After the depressing one-two punch of Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
a few years ago, I swore off the current crop of DC Comics movies.
I keep meaning to make an exception for Wonder Woman, which I’ve heard was good.
And I’ve heard the same about Aquaman.
I just haven’t gotten around to either of them yet.
But I did recently check out Shazam!
And I’m glad I did.
The original Captain Marvel, now known as Shazam, has been one of my favorite superheroes
since I was a teenager.
On the one hand, he is a pretty blatant knockoff of Superman – similar overall look, similar
powers, they’re both orphans, even their secret identities have more in common than
you might think at first glance: Clark Kent is a reporter for a newspaper, Billy Batson
starts out as a paperboy and later becomes a reporter for a radio station.
Hmm . . .
But on the other hand, Shazam has quite a few original elements that distinguish him
from Superman and have allowed him and his adventures to establish their own identity.
Unlike Superman, whose muscles are made of granite because he’s from another planet,
Shazam isn’t born with the powers and abilities that allow him to become a superhero.
Billy Batson is chosen by a wizard to receive his powers.
In the original telling, it’s implied that the Wizard chooses Billy because he’s down
on his luck – his parents are dead, his uncle stole all their money, and Billy is
homeless and sleeping in a subway station.
After his first transformation, the Wizard informs him of his sacred duties, and first
and foremost among them is to defend the poor and the helpless.
In modern retellings of the origin, this bit is usually augmented or replaced altogether
with the notion that Billy is pure of heart and therefore worthy of the powers bestowed
upon him by the Wizard.
Either way, Shazam’s superpowers aren’t a birthright, they’re something he has earned,
through his suffering or his strength of character or some combination of the two.
And unlike Clark Kent, Billy Batson is a child, usually depicted as between the ages of 12
and 14 when he gains his powers.
That gives Shazam an element of overt wish fulfillment, especially for the young readers
at whom the character was initially aimed, that Superman doesn’t have – at least
not to the same degree; most superheroes contain an element of wish fulfillment and/or power
fantasy, to a certain extent.
Finally, Shazam’s adventures typically have a lighthearted comic tone.
They’re breezy, they’re fun, they’re colorful!
The artwork of the original Captain Marvel comics, primarily by C.C.
Beck, is charming, whimsical, and vibrant.
Given all of that, I was more than a little nervous when I heard they were actually making
a Shazam movie.
Not only does the character’s traditional tone require a delicate touch and a certain
amount of wit to pull off, which would be challenging under any circumstances, the default
aesthetic of the recent DC films has been dark, grim, humorless, ponderous, depicting
heroes that resent their jobs and the people they’re responsible for protecting.
So, you can imagine my relief when I finally watched Shazam!, and found it to be nothing
like that.
Directed by David F. Sandberg, written by Henry Gayden, and starring Zachary Levi as
Shazam and Asher Angel as Billy Batson, Shazam! pulls off the impressive feat of adapting
this goofy relic from the Golden Age of comics to fit within our current era of cinematic
superheroes without losing what makes it special.
Unlike most of the other recent DC Comics films, Shazam! is funny.
It isn’t embarassed by its source material.
It doesn’t try to hide its inherent silliness – it embraces it.
The classic elements of the origin story are all there: the mystical subway train, the
ancient wizard, the Rock of Eternity, the Seven Deadly Sins, and of course the magic
word – Shazam! – which triggers Billy’s transformation when invoked.
This is all deeply silly stuff, and the film makes it work by never pretending that it’s
anything else.
In fact, from my perspective as a longtime fan of Shazam, one of the most impressive
things the film does is tell this origin story in a way that is more or less faithful to
the comics, but that also feels fresh and inventive.
That’s no easy trick, given how often we’ve been told this same story over the years.
The publication history of Shazam is complicated.
Initially published by Fawcett Comics, the character was eventually acquired by DC Comics,
which had sued Fawcett for copyright infringement based on its similarities to Superman.
But by the time DC got around to publishing its own comics featuring the character in
the 1970s, Marvel Comics had created (and trademarked) its own hero called Captain Marvel.
So even though DC had gained the rights to the character by successfully arguing that
it violated its intellectual property rights, it couldn’t market it under the name Captain
Marvel because to do so would violate the intellectual property rights of a rival company.
So DC started publishing its Captain Marvel books under the title of Shazam!, and eventually
they just changed the character’s name to Shazam, as well.
