Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Shazam! is Billy Batson, played by both Zachary Levi and Asher Angel. The backstory to the character is complicated enough, with spurious acronyms and various elements of retroactive continuity, but you don't need any of that for this. You might catch a reference to a character name that can't be used because it clashes with another from different comics publisher. You'll definitely catch references to other media, including some that raise weird questions that could cause a crisis on infinite Earths but are more likely to produce mild consternation on internet forums. You'll be entertained, at least a bit, but that might be all of it.

Captain Marvel, as he then was, was the first superhero to be adapted to film in a serial for Republic Pictures. Fawcett comics stopped publishing the character in the Fifties because DC felt he was a copy of Superman, and - after licensing and acquisitions - added him to their stable. If you're curious, you might look at Philip Wylie's Gladiator as a literary prototype for Parker, Beck, Siegel and Shuster. That stories like theirs inspired Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay, which is now itself stuck in development hell after being picked up (pre-pandemic) by Showtime is maybe one of those inside baseball things. A term the film uses itself, though it uses Philadelphia's Phillies home ground of Citizens Bank Park rather than the Memorial (previously Municipal, intermittently Venable or Babe Ruth) Stadium where the Orioles, who originated the style, played.

That "inside baseball" is keeping things short, within the infield, not swinging for the fences. A technical style, potentially easy to criticise for lacking ambition. For example not saving the world, at least not yet, but a single city. Or using the scenes after the credits to establish continuity with The Suicide Squad and its spinoffs Peacemaker and by extension Waller, and setting up a sequel that appears to promise regression to the mean by bringing back a villain. Keeping it close. Playing it safe. A striking contrast to the controversies within Moneyball, which focused on received wisdom that hadn't been handed down from Solomon or Saruman.

One of several references, that. Writer Henry Gayden returns, between this and the first instalment he's had a hand in adapting Netflix horror There's Someone Inside Your House, which is apparently based on a novel and not a pantomime. Here he co-writes with Chris Morgan, who has had a hand in seven of the Fast & Furious franchise, as well as comic adaptation Wanted and differently ensemble-based 47 Ronin. There are less overt borrowings from Attack The Block, stylistic thefts from The Matrix, beasts lifted from legend and blue glows stolen from Godzilla. There are nods in T-shirts to Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, to The Goonies, to The Iron Giant - which was Brad Bird's love-letter to Superman - mention of a "Hagrid beard and Batman voice", which asks questions someone will spend too long answering on YouTube.

I mention Miller because his impact is still writ large across comics, especially DC. Some scenes borrow his style but, in particular, the stark contrasts made possible by his work with his then wife, the colourist Lynn Varley. Her influence through the palette of DC and also 300 is still visible in this films debts to Snyder's borrowings. I might have noticed some touches of Alex Ross' gouache work for Kingdom Come, not least because of how critical Billy/Shazam/Captain Marvel is to that, but the reference isn't so much opaque as watered-down. It is trying very hard to be child-friendly and not for kids at the same time.

Whatever age audiences were when they started writing headlines saying "comic books aren't just for kids any more," they've had at least 30 years of pandering. There are some signs of progress. One of the SWAT cops firing ineffectual bullets at a mythological creature is a Black woman. There's another first openly gay character, though we're spared any conflict or stakes to it and one wonders if the two shots that feature it were caught twice for different markets. There are some hallmarks of modern film production, including one scene where I would lay odds the two involved were never on the same soundstage, never mind simultaneously. Such is the God-like power of VFX and stand-ins.

The film does seem to pass the Bechdel test, but given that it's named for the comic Girls With Slingshots creator Alison you'd hope all comic book movies would. That's made possible, just, by the antagonists. The daughters of Atlas, though giving away who joins Helen Mirren's Hespera and Lucy Liu's Kalypso would constitute a spoiler.

It doesn't count as one to say Philadelphia has two suspension bridges, the Benjamin Franklin and the Walt Whitman. Sadly though there's plenty of lightning I didn't catch a reference to O Captain! My Captain! and it is not Lilacs that Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Instead it is, to cross mythological streams further, a world tree, but given how many of those there are, you'd forgive the film for losing track of how many Hesperides are guddling about.

Six superheroic Shazammers though, seven with the wizard Shazam, six of whom are struggling with their identities and adolescence and potentially adulthood. Djimon Hounsou reprises his role as seen in the first Shazam and also Black Adam, he actually has the chance to do something in this film though some of that is doing nothing.

In keeping track of all the Shazams and a Monsters Inc style festival of portals there's plenty of opportunities for keeping score. Play "spot the hotel", for example, cringe at the "implied strong language" referenced in its 12A, cringe further at the use of advertising slogans as overtly pronounced product placement. Wonder in the mythological menagerie at cloven hooves before remembering that heraldic unicorns are so shod, and wondering if they ran out of budget for sea-lions or keythongs.

Though this doesn't require anywhere near as much homework as the average entry in the MCU, it still risks by depth of reference becoming a manti-chore. Manti here being the Central Asian spiced-meat dumpling and not the Mormon-Nephite soldier or the catfished athlete. A slightly stodgy but ultimately small thing and not 12 inches of footnotes.

Like The Five Devils it makes heavy use of a Bonnie Tyler song, but Holding Out For A Hero is less a theme than a checklist. Other referenced music includes a Hans Zimmer and JXL piece from the first film, and the opening bars of The Beastie Boy's Sabotage. It might be classical music in JJ Abrams' Star Trek, but in 2023 it's nearly 30 years old. That kind of retrospective might fly in some films, but one suspects that it could have been allowed to get back to the future and have something more contemporary instead.

Ultimately it's the age that's the issue. The borders of adulthood and adolescence make it easy to see (and hear) the cracks. It could have been cut for language and been for kids, but that would make the notion of people in desaturated-coloured costumes beating up Dr Watson and DI Jane Tennyson wearing armour that looks like the 'before' part of a Brasso advert seem silly. It could have embraced Sin City's approach to adulthood (something something hookers and blackjack) but then it'd be encroaching on Harley Quinn's niche, and even without Poison Ivy that's probably itchy territory.

At 130 minutes it doesn't drag as much as some of its competitors or compatriots, Batman v Superman had fewer capes and needed at least 20 minutes more, Eternals wasn't quite, though at five more minutes nearly felt like it, and Endgame's further 25 minutes don't include the 21 other feature films in the run-up. You could see this without having seen anything else, not just of its ilk, but at all, and you'd probably be amused, but despite references to where the director met his wife this is less a roman-a-clef than keys jingled before a baby. It strives for permanence, but all that lightning is sound and fury, signifying nothing.