DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...

[Christopher R Taylor]

Captain Doofus?  Not a great shot of him, he looks like Pee Wee Herman's buff brother

 

I prefer this look:

 

[drunkonduty]

He looks like a kid showing off his cool new super powers. Seems appropriate.

[Hermit]

3 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

Oh my god, a smiling DC Superhero...without ice cream even!

 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

The suit looks a lot better in this pic, with the lights on. However, one (annoying) YouTuber made a point that this highlights: They said they liked the suit because it reminded them of an old school Kirby New Gods look. Which goes back to it leaning a bit more toward tech-looking than mystic-looking that I mentioned earlier.

 

As to The Big Red Cheese looking goofy, well . . . his nickname is The Big Red Cheese.

 

The only recent incarnations of the character that I've seen have been in animated features, and it looks like they're playing the kid in a grown up body thing up in this as they are in those, with that gee-whiz sentimentality. So it seems inline with current takes on the character. Though in the older comics, it seems he had that kiddishness offset by the Wisdom of Solomon, and generally acted like a mature adult at all times while in Captain Marvel mode.

 

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I prefer this look:

 

Isn't that the mentally disturbed version from Kingdom Come that's being controlled by one of Silvanus's worms by Lex? Pass. Too dark for my taste.

[bubba smith]

7 hours ago, Starlord said:

so that's what the world's mightiest mortal will look like

[Bazza]

Fandral is cosplaying a DC character. Gotta love it. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

No I don't mean he looks awkward, I mean he has the face of a doofus.  Captain Marvel is supposed to look huge and heroic and manly, not like a pokemon-playing 30 year old's head tacked onto a bodybuilder's frame.  Probably just an awkward angle or something but it really does not come across very well.

[Hermit]

 

 

I'm just going to say, I really really enjoyed this.

[Grailknight]

This trailer and the Aquaman trailer give me some hope for the DCEU.  

 

Orm and Black Manta for Aquaman and looks like IBAC for Shazam.

[zslane]

Yeah, it's what I expected. Big in tights. It might end up being, er, cute and all, but I'll pass, thanks.

[Pattern Ghost]

Looks like they definitely skimped on the Wisdom of Solomon.

 

I mean, that wouldn't preclude the childish glee at getting powers, but he should at least know how to use his powers.

[Greywind]

Since when does wisdom automatically mean self-awareness?

[Ternaugh]

Maybe, it's the Wisdom of Solomon Grundy. ?

[Pattern Ghost]

2 hours ago, Greywind said:

Since when does wisdom automatically mean self-awareness?

 

Nit pick much?

 

It's an observation that they went with the modern trope of hero learning how to use his powers.

 

I guess reading doesn't automatically give you comprehension. You need to go learn what a quip is. That bit about the Wisdom of Solomon was a jokey way of making the above point.

 

Here's a summary of Captain Marvel's first appearance from here:

 

 

Quote

 

One evening, a ten-year-old newspaper boy named Billy Batson is hawking newspapers on the streets of New York, when a strange shadowy man in a long coat approaches him. He beckons Billy to follow him and leads him underground into a dilapidated subway station. A driverless subway car, unlike any Billy has ever seen before, roars to the platform and the two get on board. The car speeds off deep underground, bringing them to a vast cavern, inside the Rock of Eternity. Billy disembarks, and both the subway train and the cloaked stranger mysteriously disappear. Before him, Billy sees two rows of statues lining each side of the cavern. Each statue is forged in the likeness of a horrific monster, representing the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man.

 

At the anterior of the cavern, he finds an old man with a flowing white beard sitting on a stone throne. Above him is a large boulder suspended from the ceiling of the cavern by a tiny, fraying thread. The old man introduces himself as Shazam, the wizard, and tells Billy that he has chosen him to be his champion against injustice. The wizard lights a brazier next to the throne, illuminating the names of six mythological elders inscribed on the wall behind it; Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. He explains that each of these elders will bestow an aspect of their power unto Billy, and all the boy has to do to acquire such power is to speak the wizard's name. Billy shouts the name "Shazam", and a bolt of mystic lightning strikes down from out of nowhere, transforming the ten-year-old boy into a powerful, muscular adult. Shazam christens his new champion Captain Marvel and salutes him.

