bit.  I'm also not a Shazam person so I had no idea what this nonsense was but the Wizard seemed incredibly lazy.  Like in 40 years of desperately searching he randomnly searches like 20 people and then settles for some douchebag kid?  Like why not give the powers to those foster parents who were absolutely pure of heart and generally just awesome?

Clearly his search spell was buggy. 

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Clearly his search spell was buggy. 

That or we was just desperate at that point.

This movie was so much dam fun.

Zachary Levi really captured the heart of a child in his performance.

Also I have to say, it was refreshing to see an honest to god nice foster home in a movie. These places along with step parents seem to really get screwed over by Hollywood and always made out to be evil. It was great seeing one, ran by truly loving and kind people, who were raising equally kind and caring kids as well.

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

That or we was just desperate at that point.

Ding ding ding.

The narrative made it pretty obvious this was the reason. He was the last chance and Billy was a selfish kid, but he also had the potential to grow out of it. 

[Slurktan]

6 hours ago, Red Tiger said:

Ding ding ding.

The narrative made it pretty obvious this was the reason. He was the last chance and Billy was a selfish kid, but he also had the potential to grow out of it. 

I know it made it clear that he was desperate and thats why billy got it.  My point was why ddnt the dumbass wizard find those foster parents earlier and give it to them when he wasn't desperate as they obviously met his criteria.  Just a terrible fucking wizard.  No wonder all his buddies died.

[Corvinus85]

Quote

I'm pretty sure this is the first movie I've seen that has Christmas in it, but wasn't released during the Holidays season. Was it supposed to be released late last year?

Oops, forgot Iron Man 3, released in May, had Christmas in it, though it was much more low key than in this one.

[Spring Bass]

That was freaking awesome to watch. It's a little slow to get going at first, the plot is fairly straightforward, and it's occasionally tone-jarring (going from silly scenes to Sin-demons killing people in bone-crunching ways), but the humor is awesome, the character beats are good, and the movie is a blast to watch. That might be the hardest I've laughed in a superhero movie since the first Iron Man scenes where Tony Stark is trying to get the suit prototype to work. 

10 hours ago, sifth said:

Also I have to say, it was refreshing to see an honest to god nice foster home in a movie. These places along with step parents seem to really get screwed over by Hollywood and always made out to be evil. It was great seeing one, ran by truly loving and kind people, who were raising equally kind and caring kids as well.

I liked that too. 

. . . I liked how they handled the darkest part of the movie as well, where Billy finally meets his birth mother again. Just kind of a sad scene, with Billy quickly realizing that there's nothing there for him and he ought to get back to who his real family is now. 

[Macklunkey]

"Secret fire immunity test"

[Red Tiger]

9 hours ago, Slurktan said:

I know it made it clear that he was desperate and thats why billy got it.  My point was why ddnt the dumbass wizard find those foster parents earlier and give it to them when he wasn't desperate as they obviously met his criteria.  Just a terrible fucking wizard.  No wonder all his buddies died. 

Weren't all the candidates pretty young?

[Corvinus85]

9 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

Weren't all the candidates pretty young?

So were the foster parents at one point.  The movie implies that someone is pure of heart or isn't. I guess it's a slow working spell.

[Myrddin]

The wizard really should've made his search query more efficient. 

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

So were the foster parents at one point.  The movie implies that someone is pure of heart or isn't. I guess it's a slow working spell.

Yeah, but we don't know what they were like when they were young, for all we know they were little monsters. I mean worse little monsters than Billy.

[polishgenius]

I mean, I don't think there's any real question of the fact that the movie did Shazam himself a bit dirty. He's been looking for a champion for thousands of years ffs. His seeking spell is terrible and he's a proper arsehole to young Sivana. And then it just kills him. He was rubbish. Boo.
Also the Rock of Eternity itself was a bit dank. I hope the film does well enough to get a sequel which shows it in its full glory.

But anyway other than that I enjoyed it. I'm not a huge fan of this iteration of Sivana, much prefer his tiny mad scientist guise, but ignoring that and this version was fun enough. Though the real joy in the film is of course in Billy discovering his powers and the heart is in the family stuff, which was really well worked. Definitely not a film for the cynical mind but...

Has to be said though that during the final battle I was a lot more interested in the Family fight than in Marvel vs Sivana himself which is probably the wrong way round. But it got the tricky part of presenting his look and his powers well right, and while nothing mindblowing the action was fine.

The only real problem I had with the film was the score. I can't pin down exactly why but it just wasn't good, kept drawing my notice but not in any inspiring way.


ps the end credit sequence was a delight and the post-credit scene delighted me by including Mr Mind. The idea of him being the villain of a mainstream superhero movie is one worth anticipating. Again, hope this does well enough to get all that sorted.