Anyway, the result of all of this is that DC has reintroduced Captain Marvel/Shazam
several times over the last forty years or so, which means his origin story has been
retold at least as many times as Spider-Man’s.
So yeah, much of Shazam! the movie seemed very familiar to me.
But in this case, that familiarity with previous tellings of the story enabled me to better
appreciate this version.
I enjoyed the way the film justifies the magic subway train by establishing that the Wizard
just uses whatever form of transportation you happen to be in at the time to bring you
to the Rock of Eternity.
I was also happy to see the film incorporate the modern conceit that Billy retains his
own personality when he transforms into Shazam.
In the original Captain Marvel comics, Billy and Cap are essentially two completely different
people.
Allowing Billy to remain himself after he says the magic word provides a logical, easy
to understand justification for the film’s comic tone: this is a kid who suddenly finds
himself not only in the body of an adult, but an adult with superpowers.
The tone feels like a product of the character rather than something arbitrarily imposed
by the filmmakers.
The film also introduces us to Shazam’s arch-nemesis, Dr. Sivana.
Here, instead of merely being a wealthy and ambitious mad scientist, Sivana is presented
as a kind of mirror image of Shazam.
We’re shown Sivana as a child being summoned by the Wizard and found unworthy, then returning
to the Rock of Eternity as an embittered adult to claim the powers of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Sivana is selfish and holds the powers of the sins within himself.
Shazam comes to realize that the only way to defeat him is to do the opposite – to
share his power with his surrogate family, the other residents of his new foster home.
That leads to the most delightful surprise of the film – the introduction of the Shazam
Family.
One of the goofiest elements of this extremely goofy character, and there it is on the screen,
and it is awesome.
We get to see Billy’s foster siblings, all of whom have been given at least a scene or
two – and in the cases of Freddy, Mary and Darla quite a bit more than that – to establish
their personalities, become superhero versions of themselves and help Shazam defeat Sivana
and the manifestations of the Sins he unleashes.
It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s true to the comic, and best of all, like everything
else in this film, it emerges naturally from character and story.
The appearance of the Shazam Family is very late in the film, but it doesn’t feel tacked
on and the film doesn’t feel crowded or too busy as a result.
It makes sense.
It completes Billy/Shazam’s character arc.
And it resolves the film’s dominant theme.
The best stories, superhero or otherwise, are about something more than the literal
series of events they present.
They carry a deeper message.
They tell us something about the characters, and by extension about ourselves.
They offer an insight into our shared human experience, or sometimes, perhaps more importantly,
into the experiences of people unlike ourselves.
In Shazam!, that deeper message is about the importance of family.
Billy Batson is an orphan.
He was separated from his mother as a young child and has been moved from foster home
to foster home ever since.
When he finds his mother midway through the film, she tells him she abandoned him intentionally
and is unable to provide him with the home and family he needs now.
Billy responds to this rejection not with anger but with sympathy.
He returns to his foster siblings, who are being threatened by Sivana, and after rescuing
them, recognizes that they are the family he’s been searching for.
Sivana has his own difficult history with his family.
His father and brother are abusive toward him, they blame him for their problems, they
tell him both directly and indirectly that he is unworthy.
He hears the same thing from the Wizard.
When Sivana returns to the Rock of Eternity and steals the powers of the Seven Deadly
Sins, he uses them to kill his father.
Instead of seeking out a surrogate family to replace the one that abused and damaged
him, he becomes obsessed with accumulating the power he feels he is owed.
When the bitter, self-centered Sivana releases the Sins from his body to fight Shazam at
the film’s climax, he is rendered weaker, more vulnerable.
On the other hand, when Billy decides to share his powers with his new family, the sharing
becomes a source of strength.
The film is telling us that family is important, yes, but also that sometimes our true families
consist not of blood relatives, but of friends, colleagues, fellow travelers.
Our genetic relationships to each other aren’t important.
What matter are the bonds of love and trust that we share.
And when those bonds are in place, giving to others doesn’t weaken us, it doesn’t
deplete us – it makes us stronger.
Shazam! is funny, it’s silly, it’s exciting, it’s colorful and full of life, and its
message is about the importance of caring about others and using our power responsibly
– which includes sharing it with those who need it.
It’s exactly the sort of film I hoped someone would make about the original Captain Marvel
someday, and something I hope to see more of as this current iteration of the DC Comics
film franchise slowly emerges from the Zack-Snyder/David-Goyer-generated black cloud of nihilism under which it began.
Lead on, Big Red Cheese! Lead on.