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Zero One
Dec 30, 2004

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!
Swearing Santa owned

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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

The thing about Captain "Shazam" Marvel is that he actually has a loving amazing Rogue's Gallery. Probably one of the best in comics. they are *weird* and often silly but in doing so they tend to have a ton of personality. Like one of his villains is King Kull, an unfrozen caveman... who happens to be from a caveman soceity of insane loving supertechnology so he's at once incredibly brutish and also has absurd supertechnology. Or the original evil SHAZAM counterpart Ibac who had the powers of Ivan the Terrible, Cesare Borgia, Attila the Hun and Caligula, which he got from Satan.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 7, 2019

Detective No. 27
Jun 7, 2006

It's hard to believe but at one point, Captain Marvel was significantly more popular than Superman.

If anyone is craving more Shazam, those cartoons they had on CN a few years back are great.

https://youtu.be/s1GlfHo6Dnc
https://youtu.be/4fYUTpq0Ous
https://youtu.be/PNyBWgOg7D0

Oh, one more detail I liked, was how retro 70s the social worker's office was with the Hang In There cat poster and the yellow happy faces.

C-Euro
Mar 20, 2010

:science:
Soiled Meat

ImpAtom posted:

Or the original evil SHAZAM counterpart Ibac who had the powers of for the Terror of Ivan the Terrible Cesare Borgia Attila the Hun and Caligula, which he got from Satan.

lol that loving rules

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

I unironically love Captain Marvel/Shazam. He is an absurd hero but all the best stuff embraces that instead of being ashamed of it and it comes out better for it.

The old comics (pre-DC) are a difficult thing to recommend because they are genuinely positive, delightful and charming stories with some surprisingly progressive views (Captain Marvel attempts to solve crime by encouraging improvements in social support because criminals don't come from anywhere and beating them up is less effective than giving them support and opportunities and places to live safely!)

It just... also occasionally gets racist. Reaaaaallly loving racist. A lot of that is unfortunately the product of the time (WW2-era cartoons have a history) or genuine attempts to be 'progressive' from people whose experiences with anyone with skin darker than flour seems to have been nonexistent. There was going to be a re-release of the original Monster Society of Evil with an introduction trying to put context and warnings to the uncomfortable parts but it got cancelled because the material was considered too excessive even with that caveat.

That said, there is a lot of excellent and amazing Shazam material which is free of that stuff, and at his best the character genuinely is a strong one. I'd argue stronger than Superman in a lot of ways. One near-universal element of Shazam is that he is a kid, with the genuine optimism and hope for the future that even smilin' Superman lacks, and while this leads to him making mistakes it also encourages him to learn and do better. The movie version isn't my favorite version of the character but I think it captures the idea of optimism even in the face of darkness being The Big Red Cheese's defining trait.

A lot of people view Marvel as "a Superman knockoff" but honestly the reason they do is that he was popular enough that Superman started borrowing ideas from him and once Whiz Comics got lawsuit'd into oblivion they had the market. Otto Binder, who was the man behind a vast majority of Captain Marvel, ended up writing Superman and was responsible for a ton of his most iconic things. The Phantom Zone, Bizarro, Braniac, and a lot of other Superman things were either created by or co-created by Binder. If they have similarities it is because of that.

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

i've looked up a list of Captain Marvel/Shazam's greatest villains and I think the second movie should have a montage of the family beating up b-level villains. and one of them should be Captain Nazi, and it should be shot exactly like this video of Richard Spencer getting his face caved in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rh1dhur4aI

ImpAtom posted:

The thing about Captain "Shazam" Marvel is that he actually has a loving amazing Rogue's Gallery. Probably one of the best in comics. they are *weird* and often silly but in doing so they tend to have a ton of personality. Like one of his villains is King Kull, an unfrozen caveman... who happens to be from a caveman soceity of insane loving supertechnology so he's at once incredibly brutish and also has absurd supertechnology. Or the original evil SHAZAM counterpart Ibac who had the powers of Ivan the Terrible, Cesare Borgia, Attila the Hun and Caligula, which he got from Satan.

hilariously, there are actually two Shazam villains that got their names this way, IBAC and SABBAC, who is "The Dark Opposite of Captain Marvel" and is "powered by the dark lords Satan, Aym, Belial, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, and Crateis." IBAC is just a small time crook, SABBAC is a straight up loving hell-demon

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

OK I'm doing an effort post here because there's no way I'm not detailing all of these awesome villains. (not featured: any of the super-racist WWII era villains because we should leave that poo poo in the 1940s.)

