BEFORE: It's the last day of May (jeez, what happened? May 1 feels like it was about two weeks ago, is it just me?) so here's the format breakdown for the month:
14 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Nothing Compares, Fled, Minari, The November Man, The Misfits, Eighth Grade, News of the World, The Last Duel, Stillwater, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, The Rhythm Section, A Simple Favor, Cyrano, Top Gun: Maverick
4 Movies watched on cable (not saved): 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, Dom Hemingway, Shazam! Fury of the Gods
6 watched on Netflix: No Escape, Moxie, The Pale Blue Eye, The Land of Steady Habits, White Noise, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Annette
1 watched on YouTube: King of Thieves
2 watched on Tubi: A Shock to the System, Lovely & Amazing
2 watched on Tubi: A Shock to the System, Lovely & Amazing
3 watched on HBO MAX: Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer, The Long Good Friday, Secrets & Lies
31 TOTAL
Zachary Levi carries over from "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood" and tomorrow I'll post the proposed actor links for June.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Shazam!" (Movie #3,428)
THE PLOT: Continues the story of teenage Billy Batson who, upon reciting the magic word "SHAZAM" is transformed into his adult superhero alter ego.
AFTER: Well, speaking of things that were a while ago, but feel like they weren't, I watched the first "Shazam!" movie a little over three years ago, in January of 2020. Three years is about as fast as Hollywood can produce a sequel to a blockbuster, assuming they green light the sequel as soon as the first film is a proven hit. I watched "Knives Out" in 2020, and "Glass Onion" this year, I also watched "John Wick: Chapter 3" that year, and Chapter 4 came out right on schedule, also "Murder Mystery" was a Netflix hit in 2020, and I've got the sequel planned for June. Well, according to that formula, we should get "The Equalizer 3" and "It: Chapter Three" released sometime this year, unless I've mis-calculated. JK. (What, no "Secret Life of Pets 3" either?)
The first "Shazam!" movie was a whole lot of fun, once Billy Batson finally got powers - it took a while, let's be honest - and started to play around with them. But he also ended up sharing them with his adoptive family of foster kids, and so that's where this one starts, all six kids growing up in that house have a portion of the power derived from the Wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the something something of Atlas, and Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. Speed! The speed of Mercury, that's important. But the first thing we see the family do here is rescue people from a bridge collapsing in Philadelphia, and even though nobody died, the team is unable to save the bridge, so they get labelled the "Philly Fiascoes" in the press. Oh, if only they all knew how to access that Wisdom of Solomon (or "Saruman" as Billy Batson says it), maybe they could have figured out a better way to save the property AND the people? Or you know, maybe worked together, as a team? Get Maverick in here and let's teach them how to play beach football, it's worth a shot.
But let's go back to that acronym for a second, because one of the SHAZAM powers comes from Atlas, the stamina of Atlas. Atlas was the Titan in Greek mythology who held up the sky, or often he's depicted as carrying the world - so, umm, which was it, and if he was holding up the earth, then where was he standing? And who built this broke-ass planet where if somebody wasn't holding up the sky then the sky would crush the earth? What a poor design. In the story of Heracles (or Hercules), when he needed to obtain a few golden apples from the garden guarded by Atlas's daughters, Heracles offered to hold up the sky while Atlas got the apples, and then when Atlas got back, he didn't want his old job back. Heracles had to trick him to hold up the sky again so he could make off with the apples. So let's just assume that Atlas didn't really possess the wisdom of Solomon, either.
But those daughters of Atlas were called the Hesperides, or sometimes the Atlantides, and in some myths there were three of them, but in others there were four, or seven, with various names. In the movie here there are two at first, Hespera and Kalypso, but then a third comes along. (Not really a spoiler, she's right there ON THE POSTER.). The daughters of Atlas obtain the magic staff from the wizard, seen in the first film, which was broken in the previous film, only they make the wizard fix it again. Then they get one of those golden apples, but instead of using it to recreate their world in another realm, they decide to recreate their world right on Earth. Well, that does seem like it will save a lot of time, plus we humans are pretty much destroying the planet anyway, so maybe this next one will be better? Sure there will be Cyclopses and Harpies and Minotaurs mucking about, but if they can fix climate change, it could be worth it.
