Opinion | Noah Berlatsky: 'Shazam!' is a superhero movie trying to reclaim the genre's exuberant potential. - NBCNewsTHINK
'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' puts Miles Morales front and center. Will more Marvel diversity follow?
For that matter, the original “Shazam!” comics from the 1940s and 50s, by C.C. Beck and Otto Binder, included a range of delightfully goofy villains. Mr. Mind, for example, was a two-inch cartoon worm with super intelligence who created the Monster Society of Evil. The comic book version of Dr. Sivana devoted himself to preposterous fiendish schemes, like inventing a, which made everyone who grasped his palm become peaceful.
Even in its most inspired moments — as when it's revealed at the end that everyone gets to be a superhero — “Shazam!” can still feel weirdly disjointed. It's like watching an imaginative kid who has dressed in an oversized suit and spent the day in his dad's office filling out paperwork.
The answer is that contemporary superhero films are wedded to an action movie formula designed for adults, by adults. They're committed to a pose of high stakes, where you have to pretend, with a straight face, that the heroes are in danger, and the bad guys are sincerely frightening and evil. Virtually all the recent superhero films follow a similar arc. There's a terrifying villain; the hero doubts they can defeat the villain; the hero self-actualizes and wins.
It's a good thing that DC has clawed its way out of its dark and pompous color palette and is now making brighter films that take advantage of a superhero's exuberant potential. But “Shazam!” suggests that there will be limits to the transformation. It's hard for kids to grow up. But it's virtually impossible for adults to turn all the way back into kids again, even when they say,"Shazam!"Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer and cultural critic based in Chicago.
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