We all know Black "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson" Adam and Dr Sivana & Mr. Mind, but we're gonna have to see some more of Captain Marvel's lesser villains because there is some truly wonderful Comic Book Goofiness in his history.

Arson Fiend



an insurance salesman who was told by his boss to sell fire insurance, and after failing the normal way, decided the best way to go was creating a potion to give him fire powers that he could then threaten people with if they didn't want his fire insurance. He fought Captain Marvel and blew up a tanker, which sent himself to the hospital, where Billy Batson's evil real uncle, Ebenezer Batson, threatened to kick Arson Fiend out of the hospital (which would kill him) if he didn't pay up. Arson Fiend then makes a deal with Actual Demon Blaze to get out of the hospital and his powers back.

(it should be noted that this is *not* the only insurance-related Captain Marvel villain, as there was also an evil life insurance salesman who tried to snake Captain Marvel's life insurance case out from under a good life insurance salesman)

Aunt Minerva



An old lady whose husband died. She decided that after his death, she'd become a criminal, and was pretty good at it! She also was out looking for a new husband, at times focussing on Ibac and Captain Marvel's uncle.

Captain Nazi



Literally an aryan super soldier, Captain Nazi was turned by his nazi scientist dad into exactly what you'd expect a villain called Captain Nazi to be. in the OG Fawcett comics, he was actually responsible for Freddy Freeman's injury (and if WB makes this canon in the films I"ll buy 20 tickets to Shazam 2). In the regular DC universe he was still created by the nazis but was placed in suspended animation and reappeared in the modern day to fight alongside his (now very old) brother's granddaughter, Madame Libertine. He still shows up on occasion (Nazis never really go out of style as villains) but the 90s miniseries his current origin is from has the best ending for him, being captured and sent to Europe to be tried for WWII war crimes.

Chain Lightning



A girl who has electricity abilities powered by her multiple personalities who has a crush on Freddy Freeman, who saved her from committing suicide.

Ibac



ImpAtom kinda got Ibac and Sabbac mixed up a bit. Ibac was never the evil counterpoint to Shazam, but just a small-time crook who made a deal with the devil to become powerful, and was granted the Terror of Ivan, the Cunning of Cesare Borgia, the Fierceness of Atilla the Hun and the Cruelty of Caligula. Before all that though, he was Stanley "Stinky" Printwhistle, who tried to blow up a bridge and got caught by Captain Marvel, thus sparking Ibac's desire to defeat him. In the DC years he's occasionally had the four beings he gets power from telepathically communicating with him, but generally he's just kind of a career criminal with a schtick.

King Kull



the aforementioned caveman with highly-advanced technology. To be exact (and I'm gonna quote from Wikipedia because it's pretty much perfect), he is "ruler of the Submen, a brutish but technologically advanced race which ruled humanity until they were overthrown in a revolt thousands of years ago, as the humans vastly outnumbered them and killed all the other Beast-Men. Kull fakes his death with a bomb and survives until the 20th century in suspended animation in a cavern, then awakens due to an earthquake and repeatedly threatens the human-dominated modern world with his immense strength, durability, and bizarre technology, which is in Captain Marvel's region. However, other versions claim he emerged throughout human history and attempted to stop the spread of democracy, and is apparently the basis for the Bogeyman and other mythical monsters." How loving cool is that? He apparently hasn't shown up officially in years and years, which is a huge bummer. That story is pretty much perfect.

