“Just say the word.” That’s the tagline for Shazam!, and the film takes its own advice. Say the name and a 14-year-old foster kid becomes Zachary Levi. The pitch is simple, the movie knows it, and for most of its 132 minutes it has fun with the swap.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Billy Batson and the Rock of Eternity
David F. Sandberg directs from a screenplay by Henry Gayden, who wrote the story with Darren Lemke. The film opens in 1974 in Upstate New York, where young Thaddeus Sivana rides in a car with his abusive father and elder brother Sid during a snowstorm. The wizard Shazam summons him to the Rock of Eternity, a mystic temple in another dimension, and tests him. Thaddeus fails. The Seven Deadly Sins get in his head instead.
The wizard has spent centuries searching for someone pure of heart to name his champion.
In present-day Fawcett City, Philadelphia, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) keeps running from foster homes, hunting the birth mother he lost at a carnival 10 years earlier. A social worker drops him with Víctor and Rosa Vásquez, who already house five other kids. Among them: Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), a superhero obsessive with a physical disability, who becomes Billy’s guide to the whole business.
Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, and the Casting Bet
Sandberg cast two actors for one role rather than de-aging anyone. Angel plays the boy; Levi plays the champion. It works because Levi plays the part as a kid wearing a grown man’s body, which is the joke and also the point.
Mark Strong plays Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, the rejected child grown into a misanthropic scientist who becomes a host for the Seven Deadly Sins and Billy’s nemesis. Strong had already played Sinestro in 2011’s Green Lantern, so this is his second DC film. Djimon Hounsou plays the wizard, the last of the Council of Wizards.
The foster siblings each get a child and an adult form:
| Character | Young actor | Super Hero form |
|---|---|---|
| Billy Batson / Shazam | Asher Angel | Zachary Levi |
| Freddy Freeman | Jack Dylan Grazer | Adam Brody |
| Darla Dudley | Faithe Herman | Meagan Good |
| Mary Bromfield | Grace Fulton | Michelle Borth |
| Eugene Choi | Ian Chen | Ross Butler |
Pedro Peña, played by Jovan Armand, is the sixth foster child. The source lists no adult superhero form for him.
That doubling is the film’s best structural idea. It also gives the young cast a second job in the back half of the movie.
A Long Road to the Rock of Eternity
Shazam! is the seventh installment in the DC Extended Universe, produced by New Line Cinema, DC Films, the Safran Company and Seven Bucks Productions, distributed by Warner Bros. Development began at New Line in the early 2000s and stalled for years. Pre-production started in 2009 with Peter Segal directing and John August writing; Dwayne Johnson was considered for Black Adam, and the project fell through. William Goldman, Alec Sokolow, Joel Cohen, Bill Birch and Geoff Johns were attached as writers at various points. The film was officially announced in 2014.
Johnson ended up an executive producer. He does not appear.
Levi’s path was stranger. He first auditioned for the adult Freddy Freeman. Sandberg chose him for the title role out of 100 actors after watching a tape shot on Levi’s iPhone. John Cena, Zane Holtz, Jake McDorman, Derek Theler and Billy Magnussen all met or auditioned for the adult Billy.
the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury
What Actually Lands
The powers come with a list attached, and the film treats that list as a toy chest rather than a scripture. Billy and Freddy testing abilities is the movie at its best: two kids, one impossible body, no plan.
The Sins are the weak link. Seven of them, and the film never gives them enough room to be more than a threat with a color scheme. Strong is better than the material.
The foster family is the part that matters. A superhero film about a kid who cannot stop looking for the mother who left him, and who has to notice the people already in the house, is doing something the rest of the DC Extended Universe was not. The Vásquez household is the film’s real engine.
The Score on Shazam!
Shazam! is not a great superhero film. It is a warm one, which is rarer than it sounds, and its best scenes are the small ones: a kid and his brother arguing about what to do with a body that can fly. The Sins are noise. The family is the signal. Sandberg keeps the tone light and the runtime long, and the movie gets away with both because Levi is funny and Angel is sad.
7.1/10 (Metacritic 71/100).
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