At this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics’ Jim Lee announced that there are no plans for Zack Snyder to return to the DC franchise movies or for the “SnyderVerse” Justice League to continue. This was followed up with two big trailers that open up the DC Comics universe to return to the fun of the comics. Zachary Levi’s spin on the original Captain Marvel opened the gates for a renaissance for DC at the movies with his new Shazam in 2019, back again this year in the sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Dwayne Johnson is taking DC to the next level in his big fall release Black Adam.
And another show with a dragon! Seems like you can’t find a trailer this summer without one. Thanks, Shazam!
Neither of these movies could look better, and these trailers have a lot of promise. Can Shazam and Black Adam save the DCU? Check out the trailers for Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods: Continue reading →
It’s no revelation that DC Comics on the big screen hasn’t fared as well as the Marvel adaptations. The best of its efforts will always be a benchmark to shoot for–that’s John Wesley Shipp’s take on the Flash–from the 1990 TV series and his recent cameo appearances in TV’s Arrowverse–but other actors have formed iconic attempts to match the superheroes of DC Comics over 80 years, including George Reeves and Christopher Reeve as Superman. Zachary Levi’s spin on the original Captain Marvel opened the gates for a renaissance for DC at the movies with his new Shazam in 2019, and Dwayne Johnson may be taking DC to the next level in its big fall release Black Adam.
Pierce Brosnan returns to theaters in his first major role since The Foreigner (reviewed here) as Dr. Fate opposite Johnson in the title role. If you like nostalgia, JoAnna Cameron’s Secrets of Isis was a fun TV series in the 1970s, so it will be fun to see a new take on the character, this time played by Fairly Legal, Life, and Psych actress Sarah Shahi. And after all the iffy efforts at a Justice League, at last we will get to see Aldis Hodge(Leverage, Black Mirror, Star Trek: Short Treks) deliver Carter Hall aka Hawkman to the big screen–his costume in this first trailer looks great.
Suddenly several animated series and movies in the fantasy, adventure, and science fiction genres are going to be appearing on your TVs and in theaters. Most are coming to Netflix and Disney+, so get ready. Each one has a unique look, and they all feature intriguing trailers that offer enough to get us to give them at least a try. From a pirate sea beast tale to Sonic the Hedgehog, Ice Age, and Despicable Me sequels, to the latest seasons of the Pacific Rim and Ghost in the Shell spin-offs, a new kind of vampire series, an Apollo movie, and more. Which will be the biggest hit? Take a look at all these trailers:
It’s one of those head-scratching things. Previews for horror movies in October for movies not arriving until around Valentine’s Day. And it happens every year. Valentine’s Day is a big time for horror, and two movies heading your way next year look like you’ll want to see them if not in the theater at least streaming once they arrive on home video. Also, this weekend is DC Fandome, an online streaming event like Disney’s annual D23 fan event (which arrives next month). If you’ve wondered where DC Comics movies have been, they’ve evidently been waiting for next year–even before the pandemic they’ve been lagging behind the Marvel movies. DC rolled out several teasers this weekend, many highlighting concept art as they make their way to their final stages of production. Each of the new movies has promise, and you’ll want to compare them to our single Marvel preview below.
Below check out trailers for two 2022 horror movies, a Marvel series coming soon, and five movies starring characters from the pages of DC Comics, beginning next year.
With what seems like an ever-widening move away from superhero movies for kids in the live-action arm of DC Entertainment–from a too-long recut of Justice League to another Suicide Squad movie aimed at adult audiences–fans of comic book movies for all ages should be glad to hear three big pieces of news this month from Warner Brothers about forthcoming film projects. It’s hard to beat word that Helen Mirren has been cast as a new villainess in Shazam: Fury of the Gods, the sequel to Zachary Levi’s Shazam!, a good-hearted favorite of the DC live-action movies. Along with her untouchable slate of acting honors, Mirren’s performances in the RED and Fast & Furious franchises make her perfect casting.
Now Pierce Brosnan is returning to theaters in a major role since we last saw him in the great action-drama The Foreigner (reviewed here). He’s playing Dr. Fate opposite Dwayne Johnson, who has the title role, in Black Adam, coming in July 2022. That DC project keeps sounding better and better, and Johnson has been talking about it publicly since at least 2008. It will feature Sarah Shahi(Fairly Legal, Life, Psych) as Isis and Aldis Hodge(Leverage, Black Mirror, Star Trek: Short Treks) as Carter Hall aka Hawkman.
Where Marvel Comics has seen its pantheon of characters celebrated both in 20 years of X-Men movies and 11 years of interconnected movies featuring the other major characters from the comics, DC Entertainment has limped along on the big screen, choosing to either go darker than the traditional comics in its adaptations or overlooking the core of its characters altogether. It’s had a better run on television. What we all probably want is something getting closer to the heart of why we loved the characters as kids. And if you want reminded of what that was, you’ll be happy to see that all nine seasons of the animated classic series Super Friends aka SuperFriends are streaming right now on DC Universe.