Mister Atom



Not to be confused with Captain Atom, who was a different superpower character DC Comics bought from a long-dead competitor's ruins, Mister Atom is the creation of Dr. Charles Langley, who built a robot body before a radioactive explosion killed him and granted his robot creation life. Atom immediately determined that he should rule the world because he was both super-strong (because he was a robot) and super-intelligent (because, again, he was a robot). Captain Marvel stopped him from destroying the UN Building and locked him away in a lead bunker for years, but he came back a couple more times (first through alien intervention, then through time travel to the future) and Captain Marvel stopped him again and again, both in the Fawcett and DC eras (he actually teamed up with Braniac for the first meeting of Captain Marvel and Superman!), and occasionally gets mind-controlled by Mr. Mind. (dollars to donuts Atom or something like him shows up for the movie sequel).

Mister Banjo



Dude with a banjo. Spied for the nazis in WWII and sent them messages through banjo music.

no bird in a backpack, though

Oggar, the World's Mightiest Immortal



Before becoming the Wizard Shazam, his name was... SHAZAMO. And you can kinda see where this is going. Oggar was the O in this equation, but after Shazamo saw the evil in Oggar's heart, the two fought, Shazamo won, and he banished Oggar from the Rock of Eternity, then change his name to Shazam (which is way more catchy, honestly). Oggar chilled out for a few millennia until Shazam's pantheon was reduced to just Captain Marvel and then became Marvel's enemy. He has most of the powers that Captain Marvel does, plus magical aptitude, although he is only able to use a spell against someone once. Also he can't directly harm women with his magic. Also he granted Circe immortality but didn't stop her from aging so she became a wrinkled old crone who then became a witch (as you do when you become a 200-year-old wrinkled crone. Dude's got some issues.

Sabbac



The true "Dark Opposite" to Captain Marvel, all Timothy Karnes has to do is yell "SABBAC!" and he is imbued with the combined powers of Satan, Aym, Belial, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and Crateis. He was just sort of a generic rear end in a top hat given demonic hell-beast powers in the OG Captain Marvel stories but in the halcyon days of 2005 DC Comics he became Freddy Freeman's foster brother who, after the Freeman parents died, got shuffled around from foster home to foster home and got mad that Freddy had a normal life with his grandpa, then gets kidnapped by Dr Sivana because he's part of a demonic bloodline and turned into Sabbac, and then, when he's defeated by Captain Marvel, he gets sent to jail and his voice box is removed so he can't transform, which is all severely hosed up.

Satanus and Blaze



Demons, children of the Wizard Shazam! (!), and occasional rulers of purgatory, these two started out as early-90s Superman villains but eventually started villaining Billy and Co, they're kind of boring overall but at one point Blaze offered a powerless Mary Marvel a return to power if she would bring Freddy Freeman to purgatory to kill and steal his power.

edit for an addendum:

Ebenezer Batson



I mentioned him before but Ebenezer Batson is Billy's uncle, who adopted him after the death of Billy's parents and was his guardian for about 5 minutes until he gained control of Billy's trust fund, at which point he kicked the kid out on his rear end. He wasted all of the money and when Billy became a boy broadcaster, he asked and then attempted to steal the riches he assumed Billy had. in the post-crisis world, he was still a rich rear end in a top hat, but he made a deal with a devil (Blaze, again) to have a son, which created...

Sinclair Batson



Ebenezer's son kinda, as he was a reanimated being created by Blaze, who she used for various schemes to control Fawcett City, because he was a successful businessman and realtor. Eventually, after being almost burned alive while trapped at the Rock of Eternity, his father pumped him full of growth hormones and turned him into a grotesque beast.

DC Murderverse fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 7, 2019

SolarFire2
Oct 16, 2001

"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat." - Meat And Sarcasm Guy!
Does it kind of mess with the DC continuity to have Gotham City, Metropolis and.. Plain old regular Philadelphia?

