The Marvels movie review part 3: COSTUMES AND CHARACTER NAMES!

Here is the third part of my 3-part review of "The Marvels," focusing on the costumes and charcter names, revealing some Easter Eggs and other details that may fascinate you!

THE MARVELS Movie Review Part 1

HEre is a "video preface" to my upcoming review of "The Marvels"

"SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods" first trailer!

  After the positive reviews and reception of the first SHAZAM! movie (not stellar, but positive), we now have the sequel. We still don't see Black Adam in it (Dwayne Johnson is such a big star and the character is so popular in the comics that they decided to give them a stand-alone origin picture before putting him in the same movie with the SHAZAM! family), but instead we have a couple of highly regarded actresses (Hellen Mirren and Lucy Liu) playing ancient gods, a theme of "family" so self-aware that the Fast And Furious movie franchise is even mentioned in the first trailer (with a funny pay-off), the return of the Old Wizard, but in apparently a more "down-to-earth" role, some powerful magic people who might be allies or villains, a dragon, meta-recognition of the Shazam-Flash costume similarities (thanks, Carmine Infantino), super-feats, and some self-doubt and insecurity from the titular hero.

It looks fun, it looks funny, and it could be very exciting. It is always hard to tell with trailers. It could go too far into the comedy, but the original Captain Marvel was never meant to be all dead serious and stuff. The action clips are very short, so we can;t tell how much there will actually be. The progression from insecure hero to fighting evil with the family is not presented at all, so we can only hope that it is a convincing Campbellian hero's journey.

But let's not forget that this is only the first trailer, designed to get the "sizzle" out. We will have to wait for the movie to get the steak.

There is no hint of Dr. Sivana or Mr. Mind (the work from the post-credit scene from the first movie), no emphasis on the tiger motif that was all over the first film (though the cabochons holding his cape still have the tiger face on them), and we only see one shot of the foster parents, but at least we do see all the kids both in and out of their heroic personas.

As a fan and scholar of all characters who have been, are, or will be named Captain Marvel, I am looking forward to this movie and hoping that I am entertained as much as I was by the first one. Though I don't feel the jump=out-of-my-seat thrill I would have liked, there is enough potential between the lines here for me to be positive about it.

IF I have time, I will post up some of the myriad of "reaction videos" that are already out there.

CLICK HERE to watch SHAZAM! from AmazonPrime!

CLICK HERE to watch SHAZAM! with the bonus features from AmazonPrime!

Carol Danvers Continued; Part 19 of the Blog history of ALL the Captain Marvels)

Meanwhile...

When last we left Carol Danvers, it was 1982, and she had just gained the power of a "white hole" (a theoretical astronomical phenomenon that must be the opposite of a "black hole") and became the superhero "Binary" while in outer space with the X-Men.

First appearance of Carol Danvers as Binary.

She returned to Earth where, with the help of Professor Xavier, she regained most of her memories, and started to regain her Ms. Marvel powers.

In 1998, she rejoined the Avengers, went back to her second costume (the black leotard with the lightning bolt), and started to lose her Binary powers. She changed her superhero name to "Warbird," became an alcoholic, and was court-martialed out of the Avengers.

 

Carol Danvers picking her name with a little help (Avengers #4)

       Kindle Edition (4 book set)

Carol Danvers explaining why she turned to drink (Iron Man #7)

 

Carol Danvers' court martial not going well (Avengers #7)

Carol Danvers getting the wake-up call. (Avengers #7)

She then recovered from her alcoholism and joined S.H.I.E.L.D, switching to a more militarily-practical costume with utility pockets and an armored vest.

  

She eventually returned to the Avengers, redeeming herself and regaining her status with the team.

In 2005, Marvel Comics' big company-wide, history-changing crossover event was "House of M," an alternate reality created by the mentally unstable Scarlet Witch in which mutants had become the dominant species. In this world, her friend Carol Danvers was Captain Marvel, who, despite being of human birth, was the greatest hero in the world. In short, she was this reality's Superman.

 

When the storyline concluded and reality was shifted back to normal, she remembered what it felt like to be that successful, confident, and popular. She liked it, and felt that if she could be that there, she could try to be that here, too. She changed her superhero name back to Ms. Marvel, got a publicity agent, and struggled to fight threats cosmic and terrestrial.

In the 2006-7 company-wide crossover event "Civil War," she sided with the government, supporting superhero registration, despite an appeal from Captain America.

It was during this last event that a return apparently occurred. Captain Mar-Vell.

The person who seemed to be the once-dead hero appeared through what appeared to be a hole in time, and he had come to the present day from before he died. He was given the assignment of guarding the orbital prison for unregistered superheroes while he wallowed in melancholy about why he was in a future in which he was dead.

  

More on this in the next chapter...

Some of the titles in which these stories can be found are taken from a very thorough list about 

How to Collect – Carol Danvers’ Captain Marvel

Dwayne Johnson's Farewell to the Crew of "Black Adam" and How I feel About the Movie So Far.

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A post shared by therock (@therock)

In the above Instagram post, The Rock...er...Dwayne Johnson thanks the cast and crew of the upcoming Black Adam movie on his last day of filming. We can see his monster physique is covered by a loose tunic that drapes about him like a tent off of those massive shoulders. In addition to his words being very gracious, generous, and thankful towards the crew, it also really sounds like this role is a very big deal for him.

