Being a Superhero is Actually Fun – / Movie

Throughout the last few years, there are many movies, movies and movies are super-dark and grim. In the latter case, a couple of writers have been created for the entire DC Extended Universe, even though one of them never directed to a film within that technically defined franchise: Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder. The darkness of these films is arguably become a burden, and one that DC is now self-aware about. Their last two movies, December's Aquaman and now Shazam!These are more upbeat, colorful, and attempting to be entertaining in a traditional sense.

This post contains spoilers for Shazam!

Leaning Into the Fun of Superheroism

Shazam!, especially, is quite successful at being … y'know, fun. Part of why the David F. Sandberg-directed film works is because, to the honchos at DC deeming it so because of the Henry Gayden screenplay thing this, there's very little acknowledgment of the larger universe than the superheroes exist. The film, focusing on perpetual child foster Billy Batson (Asher Angel), most of the fans of Freddy's (Jack Dylan Grazer), who sports shirts with Aquaman's logos and treasures was bullet fired at Superman.

Once Billy becomes the so-called champion of a mystical wizard named Shazam (Djimon Hounsou), he's gifted with powers of flight, speed, strength, and more, all of which can be said by saying "Shazam" and turning into his idealized adult self, portrayed by Zachary Levi. Eventually, Billy / Shazam, Mark Strong, Thaddeus Sivana, has grown-up who was a little boy, given the chance to be champion before being denied.

Sivana's backstory, somewhat like Billy's, empathy, but it's more than enough to show off his own powers and cruelty, it's more fun to watch Billy / Shazam is a villain to be a villain . Arguably the funniest scene in the movie comes late, as Billy / Shazam and Sivana face off, hovering above Philadelphia about 100 yards apart. Sivana starts delivering a scary monologue, but when Sandberg cuts back to Billy / Shazam, it's clear that he can not hear the monologue, and does not really care what Sivana's even saying. Most of Shazam! It does not really matter, but this moment is a solid one of a key trope within the subgenre.

The concept of a superhero movie being fun has been moderately absent from a number of recent comic-book movies, not just those from DC. (That said, let's be fair: somehow, the Marvel movie that ended with the death of literally half of humanity DCEU movies are desperately grim in the hopes of seeming to be self-serious and carryous.) Something about the need for comic-book Marvel movies, including Captain Marvel and Avengers: Infinity War (it's not as dark as DC movies, but … it does not matter with half of humanity dying), aiming for importance and missing the mark.

The Self-Seriousness Complex

For DC, though, it's been a crush thanks to the mbadive success of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Of that series, the movie is most often held up the high watermark is his 2008 sequel The Dark Knight. It's easy to look at a film that is leaning too much into the darkness of its title, with Bruce Wayne / Batman pushed to his limits of moral and moral by the cruel and sociopathic Joker. But even in the world of a Christopher Nolan movie, there's some element of play, at least to come to life by the late Heath Ledger. His Joker is a character whose off-kilter qualities are absent from the other Nolan Batman movies. (Bane, a key villain in The Dark Knight Rises, is funny, but not intentionally so.) While Ledger's Academy Award-winning Joker has become an iconic flashpoint to many online fans, the self-seriousness of Nolan's work is what DC is all about.

Nolan's presence was only mildly at the beginning of the DCEU back in 2013 with Man of Steel. Though he did not direct the film, he was credited as producer and seemed to be instrumental in having Warner Bros. work with Snyder (who has had a good relationship with WB thanks to 300 and Watchmen). Goal Man of Steel is much more of a Zack Snyder movie than a Christopher Nolan one; neither of them would have been right to superman movie, in part because Superman is such a radically different character than Batman. The latter character has a darkness built into it, while it is meant to be full of excitement and joy of having powers. It's a feeling of hope that is largely absent from the first few DCEU movies.

Man of Steel was identified by criticisms of how he climaxes in Superman breaking the neck of General Zod, right after plenty of innocent civilians are murdered in the crossfire of their battle. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was marked by criticisms of its wallow in grimness, to a parodic level. (And very recently, Snyder publicly spoke about anything else is true of Batman and Superman, suggesting that he harbors no regret for his versions of the characters. Justice League, credited to Snyder as director Avengers Helmer Joss Whedon Justice League Most of the time, it's a part of the film, but it's a fact that DC knew its problems.

Of course, by the time that Justice League had opened, DC had already mocked his own penchant for darkness with the exceptionally funny The LEGO Batman Movie. It's a blend of loving homage and snarky parody, opening on a black screen as the gravel-voiced minifig version of Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) intones that "all important movies start with a black screen". That sense of importance is what the movie skewers, and what Shazam! similarly sidesteps. Maybe it's because The Dark Knight did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a decision to expand the field of nominees to ten, but the blend of importance and wounded pride contribute to the DCEU's qualitative problems.

A Breath of Fresh Air

And maybe that's why movies like Shazam! and Wonder Woman feel like such welcome breaths of fresh air. Neither of these movies Wonder Woman features its title character in the middle of World War I, and Shazam! has multiple characters with backstories designed to engender instant sympathy due to family separation. Shazam! starts out pretty dark, with a prologue set in 1974 as we meet the young Thaddeus Sivana on a trip through snowy nighttime roads (John Glover). The bespectacled Thaddeus is inexplicably transported to Shazam's air, and after that, he himself succumbs to personalities of the Seven Deadly Sins, the elderly wizard back to the real world.

When we meet Billy Batson, there's a similar sadness permeating his storyline. As a teenager, he's been in and out of foster homes for a decade; in a flashback, we found out that he was separated from his mother at carnival, and was never able to reconnect with him. Eventually, it becomes clear that his mother's absence is less an accident than an active decision on the young woman's part. When Billy is able to finally find his birth mother, with the help of his new foster siblings, he learns the truth: though they did accidentally get split up, she spotted her young son with the cops and thing to leave him behind her youth and immaturity, presuming someone else could be a better mother to him. It's a heartbreaking moment, and one that works because of Shazam!, at least the parts surrounding Billy's backstory, is so much fun.

Part of this could be the decision to make a story about a couple of teenagers. Freddy is an addict, Billy, when in his adult form. In part, that addiction is due to Freddy's physical disabilities and how much he aspires to have the kind of body that can withstand any kind of bread. Billy and Freddy, "The Shadow of the Shadows", is a test of the limits of shadowing, and the parents are not looking. It's the kind of fun that you're having, but captured on film with honest-to-goodness superpowers. This, combined with the pathos evinced by Billy learning, is about to be a part of the world.

That's what makes Shazam! special, and it's what makes many of the best superhero movies so special. (Admittedly, The Dark Knight The film is in the middle of a great sense of humor.) It's not so much that the story of the new film is blazingly original. late. Superhero movies are impossible to avoid at the multiplex, but superhero movies by characters like being superheroic are fewer and farther between. No doubt, hearings flock to kind of movie – high budget aside, even Justice League $ 650 million worldwide, and Marvel's not exactly releasing box office flops left and right. But the ones that stand out for a weekend or two feel special. Or, if you like, super.

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