 

Moments later, the thread securing the boulder above Shazam's head snaps, and the rock crashes down, killing the wizard. Shazam's spirit rises from the debris and tells Billy that his ghost will always be present inside the Rock of Eternity, should the neophyte hero ever need his guidance. Captain Marvel leaves the Rock of Eternity to begin his amazing career.

 

In the next morning's newspapers, Billy reads of a threat made by an anonymous maniac, who will soon be revealed as Doctor Sivana, against the entire US broadcasting system. He will use a ray to drive all radio stations off the air unless he gets fifty million dollars. On a hunch, Billy follows two suspicious men to the swanky Skytower Apartments, where he hears one complain about their “maniac scientist” boss. Billy visits Sterling Morris at Amalgamated Broadcasting, where Morris refuses to entertain any belief that a reputable building like Skytower Apartments could host a criminal enterprise. While Billy is shooed out of the office, he does convince Morris to offer him a job in exchange for catching the criminals.

 

Later that night, Billy, in the form of Captain Marvel, visits Sivana's apartment building, discovering the thugs talking to Sivana over the television. Captain Marvel enters the room and easily takes out the thugs, smashing the radio silencer in the process. While Sivana vows vengeance, Captain Marvel promises to bring the evil mastermind to justice, dead or alive. Billy changes back to his normal self and invites Sterling Morris to see his handiwork. Morris gives Billy the job that was promised. In his excitement, Billy almost gives away his secret identity, but stops himself before doing so.
 

 

 

Captain Marvel didn't really have to learn how to use his powers. The learning sequence in the trailer is using a clichéd modern gag about a new hero discovering his powers. It was fresher on Greatest American Hero, and done better.

 

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Frankly, the idea of a hero gaining powers, but being so good that he immediately knows how to use them all well is much, much fresher and more interesting than the training montage yet again.  Especially from a character who supposedly is defined by wisdom (although to be fair in his early comics he was pretty much a dunce most of the time).  And let's remember: Shazam tells him what his powers are.  He explains to Captain Marvel what he can do.  So him being ignorant of his own abilities is a bit ridiculous now matter how much fun the idea is of a comic book geek being buddies with a superhero and helping him learn about his powers.

[zslane]

Captain Marvel pretty much has to go through the adolescent process of learning how to behave like an adult use his powers so that WB can realize their dream of making Big in tights, a concept someone over there thinks is so crushingly strong they even hired Zachary Levi (another tv comedy actor) to fill the Tom Hanks role.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I don't mind the idea of him getting used to having an adult body suddenly, and the whole fish out of water kid-as-an-adult is a neat change from the usual comic book fare, but if they play it like Big rather than a child who needs some wisdom and guidance to find his way through the complexities of adult life it might be annoying rather than charming.  One of my favorite bits about Captain Marvel was when Superman figured out he was a kid and sort of became a mentor (one of the animated movies, I think).

[zslane]

I always liked Captain Marvel as a Superman alternative, and not because of the boy-turns-to-man wish fulfillment angle, but because of the costume and the difference in powers. I think a certain "golly, gee" tone would work well for a Captain Marvel movie, but the kid-as-adult motif feels like a guaranteed recipe for making sure audiences never take the character very seriously. And that padded costume doesn't help either. God that thing looks so bad.

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

I always liked Captain Marvel as a Superman alternative, and not because of the boy-turns-to-man wish fulfillment angle, but because of the costume and the difference in powers. I think a certain "golly, gee" tone would work well for a Captain Marvel movie, but the kid-as-adult motif feels like a guaranteed recipe for making sure audiences never take the character very seriously. And that padded costume doesn't help either. God that thing looks so bad.

 

In comparison:

 

 

[RDU Neil]

21 hours ago, Grailknight said:

This trailer and the Aquaman trailer give me some hope for the DCEU.  

 

Orm and Black Manta for Aquaman and looks like IBAC for Shazam.

 

So, my wife just showed it to me, and was both excited, "I love mermaid stuff! It looks so pretty! Jason Momoa is beautiful!" and disappointed, "Oh my god, the writing and dialogue is terrible!" at the same time.