[Bastard of Boston]

Saw it yesterday morning. I wasn't that compelled to see it when the early screenings happened a few weeks ago. I also wasn't that compelled to write my thoughts on it until now. It was...fine?

Even though I didn't rush out to see it preview weekend, I feel like my expectations of it going in were maybe too high. I don't even know why I expected more out of this film, as it's not like there was precedent to be overexcited. I just felt like this movie had a lot going for it. Nobody was expecting for it to crush at the box office. The cast is full of unstar-like stars. It was allowed to exist on its own, without connecting to an overarching universe. It could be fun and loose, as it's pretty much a pre-req for the character. I just expected it to be pretty damn good. It was...fine.

It's on par with Aquaman, but I wasn't really expecting Aquaman to be fantastic, so this one hit me harder. Usually I'm totally tuned in when I see movies, but this weird thing kept happening during Shazam! -- my mind kept on wandering. I'd lose my place in the film because I'd be thinking about what I wanted to eat after the movie, or how I was irritated that the drawstring came out of my hoodie in the dryer, and I had to install it when I got back home.

As much as I liked the cast -- specifically, the two kids playing Freddie and Billy (Put that IT kid in every movie that calls for young human and/or little person) -- the cast wasn't really given a great movie. Zach Levi is a good dude with legit geek cred, and I wanted to see him win. And I guess the film did okay opening weekend, but I wanted it to win for me -- because it is always about me.

This film was advertised as a superhero BIG -- and it even deliberately evoked those things in the script -- and that was the best part of the film. Then you had this completely mundane, utterly basic, borderline offensive other part of the movie, featuring Sivana. The actual plot of the movie sucked a lot of the vitality and fun out of the performances.

It kind of felt like a phase one Marvel film. But when Marvel was doing this type of movie ten years ago, it was new. And even when you re-watch those movies now, they still hold up because they benefit from you having an extensive relationship to these characters and the world...watching those original Iron Man, Thor, and Cap movies is still special because you know where those characters are charted to go. Shazam! didn't have that benefit and probably should've taken more advantage of the fact that there were no expectations for this film.

It's an okay movie, but it should've and could've been so much better. I liked it, but I thought it would feel more special. I'll watch it again, without the baggage of expectation.

[dbunting]

Saw this and thought it was pretty damn good. Definitely better than all the other DC stuff with the exception of WW. The spots where they were discovering what powers he had were great. Also loved the Superman cameo, unexpected and funny.

[red snow]

I enjoyed this a lot. It reminded me of 80s films featuring children where things could be quite dark/scary but also humorous.

Although for some reason the film made it more apparent how stupid his name situation is. Is he known as shazam or is that just the name of the film? If it's his name then it's pretty stupid given everytime he introduces himself he triggers the change. Marvel must have really caught DC sleeping for them to not only lose captain marvel but any use of "marvel".

I think it was as good as wonder woman to be honest. This film had a better villain and the humour was mostly genuine. I think there should have been more backlash from the public for the bus incident.

Having the evil caterpillar (mastermind or something like that?) Was a nice WTF for anyone not familiar with the characters. I thought they'd have went with Black Adam but maybe dwayne Johnson is being understandably cautious of joining DC.

[oberonus]

loved it. Very fun movie that didn't take itself too seriously, but at the same time had some good emotional punches to it (i actually got teary eyed when he finally met his mom)

my only gripe is that when the kids all got powers, they really made it seem like they all only got 1 power (speed, strength, flight, etc..) rather than they all got the same powers as shazam, but each one of them got one attribute slightly stronger (one was slightly faster, one better flier, one slightly stronger, etc..)

[Corvinus85]

2 minutes ago, oberonus said:

my only gripe is that when the kids all got powers, they really made it seem like they all only got 1 power (speed, strength, flight, etc..) rather than they all got the same powers as shazam, but each one of them got one attribute slightly stronger (one was slightly faster, one better flier, one slightly stronger, etc..)

I'm pretty sure that's what suggested. After all, six people put their hands on the staff, so I'd say the powers got distributed vs one person touching the staff and getting all the powers.

[felice]

On 4/7/2019 at 3:18 PM, Slurktan said:

I know it made it clear that he was desperate and thats why billy got it.  My point was why ddnt the dumbass wizard find those foster parents earlier and give it to them when he wasn't desperate as they obviously met his criteria.

I think the point is nobody could meet his criteria; he was rejecting really great candidates because they weren't literally perfect.