Shazam!
Welcome back everyone. It's Charlie.
This'll be my Shazam Fury of the Gods movie review.
Hopefully have a chance to see the movie this weekend.
It's basically going to be one of the last
big DC movies before James Gunn's big reboot all.
Explain how that all works to like what the new timeline is going to be in, how
the reboot is going to function through the coming movies this year,
because most of the movies that are coming from DC this year are still technically
part of the DCU, and James Gunn is calling his new universe the DCU.
Some of the actors will be recast and some of them will come back.
So if you're brand new to the channel, of course they'll do videos for everything.
There's a bunch of big DC HBO shows that I'm working on right now
too, that I'll be doing videos for like the Batman
HBO series about the Penguin character.
It's going to involve Robert Pattinson, All those characters
from the Batman movies Shazam Fury of the Gods
takes its name from Fury of the Gods that they actually get their powers from.
The whole idea is that Shazam is an acronym
for the gods that they get their powers from in the comics.
They change the back story of the characters just a little bit
because he used to be called Captain Marvel in black.
Adam used to get his powers the same way,
but then they changed it to the Egyptian gods.
But it's the same basic concept.
The different letters in the Shazam acronym STAND for the different Gods.
So within the DCU history, they explain that the Wizard Shazam powered up his step
like he gained all that power by defeating the Greek Titan Atlas.
Who's obviously part of the Greek pantheon, the Wonder Woman Pantheon.
You probably seen a lot of the TV spots
that show Wonder Woman appearing during the movie.
So it's not really a spoiler anymore
because Warner Brothers officially revealed it.
So it was really cool.
Learning more about the mythology behind the Shazam character,
The Gods inside the DCU, James Gunn has a much bigger plan
to do more backstory for a lot of those characters set thousands of years ago.
In the past,
there's a Wonder Woman TV series that they're working on
for HBO about the theme experience before Wonder Woman was born, which is meant
to be like Game of Thrones, but set on Themyscira thousands of years ago.
In the past.
Hopefully we'll learn more about the gods during that too.
We've gotten some brief teasers for that.
During the Justice League, Snyder cut in during the first Wonder
Woman movie where they talk about what happened to all the gods.
But now in present day, the daughters of that Greek Titan Atlas
want to take the powers of their father back.
Djimon Hounsou does come back in the movie as a younger version of the character,
but he's sort of like an after image.
It's not like the Wizard actually came back to life, the physical version
of him, like his physical body died during the first movie that sticks
when they get into the whole idea of where these other gods
come from, where they live, this other realm, other dimensions.
It allows them to explore some of the more mythology,
the more magic based aspects of the character
that you see inside the Rock of Eternity during the first movie.
But they didn't really explore that deeply.
They've really only started to touch on magic inside the DC movies.
So it'll be tricky to see what happens with that in the future.
As far as James Gunn has said,
there isn't a lot of Shazam during the DC phase one of his new movies.
That won't happen until a little bit later,
but he does eventually plan on doing those characters.
The three daughters of the Greek Titan Atlas are played by Helen
Mirren, who is Hospira, the oldest daughter, Lucy Liu,
the Middle daughter Calypso, and Rachel Ziegler, the youngest daughter, and Thea.
So in the way the first movie followed the Shazam.
Lee Like the actual family, it's all about the family
you create for yourself
being more powerful, more meaningful than the families you're born into.
Because all the shows and movies are basically an advertisement for adoption.
Like adoption is good. It can actually lead to good things.
I think they even actually did
some special adoption commercials for the Shazam Fury of the Gods movie.
They use the Three Sisters family in their quarreling state
to sort of juxtapose the Shazam in the way that all the characters,
all the kids work together with their parents, their foster parents.
Probably some of the best scenes in the movie are with the little kids,
just being a family together with their parents,
like then just talking to each other like parents and children.
The general vibe of the movie is similar to the first Shazam movie.
I didn't think it went quite as dark as the first movie went,
because I think the first movie
was a little more influenced by the tone and the vibe of the Zack Snyder DCU
and obviously more recent DC films have taken the tone of those movies
in completely different directions,
even though they use a lot of the same characters.
In fact, talking about that too.
One of the reasons why James Gunn said it would be possible
or theoretically possible they haven't made a decision yet
about whether or not these Shazam characters
could return in future DC movies, like If Zachary Levi could come back.
Asher Angel The other characters is because even though they do get into more
DC backstory behind the characters, more lurid mythology,
the way they explain where Shazam's powers actually come from,
how he got those powers in the first place.
The wizard doesn't completely trample on all the new candidate.
James Gunn, is trying to create all the new backstory.
He did reveal that he would be retconning some of the characters backstories
that you saw in previous movies.
But speaking of Retcon funny detail that you'll probably notice
maybe you won't notice when you see the movie for the first time
is they reshot one of the scenes from the first movies
using different costumes, the new updated costumes.
I believe the director explained.
They did that just because he likes the new costumes better.
And the new costumes are a huge upgrade.
It's a huge glow up for the characters just in general.
They look way better than the ones in the first movie.
Overall, the movie is pretty solid, relatively self-contained, like I said,
and if you enjoyed the first Shazam movie, you will definitely enjoy this movie.
But if you did not like the whole vibe of the first movie, like that jokey tone.
Zachary Levi's whole interplay with Asher Angel in the fact that they're trying
to play the same character, sort of like the Tom Hanks big movie.
But with the DC Universe, the Justice League characters,
if you don't like that kind of humor, that kind of tone,
you probably will not enjoy Shazam Fury of the Gods quite as much
because they crank the dial way up on the jokes.
I feel like the timing is pretty good.
For example, they put all the Fast and Furious jokes inside the trailers.