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
DC also sometimes has its own New York.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

SolarFire2 posted:

Does it kind of mess with the DC continuity to have Gotham City, Metropolis and.. Plain old regular Philadelphia?

No? There are plenty of real world locations in the DCEU, e.g., Diana is a curator at the Lourve in Paris.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

SolarFire2 posted:

Does it kind of mess with the DC continuity to have Gotham City, Metropolis and.. Plain old regular Philadelphia?

Oddly no. In the DC universe Gotham and Metropolis and so-on exist but so does New York/Washington/Philadelphia/etc. It's a weird element of the world setting that they just have More Cities, but various cast members have visited the real-world cities frequently. Washington is a big example but multiple folks have been to other cities. There was an infamously terrible story arc where Superman decided to walk across the country and Philly was one of his first stops where he... burned down people's houses because it was a super bad story arc.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I’m sure I’m putting too much thought into this, but I wonder if one of Shazam’s early names being “Zap-tain America” means Marvel comics/films exist in the DCEU

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand
One great thing about the current DCEU is just how prevalent magic is in it. And not just half-baked pseudomagic, but flat-out mythological worlds and concepts and personages outright being accepted as part of the setting. In this world the pagan gods were objectively real, immortal witches with true magic are completely real, Biblical demons are absolutely real and walked the Earth until being defeated by a legit council of actual wizards, and hey you'll never guess what's on the bottom of the sea. And all this is even without Justice League Dark every coming into fruition! I don't rag on Marvel's worldbuilding much, but they've had a whole film that is literally only about wizards and the mystical landscape of that universe is still just kinda "oh, uh, sure yea there's magic I guess. Maybe. Who cares."

teagone posted:

I thought BrianWilly was one of the good ones on this forum with that Wonder Woman avatar. Then I saw his posts become increasingly anti-Snyder in very weird fashion. Guess Shazam was the tipping point lol.
Lmfao okay if you like Snyder then you're "one of the good ones," sure yea that'll definitely alleviate everyone's impressions of this place being some weird Snyder cult where only pro-Snyder posts are welcome

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Yeah, that was.....incredibly poor phrasing at least

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Wonder Woman is Snyder as gently caress, especially the war scenes.

hump day bitches!
Apr 3, 2011


Okay I was a little bit underwhelmed by the seven deadly sins but that evil caterpillars has made a super fan.I want more of this weirdo stuff, center the franchise around the fight against a bug who has nazi henchmen.Owns.

Equeen
Oct 29, 2011

Pole dance~
It’s fine not to like Snyder, just don’t be a smug, angry weirdo about it.

Anyway, I’m gonna see the movie today. I’ve seen many of my fellow Snyder cultists enjoy it, so I’m excited!

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
I'm too creeped out by Buff Ed Helms to want to see this.

breadshaped
Apr 1, 2010


Soiled Meat
Probably the most anarchist superhero film I've seen.

From the very beginning, Billy rejects the police's monopoly on authority and control.

Billy succeeds when he voluntarily joins a cooperative community. The bad guy is bad because he is basically Batman.

Power should not be concentrated into the hands of the few, but rather distributed equally among the members of the community.


I don't think I enjoyed the movie though but it was quite interesting.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

DC Murderverse posted:

OK I'm doing an effort post here because there's no way I'm not detailing all of these awesome villains. (not featured: any of the super-racist WWII era villains because we should leave that poo poo in the 1940s.)

We all know Black "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson" Adam and Dr Sivana & Mr. Mind, but we're gonna have to see some more of Captain Marvel's lesser villains because there is some truly wonderful Comic Book Goofiness in his history.

Arson Fiend



an insurance salesman who was told by his boss to sell fire insurance, and after failing the normal way, decided the best way to go was creating a potion to give him fire powers that he could then threaten people with if they didn't want his fire insurance. He fought Captain Marvel and blew up a tanker, which sent himself to the hospital, where Billy Batson's evil real uncle, Ebenezer Batson, threatened to kick Arson Fiend out of the hospital (which would kill him) if he didn't pay up. Arson Fiend then makes a deal with Actual Demon Blaze to get out of the hospital and his powers back.