DC Entertainment and Warner Brothers began to take a shift in their superhero movie franchise with last year’s more adventurous Aquaman. With Shazam! the studios proved that a movie based on DC Comics characters could be every bit as good as the source material, and more satisfying than their past big budget efforts. True to the spirit of the characters and the story going back to the original Captain Marvel that was so successful in the 1940s, director David F. Sandberg found the sweet spot with Shazam! Just as seen on the big screen, now on home video Shazam!balances good fun with the requirements of demanding modern audiences. With the heart of the 1978 Superman and the Tom Hanks hit movie Big, the movie is the best of what DC has to offer in live action entertainment (check out my review of the film earlier at borghere). Worthy of the film itself, the new home release offers a trove of special features.
The film’s first strength is screenwriter Henry Gayden′s lighthearted story. It’s all about heart and family bonds, but it also has its action, and even for its comparatively modest $100 million budget, the movie relied extensively on practical effects for its key action sequences. All of the scenes with Shazam, his extended family, and the villain Dr. Sivana featured a mix of actors and stunt professionals, with far less reliance on the CGI in so many recent DC and Marvel films. So many of these scenes are showcased in the features that it’s apparent the 1,000 effects filmed for the third act in the final 12 weeks of shooting required something like the strength of Shazam to accomplish. As director Sandberg remarks in the bonus features, the production had very little slippage in their timetable. And the success can be seen in the final edit.
Some of the best content on the home release examines how the lead actors filmed their aerial scenes. Comic fans and fans of stars Zachary Levi and Mark Strong will appreciate their knowledge of the history of the characters they played. Levi initially submitted screen tests to play a grown-up version of Billy Batson’s foster brother Freddie, and it was apparent immediately to Sandberg he needed to take the lead role. Strong, who already played a great Sinestro in the less well-received Green Lantern movie, continued to add to the wealth of powerful live-action supervillains, bringing gravitas to the production, reflected in the final cut of the film. His acting prowess while being transported as if soaring across the sky with cables in front of a green screen (instead of rendering him entirely in CGI) reflects a versatile, impressive thespian who can do his craft in whatever environment is thrown at him. But fans of the film will find more than 37 minutes of deleted scenes really make the home version a must-watch.
Make no mistake, Billy Batson aka Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel (aka Shazam since 2012) has always been the most difficult to fold into the DC pantheon of superheroes. With Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman–the trinity at the top of DC Comics for so long–audiences always know much of what those characters are going to bring to a story even before they walk into the theater. To be fair, Billy wasn’t a DC original, shuffled much later into the DC universe because of some decades-long legal tedium. Billy Batson is a kid who suddenly becomes a superhero, so the trailers have been compared to Penny Marshall’s Big, another story about a kid suddenly dealing with being grown-up. And that is, indeed, part of Shazam! The movie is also part origin story, because although Shazam! adheres to Billy’s origin story going back to the 1940s (just as Captain America: The First Avenger adhered to its source material), much of the audience that saw the character in his heyday–when he was even more popular and well-known than Superman–aren’t around to make up the target moviegoing audience. But Big and an origin story is just the beginning.
You know it when you watch a movie unfold and realize something great is happening. DC Entertainment–the movie guys–finally paid attention to DC Comics–the actual writers and artists who built the character from the ground up–and at last delivered what this comic book reader has always wanted. Shazam!, the story, Zachary Levi‘s superhero, and a new young actor named Jack Dylan Grazer as Billy’s friend Freddy–are fantastic. The magic, wonder, and heart of DC Comics is finally back in the theaters. It’s a gamechanger for the DC universe, because it finally steps away from Zack Snyder’s dark and brooding Justice League and returns it to the roots of DC Comics and DC At the Movies that we first got a taste of with Christopher Reeve’s first Superman and Michael Keaton’s first Batman. So if the executives at DC are paying attention, and audiences agree once the film hits general release April 5, this could be an opportunity for a switch-up–an excuse to build a new Marvel-level superhero film universe around the new, amazingly fun and appealing superhero characters in this film.
At its core, the story by new screenwriter Henry Gayden updating a script by Darren Lemke(Shrek Forever After, Jack the Giant Slayer, Goosebumps) is about a foster family and the importance of family, so don’t think this is another frivolous superhero movie to be easily dismissed. As with Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it’s loaded with emotional beats, and it’s all heart. What do kids care about, and what are they afraid of? The film takes some time to look seriously at these things. It’s not only laugh-out-loud funny in spots, expect some snorts, too. But look for some emotional pangs along the way, on par with an oft-forgotten superhero movie that may have more heart than any other, the 1980 John Ritter sleeper (and one of my favorites) Hero At Large. Which makes Shazam! also a movie for fans who count Spider-Man: Homecoming and The Incredibles among their most favorite superhero movies.