Oh, and the daughters of Atlas have a really cool dragon too, named Ladon, and he's totally different from all the other dragons seen in movies like "Harry Potter" and "The Hobbit". Well, OK, forget that, he looks pretty much the same, except he's made of wood? But otherwise fairly identical, they wouldn't want to blow your minds with an ice dragon or a water dragon or anything else cool from D&D lore. And who cares that the battle scenes basically take up the whole second half of the movie? They're so cool and so exciting and so much fun, really if this is your biggest complaint then you've really got nothing to complain about.
Also, Billy finally learns his superhero name (or DOES he?) - I can't help but think that all the joking in both movies about using names like "Captain Thundercrack" or "Mister Everypower" is a subtle dig at the lawsuits over the years between DC, Marvel and other comic book companies. You see, the character now called "Shazam" used to be called "Captain Marvel" back in the day, but the name became problematic when Marvel Comics came on the scene, and Marvel's had at LEAST three different heroes who have used that name, probably more. Plus then DC was almost advertising for their biggest rival every time they put out a "Captain Marvel" comic - imagine Marvel printing a comic where the main character was named "Mister DC". (OK, they had the Squadron Supreme, all those characters were ripoffs of Justice Leaguers, but that's neither here nor there...)
The Billy Batson/Captain Marvel character was first published by Fawcett Comics in 1940, and they folded in 1953, partly due to a copyright lawsuit that claimed their character was a copy of Superman. Which couldn't be true, because Superman didn't turn into a kid when he wasn't using his powers, he just put on glasses and pretended to be a regular guy. But Fawcett licensed the character rights to DC in 1972, and he and the whole Shazamily got integrated into the DC universe of heroes - but they've called him "Shazam" in the DC comics, to avoid confusion with the Captains Marvel over at Marvel.
It was the 2011 "New 52" re-boot of the DC comics that created the new Shazam family, made up of six kids in total, which has carried over into the films. I think before that there were two main "siblings" to Captain Marvel, just Mary Marvel (she got the powers of Selene, Hippolyte, Ariadne, Zephyrus, Aurora and Minerva) and Captain Marvel Jr., aka Freddy Freeman. But then there were always others, like Lt. Fat Marvel and Lt. Tall Marvel (not joking here...) and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.
So I maintain that this film could have been much, much worse. Heck, the live-action TV show called "Shazam!" that I watched as a kid just had Billy Batson traveling across the country with his guardian "Mentor" in an RV, just looking for injustices to fight in America's national parks system. I think they cleaned up a lot of litter, or something.
Also starring Asher Angel (last seen in "Shazam!"), Jack Dylan Grazer (last heard in "Luca"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Life Partners"), Rachel Zegler (last seen in "West Side Story" (2021)), Ross Butler (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Ian Chen (also last seen in "Shazam!"), D.J. Cotrona (ditto), Jovan Armand (ditto), Grace Caroline Currey (ditto), Faithe Herman (ditto), Marta Milans (ditto), Meagan Good (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Domino"), Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "The King's Man"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Cooper Andrews (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Jennifer Holland (last seen in "Brightburn"), Steve Agee (last seen in "Hit and Run"), Mark Strong (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Rizwan Manji (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Diedrich Bader (last heard in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Carson MacCormac (also last seen in "Shazam!"), Evan Marsh (ditto), Lotta Losten (ditto), Michael Beasley (last seen in "Contraband"), Michael Gray, Natalia Safran, Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Running With Beto") and the voice of David F. Sandberg (last heard in, you guessed it, "Shazam!")
RATING: 8 out of 10 packs of Skittles (Taste the Rainbow!)
No comments:
Post a Comment