The meta joke there is that a lot of the characters in Shazam
Fury of the Gods have been in the Fast and Furious movies.
Helen Mirren, for instance, she's in this scene, Djimon Hounsou,
even Gal Gadot's
Wonder Woman, who's in the movie, was also in the Fast and Furious movies.
Helen Mirren was fantastic.
She's great in all the stuff that she does.
Lucy Liu plays arguably the main villain of the movie.
I feel like she does a pretty solid job, too.
I enjoy most of her stuff.
I hadn't seen a lot of Rachel Ziegler's stuff
before I saw this movie, but she did a pretty good job.
Most of you might remember her from West Side Story.
What am I big disappointments to say?
And most of you probably have already realized this.
They've been talking about it publicly, so I don't consider it a spoiler.
Is that Black Adam is not in this movie, The Rock Black.
Adam is not in this movie.
And they've been hyping up a confrontation between Shazam and Black Adam
for so long.
It's such a huge deal in the back story between their characters in the comics.
It felt like such a natural thing for them to build up to.
But then the big debacle with Black Adam in the Rock happened last year.
He had a huge falling out with DC, where there was
this big political power play behind the scenes he wound up losing.
James Gunn was hired as the new CEO, the new Kevin Feige of DC Studios,
and that was the end of it.
Even though the Rock recently was asked about all that drama.
And he actually took it like a champ.
He's treating it like water under the bridge now.
Like it doesn't bother him that much, but it does sound like we will not see
Black Adam versus Shazam in any kind of DC movie for a long, a long time.
And when they do eventually do something like that,
the rock will not be that version of Black. Adam.
So as much as being self-contained helps the Shazam characters chances
of coming back in the future and helped the movie avoid major Re edits
after the fact, after James Gunn was hired and they rebooted DC movies with this
brand new plan,
is that it isn't quite as epic or earth shattering is a film that you would
normally expect is a sequel setting up and paying off all these big things
that they teased during the first movie.
There's still a lot of action in the movie.
The special effects are pretty decent,
and I did like the way that they upgraded their use of powers.
Like with time,
the characters have gotten better at using their powers,
so they have more creative uses for their abilities.
We also get a couple
really cool scenes of them using their powers together as a family.
And because they did reveal the big Wonder Woman cameo scene,
I feel like it's not too much to talk about that.
It didn't completely sideline the movie.
It is a relatively small beat, but it is a pretty critical part of the film.
It did feel a little bit like the Henry Cavill Superman cameo scene in Black Adam,
where he just kind of shows up at the end very briefly for a couple of seconds
and that's it. Like, okay, we're going to do this.
We're paying off a Big Joe from early in the movie about Wonder Woman.
If they were going to have her in the movie,
it would have been cooler to have her
in a much bigger part of the movie, like do a bigger crossover.
But I can understand why they wanted the movie to feel self-contained
because of all this big craziness with DC, all the big reboots,
it might have resulted in them having to reedit the movie
a couple of times to remove some stuff
because they've already run into that problem with the Flash movie.
They filmed a bunch of Superman cameo scenes with Henry Cavill.
Superman.
They had to remove those after the fact
because apparently they were setting up a lot of future stuff that James Gunn
is no longer planning on paying off with his new ten year plan for DC movies.
So it's like saying, Oh, we had a bunch of cool stuff
that we might have been able to do and Shazam Fury of the Gods,
but we're not going to do that just to avoid future headaches.
But if you do like smaller, self-contained movies
that don't connect to every single thing and set up a bunch of other movies,
then you might actually enjoy what they did with this film.
The ending of the movie
does give the characters a logical end if they decide to recast everyone,
they can reboot
with a bunch of new characters and it won't cause a bunch of confusion.
But they also end on a moment
that will allow the characters to continue in the future.
If they do get to come back.
The way
that Zachary Levi has talked about, that is it
just depends on the box office for the movie.
If it's incredibly successful, like if it does well,
then there's a chance that they might come back.
If it's more like Black Adam and it doesn't perform,
then we probably will not see these actors come back.
The other elephant in the room is the idea that Shazam is supposed to be
this dichotomy of a little kid who turns into an adult, like
the idealized adult version of himself when he activates his powers.
And if you look at Asher Angel in present day now during this movie,
Billy is getting ready to turn 18.
So just within the context of the universe, he's becoming an adult,
so to speak.
And in real life he's aging up pretty quickly.
Like by the time they get a third movie out,
he would actually look like a legit adult. So it'd be kind of weird.
Like, isn't it supposed to be a little kid turning into an adult?
Which is?
AM They even did that with the Merry Marvel character during this movie
where they actually have the actors playing both versions of the character,
just because you got a little bit older and it felt more natural for the character
to do that.
If that were the case, then Asher Angel would have to start
playing the Shazam powered up version of the character.
My only other complaint about the movie, and this is actually similar
during the first movie is that it almost feels like Asher Angel
in Zachary Levi are playing two completely different types of characters.
I really did enjoy Asher Angel's performance,
but there are times when Zachary Levi
feels like he's meant to be a completely different
character than just adult version of Billy.
Once you do have a chance to see the movie,
just post all your reactions in the comments below.
Please don't post a bunch of spoilers in the comments either.
Things that have been released in public trailers aren't spoilers though
there are two post credit scenes, so do be sure to say after the movie
I'll do a full post credit scene video later this week.
After the movie comes out in the full breakdown
Easter eggs like I do for all the other big movies.
If any big questions, just write them in the comments below.
Everyone click here for that Post Credits scene video.
Update the link as soon as I post
that and click here for my brand new flash movie trailer, video and Easter eggs.
Thank you so much for watching.
Everyone stay safe and I'll see you guys in the next one.