(it should be noted that this is *not* the only insurance-related Captain Marvel villain, as there was also an evil life insurance salesman who tried to snake Captain Marvel's life insurance case out from under a good life insurance salesman)

Aunt Minerva



An old lady whose husband died. She decided that after his death, she'd become a criminal, and was pretty good at it! She also was out looking for a new husband, at times focussing on Ibac and Captain Marvel's uncle.

Captain Nazi



Literally an aryan super soldier, Captain Nazi was turned by his nazi scientist dad into exactly what you'd expect a villain called Captain Nazi to be. in the OG Fawcett comics, he was actually responsible for Freddy Freeman's injury (and if WB makes this canon in the films I"ll buy 20 tickets to Shazam 2). In the regular DC universe he was still created by the nazis but was placed in suspended animation and reappeared in the modern day to fight alongside his (now very old) brother's granddaughter, Madame Libertine. He still shows up on occasion (Nazis never really go out of style as villains) but the 90s miniseries his current origin is from has the best ending for him, being captured and sent to Europe to be tried for WWII war crimes.

Chain Lightning



A girl who has electricity abilities powered by her multiple personalities who has a crush on Freddy Freeman, who saved her from committing suicide.

Ibac



ImpAtom kinda got Ibac and Sabbac mixed up a bit. Ibac was never the evil counterpoint to Shazam, but just a small-time crook who made a deal with the devil to become powerful, and was granted the Terror of Ivan, the Cunning of Cesare Borgia, the Fierceness of Atilla the Hun and the Cruelty of Caligula. Before all that though, he was Stanley "Stinky" Printwhistle, who tried to blow up a bridge and got caught by Captain Marvel, thus sparking Ibac's desire to defeat him. In the DC years he's occasionally had the four beings he gets power from telepathically communicating with him, but generally he's just kind of a career criminal with a schtick.

King Kull



the aforementioned caveman with highly-advanced technology. To be exact (and I'm gonna quote from Wikipedia because it's pretty much perfect), he is "ruler of the Submen, a brutish but technologically advanced race which ruled humanity until they were overthrown in a revolt thousands of years ago, as the humans vastly outnumbered them and killed all the other Beast-Men. Kull fakes his death with a bomb and survives until the 20th century in suspended animation in a cavern, then awakens due to an earthquake and repeatedly threatens the human-dominated modern world with his immense strength, durability, and bizarre technology, which is in Captain Marvel's region. However, other versions claim he emerged throughout human history and attempted to stop the spread of democracy, and is apparently the basis for the Bogeyman and other mythical monsters." How loving cool is that? He apparently hasn't shown up officially in years and years, which is a huge bummer. That story is pretty much perfect.

Mister Atom



Not to be confused with Captain Atom, who was a different superpower character DC Comics bought from a long-dead competitor's ruins, Mister Atom is the creation of Dr. Charles Langley, who built a robot body before a radioactive explosion killed him and granted his robot creation life. Atom immediately determined that he should rule the world because he was both super-strong (because he was a robot) and super-intelligent (because, again, he was a robot). Captain Marvel stopped him from destroying the UN Building and locked him away in a lead bunker for years, but he came back a couple more times (first through alien intervention, then through time travel to the future) and Captain Marvel stopped him again and again, both in the Fawcett and DC eras (he actually teamed up with Braniac for the first meeting of Captain Marvel and Superman!), and occasionally gets mind-controlled by Mr. Mind. (dollars to donuts Atom or something like him shows up for the movie sequel).