A new edition of a book about the popularity of Fawcett Comics‘ original Captain Marvel, the world’s mightiest mortal–the superhero renamed Shazam and featured in a new movie this month starring Zachary Levi–will be the perfect trip through time for fans who have enjoyed the character in his many stories going back to his debut in 1939. My personal favorite Captain Marvel stories can be found in the original Whiz Comics (all in the public domain and available to read online now here) and as drawn by Alex Ross in his landmark graphic novel with Mark Waid, Kingdom Come. For the first time in a softcover edition, Chip Kidd’s Shazam: The Golden Age of the World’s Mightiest Mortal has been reprinted by Abrams ComicArts just in time for the release of the film, Shazam!
For those not in-the-know, this is the Captain Marvel who now goes by Shazam (the word that causes him to bring forth his powers)–the one owned by DC Comics today, and not the one owned by Marvel Comics and also in theaters now in the movie Captain Marvel (reviewed here at borg). Shazam: The Golden Age of the World’s Mightiest Mortal is a historical work, and it doesn’t hesitate to use the name he’s always been known as by his fans. As told by writer Chip Kidd, the Captain Marvel fan club had 400,000 people in it in its best year in the 1940s, and Fawcett projected 40 million followers of the character in books and film. Captain Marvel books sold 1.3 million copies per month, not a common feat even today. Does anything approach that kind of fan club status today? At the height of the character it was more popular than Superman and Batman, and so of course the character had hundreds of tie-in products.
Readers will marvel over a reprint of the entire story from Captain Marvel Adventures, Issue #1–created by two then unknowns: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, and reprints of several colorful covers from Whiz Comics, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., Mary Marvel Comics, WOW Comics, Master Comics, America’s Greatest Comics, Spy Smasher, and even Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny, plus pages of scans of original comic pages from ex-Fawcett staff.
The book uses photographs from a collection of some of the scarcest superhero collectibles known, including images of books, toys, and paper ephemera for Captain Marvel and the entire Marvel Family–superhero kids like Billy Batson–the boy who turns into Captain Marvel–and his friends who use the Shazam powers but remain as kids.
It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2019. Are you going to see them all? Heck no. These are the genre films we think borg readers will want to know about to make their own checklists for the coming year–and they are only the films we know about so far. We pulled 78 of the hundreds of films that have been finalized or are in varying stages of final production, slated for next year’s movie calendar.
What looks to top the list for most fanboys and fangirls? The last of the nine films in theStar Wars saga. Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.Shazam!is DC’s contribution. Quentin Tarantino returns to movies to direct Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Martin Scorsese is back with an all-star cast in The Irishman (on Netflix). M. Night Shyamalan finishes his dark superhero trilogy with Glass. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton return in Terminator. Jordan Peele is back with another horror film with Us.
Do you like sequels? This is your year. Another Men in Black, X-Men, Shaft, Happy Death Day, Lego Movie, Hellboy, John Wick, Kingsman, Jumanji, The Secret Life of Pets, How to Train Your Dragon, Fast and the Furious, Zombieland, Addams Family, Charlie’s Angels, Godzilla, Shaun the Sheep, Annabelle,and Stephen King’s It and Pet Sematary—Disney is trying to get you to move into your local theater with another Toy Story, Aladdin, Dumbo, Frozen, and Lion King–all in one year. Yep, lots and lots of sequels are coming.
Some films don’t have locked-in release dates yet. Amazon Prime and Netflix haven’t revealed dates for these 2019 releases:
Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, a film about Jimmy Hoffa starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, and Bobby Cannavale (Netflix)
The Kid, a Western biopic with Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Dane DeHaan, and Vincent D’Onofrio (Netflix)
The Man Who Killed Hitler Then Bigfoot, starring Sam Elliott (Netflix)
6 Underground, a Michael Bay film starring Ryan Reynolds, Ben Hardy, Dave Franco, and Mélanie Laurent (Netflix)
The Last Thing He Wanted, Dee Rees directs Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, and Toby Jones; journalist quits newspaper job to become an arms dealer for a covert government agency (Netflix)
The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh directs Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, James Cromwell, about the Pentagon Papers (Netflix)
Radioactive, Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie, with Anya Taylor-Joy (Amazon)
Some of these films will have revised release dates, or get pushed to 2020.
So grab your calendar and start making your plans–here are the movies you’ll want to see in 2019 (and many you might not):
January
Glass – Superhero, M. Night Shyamalan trilogy part 3, stars Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy; continues where Unbreakable and Split left off – January 18.
Serenity– Mystery/Thriller, stars Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Diane Lane; sorry, no relation to Firefly – January 25.
King of Thieves– Heist Comedy, stars Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Charlie Cox, Michael Gambon, and Ray Winstone – January 25.