 

Last night, I noticed Justice League was finally free on HBO, so I watched it... tried to watch it. "Oh my god, the writing and dialogue is terrible!" JL was groan worthy from the very first scene, and never let up. All they do is pose and say stupid, drawn out, one liners that aren't even remotely funny. The direction is so static and fake looking... they sexualize all the Amazons, added in lingering shots of Diana's butt, Flash is annoying and needlessly on the autistic spectrum... like they thought, "We need a Drax like guy for this movie." Steppenwolf is like an action figure stop motion, he looks so fake. Mother Box is evil? What? 

 

I kept stopping the movie and smh and doing something else, then coming back and seeing if I could farther... groan, repeat. I got to the part where they have to spend all the setup for a silly moment of the Flash zapping a box to make Superman come out of some soup... I'm really not sure... and then he is standing there, and suddenly all the others are posed in a line behind him (wha?") and they all stand there staring for a while, then Wonder Woman gets to deliver this big dramatic... "He's back." line that is like.... oh god... 

 

I turned it off. That was attrocious, and the kind of thing that makes me embarrassed to be a comics geek, since it is all the horrible fan boy tropes and awfulness in one place. The fact that this movie made 800 dollars, let alone 800 million is just more evidence that humanity is a disgrace.

[Hermit]

48 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

In comparison:

 

 

 

See, this is the advantage of being on the path to age and decay. I remember this stuff, heck. I remember when Spider Man had what looked less like webbing and more like construction wire... 

mostly on the small screen, mind you, but it does make me appreciate the incredible leaps and bounds we've had in a lot of ways even when they fall short. 

I know some folks are trashing Shazam as 'BIG with superpowers', but to my thinking, there is nothing new under the sun so the secret is to show how diverse the superhero genre can be. Ant-Man is a heist movie. Captain America: Winter Soldier an espionage thriller like the 70s might have, and so on. It won't all work. I'm not crazy about New Mutants as a horror thing but thats' because I'm not always big on horror.

 

So if someone HATES BIG, I can see why shazam is not looking promising for them now.

 

but if the complaint is 'it's been done before' well, my thought is, it hasn't for this particular genre, and if we go for all genres count- well, very little hasn't been tried.

 

Now, will it be done WELL? that remains to be seen. I hope hopes. Sue me. While I would not wish for all the world even my worst enemy to endure what the Snyder family did, I do think with him stepping down DCEU may find it's footing and give us more movies on quality level with Wonder Woman than Batman v Superman

[Iuz the Evil]

1 hour ago, Ternaugh said:

 

In comparison:

 

 

I agree, that's a much better look.

[zslane]

I love both Big and Elf. They are two of my favorite movies. But I'm not going to go see any superhero movie that cops their tone and central conceit, that's all. It's simply not what I look for when it comes to superhero action movies.

 

And you know, I think about how the MCU made superheroes into something adults could get into, by presenting characters and situations that were mature and not played for juvenile laughs (Spider-Man notwithstanding). I can't help but think that this Shazam movie is taking a huge step back in that department, reintroducing the idea that superheroes are "just for kids" back into the pop culture consciousness. I do believe their heart is in the right place, but I also think the direction they're going in with the character is a dubious one.

[Hermit]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

I love both Big and Elf. They are two of my favorite movies. But I'm not going to go see any superhero movie that cops their tone and central conceit, that's all. It's simply not what I look for when it comes to superhero action movies.

 

And you know, I think about how the MCU made superheroes into something adults could get into, by presenting characters and situations that were mature and not played for juvenile laughs (Spider-Man notwithstanding). I can't help but think that this Shazam movie is taking a huge step back in that department, reintroducing the idea that superheroes are "just for kids" back into the pop culture consciousness. I do believe their heart is in the right place, but I also think the direction they're going in with the character is a dubious one.

 

Hey, if it's not what you're looking for in superhero movies, then it isn't what you're looking for you. I can't talk smack about that. I already mentioned I'm tempted to shy away from New Mutants for similar reasons.

 

But I'm not sure ANYTHING now a days doesn't 'cop' a tone or theme from something earlier... if you go back far enough or cast a wide enough net.

 

 

[zslane]

I don't object to it borrowing from previous work. All good art does that, right? It's the specific match-up of what's being borrowed with the genre its being applied to that I'm not fond of.