Written by Henry Gayden & Darren Lemke
Directed by David F. Sandberg
Shazam: "Hey, what's up? I'm a superhero."
Who would've thought that the trajectory from both Justice League to Aquaman could have a positive effect on the general perception of the DCEU and following the latter's massive success, the question now was whether or not the seventh entry into this franchise would continue this newfound critical success or be a step backward. I'm happy to say, it's definitely the former here.
Largely set during Christmas, you've got a young Thaddeus Sivana (Ethan Pugiotto) in flashbacks being belittled by his older brother and father (John Glover) on a car drive before a chance encounter with the Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) sees him getting the chance to become a champion, only for the temptation of the Seven Deadly Sins to become too much for him and with that, a humiliating rejection from the Wizard and a change of events for his family.
Over forty years later, Sivana (Mark Strong) has become obsessed with getting power from the Seven Deadly Sins and after investigating various others rejected by the Wizard, he finds a way to get into the dimension to become the main antagonist of the movie. With the baddie sorted out, it was time for the Wizard to find himself his champion and that came in the form of foster kid, Billy Batson (Asher Angel).
Billy is our main hero of the piece and he's just a kid. A kid who lost his mother at a toy fair when he was much younger and has since then been running away from every foster home, until landing in his latest one, headed by the kindly Victor (Cooper Andrews) and Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans) who also have other foster kids - Mary Bromfield (Grace Fulton), Eugene Choi (Ian Chen), Darla Dudley (Faithe Herman), Pedro Pena (Jovan Armand) and of course, the superhero savvy Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer).
It's Freddy with whom Billy connects with first in his new surroundings and it's Freddy whom Billy also confides into when his encounter with the Wizard results in his transformation into the superhero Shazam (Zachary Levi) and seeing the two of them bond while figuring out the latter's abilities as a hero is what helps to anchor a lot of the movie. That and the fact that a lot of those scenes are played for absurd comedy that really works here. There are plenty of strong performances in this movie but naturally Zachary Levi, Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer are the highlights throughout.
The theme of family is the dominating factor in this movie. The Wizard mourns the loss of his own siblings and refused to move on until finding his champion while Sivana's more dysfunctional relationship with his own family comes to a rather brutal end when he got his own abilities. Then there's Billy's quest to find his own mother, which ended on a rather sour note for him before he embraces his new family over the course of the film and with the latter, it did genuinely feel earned as well, making those moments all the more effective.
Then there's the family themselves. Normally you'd expect for Sandberg and the WB to wait until the sequel (which I think is a safe bet) to give the rest of the family their powers but this one didn't waste time in having Billy pass his powers and as a result, we got to see older versions of Freddy (Adam Brody), Mary (Michelle Borth), Pedro (DJ Cotrona), Darla (Meagan Good) and Eugene (Ross Butler) in order to help defeat both Sivana and the Seven Deadly Sins during the big climatic fight sequence.
In terms of baddies, both the DCEU and MCU have the common link of being hit and miss there. I think here though, Sivana was actually a pretty credible foe with clear motivation, a general sense of nastiness and theatricality while also played well by Mark Strong. CGI wise, the Seven Deadly Sins looked far better than say Doomsday or Steppenwolf from previous movies and of course, there's also another villain who managed to pop up as a sequel hook as well.
- The mid credit sequence saw Mister Mind (voiced by David F. Sandberg) making contact with Sivana in the latter's prison with the offer of more power to him.
- Post credit sequence saw Billy realising that he couldn't talk to fish while Freddy made the obvious references to Aquaman. Djimon Hounsou previously played the Fisherman King.
- The movie through it's closing animated credits and various newspaper clipping, props and Freddy's clothing made references to our main heroes, but we also got a Superman cameo in the last scene, albeit with a body double though.
- There was a brief cameo of other baddies, the Crocodile Men while the Wizard was clearly talking about Black Adam when lamenting over a previous champion who went mad with their powers.
- Standout music: Bing Crosby's Do You Hear What I Hear? Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, the use of the 1978 Superman theme, the Ramones I Don't Want To Grow Up and in general, Benjamin Wallfisch's score for the movie.
- Chronology: Christmas 1974 to begin Sivana's story with the Wizard and also Christmas 2019 in Philadelphia for the main story for Billy and his new family.
Shazam! is a triumph of a movie. It's literally got everything to be a perfect movie - a seasonal setting, a little bit of horror, some great comedy, character driven drama, a hero(es) worth rooting for and an equally compelling set of individual baddies to get invested into while the theme of family and diversity (including a possible gay character) feel organic, great use of music and wonderful references to past movies. This is a movie that might not have been released at the most perfect of times but it's one that deserves to be as big a hit as it can possibly be.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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