Shazam! review

I liked Zachary Levi in Chuck, but I never expected him to play a superhero - at least not a straight-laced powerhouse like Shazam(/Captain Marvel?). But after watching the trailers and seeing what they were going for, I got it. And to be honest it made sense.

Well, at least if you ignore the whole "Wisdom of Solomon" part of his powers, which the movie pretty much did. But hey, "wisdom" can be a difficult thing to write around; I can accept that, just as it takes a hero time to get used to their powers, it could take a child time to learn to listen to the wisdom that is ostensibly part of those powers.

At any rate, I was just glad to see DC moving away from the dark and gloomy atmosphere of BvS; something a little lighter and more upbeat, more colourful, was exactly what I was hoping for. Plus I have a bit of a soft spot for Captain Marvel Shazam, and was glad to see him getting a bit more recognition. So I was willing to be a little bit forgiving.

I did like the movie. It had it's flaws though, and perhaps the one that took away the most from the movie for me was that the dramatic final conflict felt far too messy and drawn out; it felt like it was spinning it's wheels to pad out the runtime. But more about that in the spoilers section.

Perhaps the more imporant problem was Billy Batson. He's... just too big of a selfish jerk, at least at the start. I did feel sympathy for him by the end, but I really feel they could have gotten me on board much sooner if they made him less of a jerk and gave him more redeeming features earlier on. I get that there's something to be said for taking a character who is initially somewhat unlikeable and then allowing the audience to start to care about him as they learn more about why he acts the way he does. But there's also something to be said for not making me dislike your protagonist for most of your movie's runtime!

It didn't really help that Billy Batson and Shazam had COMPLETELY different mannerisms and personalities. At no point did they feel like the same person. Which is really bizarre; it really feels like that's the sort of thing someone should have thought about.

Speaking of split personalities, for most of the runtime this felt like a family-friendly movie, something you can take your kids to. But there is a scene with monsters murdering people that I think some parents might not want their kids to see. The actual killing is mostly off-screen, but it's still a bit heavy as you can see a suggestion of what's happening, with the monsters roaring and the victims screaming. Obviously it didn't bother me personally, but it somehow felt tonally out-of-place and I think it's something parents should be aware of.

Having said all that, I think the movie did a really good job of crafting a compelling story for Billy Batson. I guess I'd say the movie has heart. The humor worked pretty well too I thought. I didn't think the action was particularly satisfying, but the VFX were good, and some of the magical elements were pretty cool.

Other than the issue with Billy and Shazam coming across as completely different people, the acting was good, with Asher Angel doing a great job as the angry and troubled Billy, and Zachary Levi putting in a fun performance as the awkward man-child Shazam. Of course Mark Strong and Djimon Hounsou were great. Freddy might have been a bit of an annoying character, but I certainly can't fault Jack Dylan Grazer's acting, nor that of the rest of the supporting cast.


Overall I found it engaging and entertaining. I'm giving it a 7/10: it's fun, and with just a few changes it could have easily been an 8.




#####SPOILER WARNING#####
Let's start by discussing the big pacing issue with the finale I mentioned earlier. When Shazam meets Dr. Sivana, the movie just takes too long to resolve the battle. It feels almost like padding: they fight a bit, then Shazam runs away, Sivana takes his family hostage, Shazam surrenders, Sivana lets his guard down and Shazam un-surrenders (which bothers me a little, but that's a big discussion that I'm not in the mood for), Shazam runs away, Sizana takes his family hostage, Shazam surrenders, Sivana lets his guard down and Shazam un-surrenders, they fight a bit... it literally goes in circles, and relies heavily on Sivana repeatedly allowing himself to be tricked.

It's actually quite weird considering in the comics Sivana is supposed to be one of those "evil genius" characters. It's really not a very faithful adaptation. Plus it suffers from being just another instance of the "bad guy has the same powers as the good guy" trope that is practically omnipresent in superhero movies these days.

Which... is also kind of weird. Why DOES Sivana have the same abilities as Shazam? His power comes from the Deadly Sins doesn't it? It's not the power of the wizard, I don't really see why it works out to be the same as Shazam's. Also I didn't get a sense that his power level changed depending on how many of the Sins were inside his eye? Which it feels like maybe it should have, seeing as we know the Sins WERE the source of his power: he lost his power when the last Sin left his eye.

Speaking of the Seven Deadly Sins, I really feel they were a missed opportunity. They really were just a bunch of generic monsters; there was practically nothing differentiating them, and nothing "sins-themed" about their behaviour or powers. I guess at the end Shazam took advantage of Envy's envy, in theory at least, but that was pretty much it really. Also I was expecting a more... creative solution to the problem with their ability to turn intagible at will.


Shazam never uses his super-speed against Sivana, or tries to shoot lightning bolts at him. Which is especially weird when the lightning bolts were the first power Shazam learned to use, and the one he used most during the movie.


Shazam randomly letting out an accidental lightning bolt in the middle of an argument, and then it hits a bus and forces it off a bridge? That's... pretty random, and feels quite contrived as a way to move things forwards.