Mister Banjo



Dude with a banjo. Spied for the nazis in WWII and sent them messages through banjo music.

no bird in a backpack, though

Oggar, the World's Mightiest Immortal



Before becoming the Wizard Shazam, his name was... SHAZAMO. And you can kinda see where this is going. Oggar was the O in this equation, but after Shazamo saw the evil in Oggar's heart, the two fought, Shazamo won, and he banished Oggar from the Rock of Eternity, then change his name to Shazam (which is way more catchy, honestly). Oggar chilled out for a few millennia until Shazam's pantheon was reduced to just Captain Marvel and then became Marvel's enemy. He has most of the powers that Captain Marvel does, plus magical aptitude, although he is only able to use a spell against someone once. Also he can't directly harm women with his magic. Also he granted Circe immortality but didn't stop her from aging so she became a wrinkled old crone who then became a witch (as you do when you become a 200-year-old wrinkled crone. Dude's got some issues.

Sabbac



The true "Dark Opposite" to Captain Marvel, all Timothy Karnes has to do is yell "SABBAC!" and he is imbued with the combined powers of Satan, Aym, Belial, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and Crateis. He was just sort of a generic rear end in a top hat given demonic hell-beast powers in the OG Captain Marvel stories but in the halcyon days of 2005 DC Comics he became Freddy Freeman's foster brother who, after the Freeman parents died, got shuffled around from foster home to foster home and got mad that Freddy had a normal life with his grandpa, then gets kidnapped by Dr Sivana because he's part of a demonic bloodline and turned into Sabbac, and then, when he's defeated by Captain Marvel, he gets sent to jail and his voice box is removed so he can't transform, which is all severely hosed up.

Satanus and Blaze



Demons, children of the Wizard Shazam! (!), and occasional rulers of purgatory, these two started out as early-90s Superman villains but eventually started villaining Billy and Co, they're kind of boring overall but at one point Blaze offered a powerless Mary Marvel a return to power if she would bring Freddy Freeman to purgatory to kill and steal his power.

edit for an addendum:

Ebenezer Batson



I mentioned him before but Ebenezer Batson is Billy's uncle, who adopted him after the death of Billy's parents and was his guardian for about 5 minutes until he gained control of Billy's trust fund, at which point he kicked the kid out on his rear end. He wasted all of the money and when Billy became a boy broadcaster, he asked and then attempted to steal the riches he assumed Billy had. in the post-crisis world, he was still a rich rear end in a top hat, but he made a deal with a devil (Blaze, again) to have a son, which created...

Sinclair Batson



Ebenezer's son kinda, as he was a reanimated being created by Blaze, who she used for various schemes to control Fawcett City, because he was a successful businessman and realtor. Eventually, after being almost burned alive while trapped at the Rock of Eternity, his father pumped him full of growth hormones and turned him into a grotesque beast.

I keep wanting to see how they handle Steamboat

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
Movie was good not great.

The comedic bits that land land really well but I left wishing there were more of them. The 7 villains looked too much alike. The child performances were quite good which is always a plus when it happens. Whoever said that even though the kid who played Billy and the lead actor were good, that there often seemed to be a disconnect between the 2 characters as if it wasn't the same person was spot on.

I could nitpick it but most of it was really good and even the not so great stuff wasn't terrible.

I felt like it left something under explored or under realized though and mainly took away that it was good but felt like it could have been better. I wanted a little more time with scenes like the convenience store and him just being a goofball. We got some of that but I thought it went straight to the villain too soon after he got his powers. Also thought it took a little too long to get going and introduce the titular character in the first place.

Good performances all around and one of DC's better efforts though.

I kept waiting for That Stuffed Animal to somehow start talking and was honestly surprised we never got a rolling ferris wheel at some point since it seemed to be setting that up.

C-Euro
Mar 20, 2010

:science:
Soiled Meat

ImpAtom posted:

There was an infamously terrible story arc where Superman decided to walk across the country and Philly was one of his first stops where he... burned down people's houses because it was a super bad story arc.

That why we beat up that hitchhiking robot a few years back. Can't be too careful.

