"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!

TWO NEW TRAILERS! ONE FOR SHAZAM! ONE FOR CAPTAIN MARVEL!

So MovieAccessTrailers seems to like to put together videos of "coming attractions," book-ended by recent trailers. This is great because it gives us the opportunity to see a whole bunch of footage of the movies in one convenient video. So without further ado, here is the one for DC's upcoming "SHAZAM!" movie:

In it we see Sivana shooting lightning from his fingers, money flying out of an ATM into the hands of the hero and Freddy Freeman, a new member of the "Shazam Kids," and repeated viewings of what is possibly the coolest shot in any Superhero movie, Billy Batson jumping off a building, saying the word, and, in a flash of lightning, transforming into the hero.

Here is the one for Marvel's "Captain Marvel" movie:

The heading is a bit misleading. We don't see any Minerva-Ronan fight, What we do get is Annette Benning as a maternal figure, a brief look at Korath with laser wings, more Brie Larsen/Samuel L. Jackson banter, a Jude Law/Brie Larsen fight/training sequence, some air force buddy-banter between Lashana Lynch (Monica Rambeau's mom) and Brie Larsen, and footage of Brie Larsen jumping on a train and crashing a plane.

I am going to update this post with some analysis later.

SHAZAM! trailer released at San Diego Comic Con! BREAKING~!

HERE IT IS! Of the two movies based on Captain MArvel properties scheduled to come out next year, DC is the first one with an actual trailer!

This is not completely surprising, being as their movie wrapped shooting faster and earlier,I expect the plot to be simpler, and it certainly has fewer tie-ins with other movies from its studio.

Here it is, as it was shown at San Diego Comic Con:

So here we can see Asher Angel as Billy Batson finding his new foster home, Jack Dylan Grazer as his new foster-brother, Freddy, Mark Strong as Sivana, the super-powered (!) villain, at least one transformation into Zachary Levy as the hero, and a silhouetted Djimon Hounsou as the Wizard.

Now, of course, there were bunches of "reaction" and "explanation" videos posted immediately, as YouTube's "clickbait" dynamic was activated. Here are some of them:

...and here some folks even did "mashups" of a bunch of them!

 

I don't have time to watch and comment on all of them now, but I am keeping them here as a repository so that you and I can view them at our leisure later, especially after the movie comes out, and we can judge how right or wrong these reactions turned out to be!

If you have a reaction to this trailer, either  in video or text, please post it in the "comments" section, share this post, and subscribe to the Captain Marvel Culture blog!