The Wizard couldn't find anyone worthy to bear the powers even after decades or more of searching? That's a fairly pessimistic view of humanity, especially considering the fact that in other ways the movie was not particularly cynical. Billy's adoptive parents are great, his foster siblings seem nice; there seem to be good people in this world. Was the Wizard just REALLY bad at finding people?


Billy, Freddy, and Shazam - the three main characters - were all kind of unlikeable, at least for a large portion of the runtime. I mean, even the Wizard was kind of a jerk; I can understand him being strict, but it went beyond that. I do get that Billy has had a rough time, but he seemed to take great pleasure from insulting and stealing from the police, and he's completely cold to his foster family even though they treat him well; I guess I can understand some of it at least, but it wasn't a good way to make him a sympathetic character. I think they could have made him cold and distant; afraid to get close to anyone, without making him an actual jerk. You would have basically the same character development, the same emotional arc, but he would be more relateable and sypmathetic to the audience earlier on. Well, that would make sense to me anyway.


I feel like Freddy was extremely irresponsible; doing things like setting Shazam on fire and getting him shot in the head to test his powers. For a guy who makes a big deal about reading comics and knowing about powers and stuff, he sure doesn't seem to understand the importance of keeping a secret identity a secret. He tells Shazam off for being selfish and not doing more heroic stuff, while he's upset that Shazam didn't show up at school to satisfy Freddy's own selfish desire to look important?


I'm not a huge fan of movies changing character races, but I thought it made sense for Billy's adoptive family; America is a big melting pot right? I'm not sure it made as much sense for the Wizard Shazam, but it didn't feel too out of place to me. I guess it's easier to forgive when it's supporting characters.

65 review

I hadn't heard of this or seen the trailer, but there was nothing else interesting showing at the cinema so we gave it a shot. From the poster it looked like something about surviving on prehistoric Earth; I assumed it involved time-travel in some way. For some reason I was expected something like a reversed Planet of the Apes. But other than that I knew nothing going in.

Most of the run time does indeed center around "surviving on prehistoric Earth". The story focuses on two strangers forming a connection while struggling to overcome the dangers of a wilderness filled with vicious predatory dinosaurs. On paper, that sounds like something I would probably like.

Unfortunately I wasn't really happy with the movie by the end. Sure, it did a lot of things right, but there was so much in it that just felt too contrived or unrealistic to me. A lot of it just felt forced. It seemed too sensationalist to me, trying to milk as much drama out of the setup as possible, where a more grounded approach would have worked better for me.

It might sound strange, but I think this movie would have been better if the budget was much lower. It feels like they tried too hard to force in dramatic action scenes and big-budget set-pieces (which certainly did look good, to be fair), when the setup didn't need so much of that. They should have kept the movie small rather than trying to making it big; the heart of the movie is the relationship between the two main characters, they didn't need to focus as much on action and explosions to make that work.

I had mixed feelings on Adam Driver in this film. Sometimes he was good, other times his performance just felt too... flat, too cold for... what I would have expected from the character in the given scenes. But that's just me. Ariana Greenblatt was good, though unfortunately I can't say I enjoyed her performance as I felt her character wasn't that well written. Chloe Coleman and Nika King were fine.


For me, this movie was a 6/10. It's not a bad film, I just couldn't really get into it because of how so much of it felt so forced. I think a lot of people have an easier time ignoring that kind of contrived writing, and would enjoy the movie a lot more than I did. And that's fine of course.




#####SPOILER WARNING#####
I wasn't convinced the whole "prehistoric Earth" thing was really necessary; it could have been normal humans on an alien planet rather than human-identical aliens on Earth. But I suppose that this makes some things easier; no need to explain alien species or the "ticking clock" impending disaster as we all know about dinosaurs and the big meteorite.

But then it occured to me that perhaps the fact that the aliens were completely identical to humans was not just lazy filmaking; there's a part early on when Mills says that two stasis pods were missing. Why two specifically? Initially I thought Koa's pod was supposed to be one of the missing ones, but what if it wasn't; what if the film is trying to imply that the two missing pods were, well, Adam and Eve? That "humans" are the descendents of these aliens? That would explain why the film felt the need to include a "time-skip" scene at the end where we're given a glimpse of human civilisation advancing.

I mean, it doesn't matter, it's ultimately a mostly meaningless twist that adds very little to the movie, but at least it makes the choice of time and setting a little more meaningful. So that's nice I guess.


Let's talk about how contrived it was. First of all, they happened to crash just before the famous asteroid hit? Sure, they crashed because ran into asteroid fragments so there's an argument to be made that it's not exactly some big coincidence or something but... it still feels pretty contrived to me. It doesn't help that after days on the planet they finally manage to take off literally moments before the asteroid actually hits.

