It’s here! Via San Diego Comic-Con, Warner Bros has released the trailer for ‘Shazam!’. Directed by David F. Sandberg and starring Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer and Mark Strong, this is the next step in the DC Comics film franchise and it’s like nothing we’ve seen so far.
The gritty grime of ‘Batman V Superman’ is gone and so is the sweeping grandeur of ‘Wonder Woman‘. This is a much more narrowly focused film and the best comparison is actually ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming.’ While Billy Batson (Angel) transforms into an adult hero on the outside, he retains his same personality and relies on his superhero fanboy new foster brother Freddy Freeman (Grazer) to walk him through the process of discovering his superpowers and how to use them.
In the New 52 comics, Geoff Johns tried to update Billy– usually depicted in an anachronistic wide-eyed ‘Leave it to Beaver’ light– into a modern teenager, but went too far and turned him into an unlikeable jerk. It seems Sandberg has found a happy middle ground. Levi’s Shazam has a goofy lack of self-awareness that kids that age possess– busting a funky dance move before punching a wall to test his super strength, catcalling a female passerby, “Sup, I’m a superhero.”
The emphasis of this first trailer is squarely on the lighter side. Presumably, this “testing your powers” montage will only make up a small portion of the beginning of the movie. Mark Strong’s Dr. Sivana pops up for a brief moment (and displays powers comparable to Shazam’s), but that’s the only tease give of the larger conflict of the movie.
If there’s one thing that looks extremely odd, it’s those glowing yellow lightning bolt chest plates. They just look weird, but maybe by the time the movie arrives, I’ll have gotten used to them. But overall, this looks… cute! Is that a bad thing?
Check out the trailer below:
‘Shazam!’ kabooms into theaters on April 5, 2019.