He also posted the following text:  Honored and proud to say that’s an official wrap on BLACK ADAM⚡️

I knew many years ago, the opportunity for me to make BLACK ADAM would be a ONCE IN A CAREER EVENT.

It has been my true honor to go shoulder to shoulder with over 1,000 brilliant and hungry crew of filmmakers and storytellers to bring the antihero known as, BLACK ADAM to life.

This has been one for the ages and easily the hardest labor and toughest grind mentally and physically of my entire career.

Worth. Every. Second.

Love you all.
Thank you all.
And I’ll see you down the road.
Now go have some fun with that $10,000 🤣💰

The hierarchy of power in the DC UNIVERSE is changing.

Black Adam⚡️
#themaninblack 

I recall back in the mid 2000's when an MTV survey asked whether he should play Captain Marvel or Black Adam (rumors had him pegged as either one) he responded to the result (Black Adam) by saying that he would be interested in talking about it (or words to that effect). It was apparent that he was not so familiar with t he character. Here is an article about the results of that poll. Through the years that the project was in pre-production hell, however (repeatedly being delayed with directors and writers being hired and fired), he would talk about the character as being important, and meaningful. When Peter Segal and John August were tapped as director and writer, things were really looking up for the project, and when a comedy that they worked on featuring Johnson was released, some folks were trying to deconstruct it to see what it revealed abut how they would work together for the SHAZAM! movie. Since then, Johnson had become such a big star that it was decided to give him his own stand-alone Black Adam movie. This makes sense, because Johnson's presence in the movie would distract from the lead characters, Billy Batson and his super-hero alter ego. Besides, with two movies instead of one, the DCCU will have more entries into the superhero film realm, and potentially more profits. So I am interested and excited to see this movie. The cast of characters alone is fascinating (Hawkman, Dr. Fate, and Isis, particularly) showing that DC is not afraid to put lesser-known, even obscure superheroes in their movie, trusting that the overall popularity of superhero movies, and the specific quality of this movies will be strong enough to overcome the unfamiliarity of the characters.

But they have also cast some popular names in the movie as those characters (Aldis Hodge, Pierce Brosnan, and Sarah Shahi), meaning that the actors believe in the project and the studio is willing to spend that kind of money on it. It would be easy to say that everything about this movie is just being built around the star power of Dwayne Johnson, but why does he have such star power? Because enough of his recent movies have been entertaining, and he has been entertaining in them. He has proven himself to be likeable, with charisma to burn, and just good enough an actor to pull off most of the roles that he has been given. I saw him as very much an Errol Flynn type in "The Scorpion King," and that franchise has suffered without him. H did well as a villain type in his debut in "Star Trek: Voyager" and "The Mummy Returns," so we will see how he does as the "anti-hero" that DC has developed Black Adam into since his revival in Jerry Ordway's "The Power of SHAZAM!"

As a footnote, there are some interesting possible clues to the movie visible. We don't know for sure if that tunic Johnson is wearing is costume or is hiding/protecting his costume, but a couple of other actors are wearing what could be some kind of fantasy/sci-fi outfits that could be Kryptonian, for all I know. The background is a cyclorama of a cloudy sky with patches of bright white clouds popping up randomly. The actors have cables attached to their back, so this may have been a flying scene. Many of the crew are wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis. I don't know if that is because the scene is set in (or above)Hawai'i or if it was thee party theme of the day.

"X" Marks the Mar-Vell! The Blog History of ALL the Captain Marvels, Part 18

"X" MARKS THE MAR-VELL
The largest and most extensive of the realizations of an Alex Ross idea, the "high-water mark," if you will, of these limited-series extrapolations of possible alternate futures of the superhero universe, was undoubtedly Earth X and its follow-ups, Universe X and Paradise X, and a Captain Marvel or two were right in the middle of it.

Captain Marvel appears in various forms on selected covers of Earth X, Universe X, and Paradise X.

This Captain Marvel's story was intimately intertwined with death (which may or may not have been ironically deliberate, being as, at this time in the regular Marvel Universe, Mar-Vell was still dead). However, the story was so big and complex and convoluted, with so many characters doing so many bizarre and universe-shattering things and changing in so many ways, told over massive numbers of pages in three 14-issue limited series in a combination of sequential art and prose, that I can't honestly say that I fully understood it the first three times I tried to read it.

Mar-Vell did appear in two distinctive guises: One of them was the dead Kree warrior in the afterlife, leading an army of dead Kree warriors into battle, inspiring them with a speech to convince them that they were actually dead, though their enemy told them otherwise; The other was a 5-year-old child battling the Supreme Intelligence and pining over his late lover, Una.

 

The child and dead versions of Mar-vell in Earth X

DEEP DIVE: DC's reprint of "SHAZAM! The World's Mightiest Mortal #19-35"...

Here is the second part of my "deep dive" into Volume 2 of DC's new reprint edition of their 1970's "SHAZAM!" series, reviving the original Captain Marvel.
#captainmarvel #shazam #dccomics #marvelfamily #comicbookreview