BrianWilly posted:

One great thing about the current DCEU is just how prevalent magic is in it. And not just half-baked pseudomagic, but flat-out mythological worlds and concepts and personages outright being accepted as part of the setting. In this world the pagan gods were objectively real, immortal witches with true magic are completely real, Biblical demons are absolutely real and walked the Earth until being defeated by a legit council of actual wizards, and hey you'll never guess what's on the bottom of the sea. And all this is even without Justice League Dark every coming into fruition! I don't rag on Marvel's worldbuilding much, but they've had a whole film that is literally only about wizards and the mystical landscape of that universe is still just kinda "oh, uh, sure yea there's magic I guess. Maybe. Who cares."

I actually had a similar thought about how the world's mythologies and religions are split between Marvel and DC.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

BrianWilly posted:

Lmfao okay if you like Snyder then you're "one of the good ones," sure yea that'll definitely alleviate everyone's impressions of this place being some weird Snyder cult where only pro-Snyder posts are welcome

That's not what I meant at all. It's fine not to like Snyder movies, I get it. His stuff isn't for everyone. But... Snyder was heavily involved with Wonder Woman, and anyone who likes Wonder Woman is cool in my book! I just found your increasingly anti-Snyder behavior, capped off with that Shazam rant (lol), to come off weird in that regard since you have a Wonder Woman avatar.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
I like Snyder movies just not particularly what he did with the DCEU and I shudder to think how he might have treated a property like Shazam, which I can't see working at all. There's (yet another) Snyder derail going on in one of the comic book movie threads and I get that the guy is deeply divisive but, overall, I don't think the "failure' of the DCEU is really his fault so much as a lack of proper planning and vision for the properties at large and the general tendency to rush things and catch up to Marvel.

To me, DC's best bet moving forward would be to say gently caress the continuity and just let the directors and writers decide how much crossover to explore and let them stretch their wings and just make a decent movie. Shazam was "in continuity" but it wasn't essential to anything and didn't drag down or complicate the story with its presence either.

In Snyder's hand or with DC's weird, heavy handed, rushed ideas, this movie could very easily have treated the character and the story as Kingdom Come Light and crammed Bruce, Clark, Wally, Hal and Diana in there. I know there's a lot of talk about set up and how essential it is or isn't with such well known characters but Kingdom Come and even TDKR don't entirely work without a fairly in depth understanding of the characters and, more importantly, the history. My ex read TDKR and was like "who's Oliver?" to use one example of what I'm trying to say. Another would be the fact that very few people are going to get even half of Kingdom Come without being invested in and knowledgeable of the lore.

DCEU/Snyder went straight for The Big Events without enough exposition IMO and Shazam is a better movie for saying "gently caress all that. Let's tell a fun story" and just letting the shared universe be inconsequential window dressing. DC's best films (Aquaman, WW, and this one) have all basically taken this approach.

Even something like Marvels works because, while they still hit the major beats and draw on the years of stories, they still show them to us via a reliable and consistent narrator and don't resort to incomprehensible dream sequences, awkward cameos, forced expository news broadcasts and cheesy newspaper clipping montages to fill in the story for the most part.

SimonCat
Aug 12, 2016

by Nyc_Tattoo
College Slice
What the gently caress does Snyder have to do with Shazam?

Crespolini
Mar 9, 2014

SimonCat posted:

What the gently caress does Snyder have to do with Shazam?

Nothing, but Man of Steel broke peoples brains so here we are.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
^^^I quite liked MoS^^^

SimonCat posted:

What the gently caress does Snyder have to do with Shazam?

Nothing in particular.

Just been cross posting and reading about different things plus the poster right before me brought him up. I'd say Snyder is relative to the discussion in as much as Shazam is technically in that universe and we got a Superman/MoS cameo plus some Batman stuff in this film. Shazam seems like a step forward tonally on what's been built already and that WAS built in large part by him.

The film is set in the DCEU for better or worse.

El Grillo
Jan 3, 2008
Fun Shoe
I may go and see this because I really like Zachary Levi from the old days of Chuck, is it worth paying for cinema tickets

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

I think there's some discussion to be had about to what extent -- if at all -- the foundational films are still influencing the current DCEU.