When they were asleep under the waterfall, it seems the big dino woke Mills up just in time for him to save Koa from choking? Also how did it find them down there? Then when they were trying to crawl out of there, it seems a bit forced that there was a cave-in that exactly blocked the path between them in the moment they were separated without injuring or killing either of the pair. Anyother fun little "coincidence": when they could not take off because their ship was pointing in the wrong direction, how fortunate that a bunch of very large dinosaurs showed up just then and just happened to knock their ship around so it was pointing upwards and was able to take off. Oh, and it was quite fortunate that the geyser decided to spout boiling hot water at the exact instant that the dinosaur had its face over the hole.

And that's just some of the "coincidences". Another issue I had was that the way characters and especially dinosaurs acted didn't feel realistic to me. Sometimes when Mills was interacting with his daughter or Koa, and I expected a warm and/or emotional performance from Adam Driver, I felt he seemed too cold or distant. I'm certainly not saying that his entire performance was like that, only that there were a few times when it felt odd to me.

Koa doesn't speak English. She quickly picks up a few words as Mills tries to communicate. It just felt a bit off to me that she immediately pronounces them perfectly. Maybe it's a cliche, but I expect people to stumble a bit over foreign words the first few times they try to speak them. I'm pretty sure my pronounciation of the few words I know in different languages is far from perfect anyway.

There was one part where the attempt to build up the relationship between Mills and Koa felt a little rushed to me: when they first set out for the mountain, they barely know each other and can hardly communicate, Koa starts... acting playful I guess? She's trying to get Mills attention by throwing berries at him. But this is very soon after she woke up, she can't communicate with him effectively, they have recently had a near-brush with a big scary dinosaur, she's worried about her parents, and they have just started walking through a strange and dangerous land. Her behaviour just felt out of place to me; at least I would expect her to spend a bit more time with Mills before she starts, I dunno, throwing stuff at him.

What irritated me far more than some slight... eccentricities in the way the human characters acted, was how the dinosaurs behaved. They were far too agressive; they existed simply to kill, mostly lacking any actual survival instincts. When the pack attacks the two humans, they throw themselves forwards even as Mills is literally disintegrating them with his weapon. Later we see the loud gunshots of his rifle scare away the last remaining member of the pack, but before those same gunshots don't phase them at all, and even a grenade going off right in front of them, blowing up several members of the pack, doesn't seem to do anything to discourage the survivors from throwing themselves forwards.

Animals have better survival instincts than that, at least ones that have survived the harsh conditions of this prehistoric Earth. After all these are only mid-sized dinosaurs and there's much larger and scarier ones running around. In real life, animals react to loud sounds, especially loud concussive sounds that they've never heard before.

It actually gets even worse later, as metorites start to rain from the sky, filling the land with explosions and fire, three giant dinosaurs attack them when they are inside the ship! I mean, seriously? There's so much wrong with that. I'm not expert, but I reckon most animals are careful around things they haven't seen before: these humans don't exactly look like anything these dinos are used to eating. They are also quite hard to see, being barely visible through the narrow visor of the ship. And even then they don't exactly look like an easy meal; not one worth slamming your head into a chunk of steel over. Plus, you know, THE WHOLE WORLD IS BURNING, WITH FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE! What kind of creature is sitting there thinking "this is a great time to go out of my way for a light snack"? Do these things have NO self-preservation instincts? Even after the final dinosaur gets a face full of steam, it still refuses to back away and continues trying to kills Mills.

Well, it tries to kill him eventually. After standing there staring at him for a few minutes of course. Despite the dinosaurs being unbelievably aggressive and blood-thirsty, they somehow still do the whole "slowly stalking forwards in full view, not attacking when they have the chance" thing. When the pack of smaller dinos shows up while Mills has dislocated his arm, they emerge from the brush very very slowly, walking forwards at a snail's pace as they wait for him to get his arm back in his socket before finally rushing forwards. This happens again when the bigger dinos are attacking Mills at the end, repeatedly refusing to rush in and finish him off at times when he would not be able to defend himself.

That kind of... "forced drama" I suppose, is forgiveable sometimes, but just felt like it undermined this movie, taking away from the film's strengths in exchange for cheap clumsy attempts at thrills. I honestly would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they worried less about going big and dramatic, and just focussed more on the human element. But hey, that's just me.


So Mills' rifle does very little when he shoots one big dino in the face at close range earlier, then later he kills a dino with it while peppering it's entire body with shots? OK. And why is it that the first time the big dino got a face full of steam it had no effect, but the second time its skin completely sloughed off?


Watching Koa dump a whole bag of grenades into the tree stump to kill one tiny little chihuahua-sided lizard was painful. Why did Mills give her the entire bag? Keep a few for yourself man!


Why were the passengers even in cryo sleep? Mills mentions it's an exploratory mission, suggesting they are far from civilised planets, yet the ship couldn't even account for a few rocks in it's path (pretty crappy AI if you ask me), which implies to me that they are in an area of space that is considered "safe"; the ship is allowed to fly while the only pilot is asleep after all. And when they send out a distress signal, it seems a rescue arrived in like two days? That... doesn't sound like they are that far from civilisation. Sure, I can come up with reasons why they would be in cryo sleep, but those reasons feel a bit contrived, and more importantly it just feels narratively inconsistent overall. To me at least.