Superhero Media: SHAZAM!

Boy did this one come out of nowhere, huh? I mean, the trailer looked good, but that's no indication of final quality, as anyone who remembers The Phantom Menace can tell you. I think the moment I realised that SHAZAM! might be something special was when a friend of mine messaged me out of the blue and told me to go see the film; as this friend is more into cult horror and exploitation films, I was keen to see what he found so interesting. When friends ask me what I want to see in a particular hypothetical film or television adaptation and I tend to respond "make a good film first then worry about the character", and it seems that the crew of SHAZAM! must have been spying on me for a while, because that's pretty much how the film works. Billy Batson is a teenage runaway looking for his long lost mother when he lands in a foster home with a gaggle of colourful siblings and gets recruited to be Captain Marvel by the Wizard Shazam. Yes, I'm going to refer to the character as Captain Marvel, deal with it. 

Probably the greatest achievement of SHAZAM! is finding a dozen child actors who are decent enough to carry all of their lines and keep a straight face during their scenes. Add to that some decent writing that actually evokes young people and their interactions, and the superhero parts of SHAZAM! are almost secondary to the enjoyment of the film. Not that the film slumps in this area thanks to the sheer menace Mark Strong brings to Doctor Sivana, and the Sins look scary enough to be a legitimate threat, though I would have liked them to look like the Golden Age versions for one scene. C'mon, Mister Mind has two cameos, it wouldn't have shifted the tone all that much. By Zeus, I'm hanging out of a DCEU Mister Mind, can't wait to see an evil caterpillar be the headline villain; hope they don't wuss out on it. SHAZAM! takes risks, not just with the source material and focus on child actors, but in the balance of the lighthearted and scary moments and the challenge of superhero movie tropes; the scene where Sivana makes an evil speech Captain Marvel can't hear is great. 

I want to see more of Captain Marvel and his family, both in more films of their own and in the broader DCEU, whatever that turns out to be. The lighthearted tone that the Marvel family brings would be a great way to move away from the Snyder aesthetic so gradually perhaps the grim and gritty set may not even notice and start to have fun with their lives. At the very least we need a recreation of the Superman/Captain Marvel fight from Justice League Unlimited, if not having Captain Marvel hanging around the Teen Titans and getting along because he's a teen as well, like in Young Justice. Hell, I'm just happy to see more DC films that don't involve Superman or Batman, so I'm down for a few more in this series just on that merit.