But this is the 5th film since the two films by that director, and Justice League pretty definitively answered how much WB respected or planned to utilize his original vision/plan. The "broken brains" part comes in when you have people saying "Finally! They are burying the dark DCEU!" for like the 4th movie in a row, out of a total of 7.

C-Euro
Mar 20, 2010

:science:
Soiled Meat
I'd be down for a DCEU that doesn't necessarily have an overarching meta-plot, but rather that tells a bunch of stories in the same universe that will cherry-pick details or cross-references from each other. Don't try to beat Marvel at their own game because you won't. Justice League had a couple of these (a Green Lantern appearing in a flashback sequence, Darkseid getting a real quick name-drop) and I thought they were nice touches.

Also more specific to Shazam, I love that in a world where Batman and Superman are real people you still have the same Batman and Superman merchandise you have in the real world.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost

C-Euro posted:

I'd be down for a DCEU that doesn't necessarily have an overarching meta-plot, but rather that tells a bunch of stories in the same universe that will cherry-pick details or cross-references from each other. Don't try to beat Marvel at their own game because you won't. Justice League had a couple of these (a Green Lantern appearing in a flashback sequence, Darkseid getting a real quick name-drop) and I thought they were nice touches.

Also more specific to Shazam, I love that in a world where Batman and Superman are real people you still have the same Batman and Superman merchandise you have in the real world.

You can also get Barack Obama bobbleheads

SimonCat
Aug 12, 2016

by Nyc_Tattoo
College Slice

C-Euro posted:

I'd be down for a DCEU that doesn't necessarily have an overarching meta-plot, but rather that tells a bunch of stories in the same universe that will cherry-pick details or cross-references from each other. Don't try to beat Marvel at their own game because you won't. Justice League had a couple of these (a Green Lantern appearing in a flashback sequence, Darkseid getting a real quick name-drop) and I thought they were nice touches.

Also more specific to Shazam, I love that in a world where Batman and Superman are real people you still have the same Batman and Superman merchandise you have in the real world.

I think a shared universe that with only tangentially related movies would be great. You could have crossovers and cameos without each movie leading towards some ultimate showdown. As the above Rogue's Gallery shows there are lots of great villains to pull, just go with that and have fun with it. The levels seriousness can vary with the movie and the character.

Though a theatrical version of Kingdom Come would be amazing if they went all in with it.

Also, I thought that Freddie's most expensive piece of memorabilia was a fake, like something you'd buy out the back of a comic book ( :v: ) instead of being the real deal, as it probably was as seen by the end shot of the movie.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
Saw the movie, really liked it. I wished Sivana was more traditional, but I think I saw some of that old fashion Sivana madness and megalomania at the end.

Darth Brooks
Jan 15, 2005

I do not wear this mask to protect me. I wear it to protect you from me.

DC Murderverse posted:

For such a fun movie there are little moments where it goes very dark (Sivana mercing his family and Billy meeting his sad mom)

Yeah, this is not a movie for really young kids. I have a two and a half year old whose not going to see this movie for awhile. Also, I didn't realize how apt the thread title was. There's a lot of dancing around Billy's superhero name in the movie. Google know what's up though.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I think Aunt Minerva is my favourite of that lot. Just an old lady with nothing better to do than crime.

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



i want a snyder/ayer version of aunt minerva that they then have to continuously retcon when it bombs

Venuz Patrol
Mar 27, 2011

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

the dialogue was riddled with so many cliches ("He doesn't have a social media profile, he's a ghost" -- seriously!)

i'm 80% sure that line was a direct reference to another movie, like fast and furious 8 or something

hump day bitches!
Apr 3, 2011


I want an insane Paul Verhoeven like Aunt Minerva.Just running around with a Tommy gun dropping fools with weird glee.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I hope Mr Mind puts together an evil Avengers.

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side_burned
Nov 3, 2004

My mother is a fish.
Hey Dwayne Johnson say Black Adam is getting his own movie. Agree that doing Captain Marvel and Black Adam's origins in separate movies was a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pal26m5NvAE

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