Shazam!

            On Sunday morning I finished posting my translation of “J’aimes les roses fanées” by Serge Gainsbourg on my blog and started looking for the lyrics for Gainsbourg’s “Bébé Gai”. The only ones I found are part of a YouTube video and so I started transcribing them but didn’t finish.

            I worked on my journal.

            The morning got away from me again too much to work on washing the kitchen floor. But it wasn’t a total loss, as I transferred the vinegar from my leaking bucket to the new one and filtered out all the sediment as I went along.

            I threw out most of the meat from the turkey that I cooked on Christmas Day because I think it gave me food poisoning. I just kept the dressing and the skin.

            I had some of the sausage dressing with cranberry sauce for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to the New Years Eve 1948 episode of Amos and Andy. This story begins with Kingfish having stayed out all night playing poker and Sapphire angrily waiting for him when he gets home. She has accidentally opened up a New Years card for Kingfish that is signed “Your sweetheart”. He tries to track down the unknown person that sent it and begins calling up old girlfriends. He goes to see one of them but at the same time Sapphire comes to her place collecting clothing for a charity drive. Sapphire thinks she’s caught Kingfish with the woman that sent the card and she takes him to court. Kingfish’s lawyer Stonewall always just helps the prosecutor argue against Kingfish whenever he defends him in court. Finally Sapphire drops the case because the woman in the apartment called and explained the situation. It’s still a mystery who the woman is that sent the card. Later we hear Amos’s daughter Abadella saying her prayers and she hopes that Uncle Kingfish liked the card she sent to him.

            This was voted the best Amos and Andy program of 1948.

            The sponsor of Amos and Andy was Rinso detergent and for the last few years it’s said to contain Solium “the sunlight ingredient”. In this show they say that it was developed with wartime research. It gives the impression that it was developed by the war department but I guess any research during the time of war could be wartime research. But it could be possible that scientists needed better detergents to wash soldier’s uniforms. There were limitations on fats because they were needed to make ammunition and so perhaps they did research alternatives.

            I got caught up on my journal for the first time in days.

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug”.

I had some sausage dressing with a beer and watched Shazam.

The superhero in the movie was the original Captain Marvel and he was created during WWII. The character never made it to the 60s when I started reading comics because he was sued out of existence by DC Comics for being too much like Superman. The similarities were that Captain Marvel had super strength, super speed, indestructibility, the power of flight and although his costume was somewhat different, he looked something Superman too. But they differed in many ways as well. Marvel’s powers came from magic whereas Superman's were based on scientific explanations. Superman had his powers since infancy whereas in Captain Marvel’s case his secret identity is a boy who says a magic word to cause magic lightning to strike him and transform him into Captain Marvel.

This movie begins in the past as a boy named Sivana who is travelling with his uncaring father and older brother is suddenly transported mentally to the temple of the ancient wizard Shazam. Shazam is losing strength and needs to transfer his powers to a champion that is pure of heart. Sivana is one of many that Shazam has tested but like all the others he finds him unworthy. Back in the car with his family, Sivana gets into an argument with his brother that indirectly results in an accident that cripples father and brother. We return to the present and a homeless orphan named Billy Batson. Billy lures the cops into a building so he can access the police database and try to track down his mother. Then he steals the cop’s lunch. We have a flashback to when Billy was three or four years old with his mother at a carnival. She wins him a compass key chain and tells him he can always find his way with it. He drops it and goes after it, letting go of his mother’s hand. Billy is now fifteen and has been bounced from foster home to foster home and from orphanage to orphanage all this time. He keeps running away to find his mother. He knocks on the door of the last name he has and she's not his mother either. The cops pick him up and he's placed in another foster home, this one is parented by a loving couple named Victor and Rosa. There are five other orphans in the home. Two of them are characters from the comics. One is Mary, who in the comics is Billy’s twin sister but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The other is Freddie Freeman who walks with a crutch and is Billy and Mary’s best friend. In this case he shares a room with Billy and has an extremely outgoing personality. The youngest child in the home is about seven and she is Darla. She is extremely innocent and loves to hug everybody. Meanwhile Sivana is grown up and is a PHD now. He has interviewed people for years that have also claimed to be taken to Shazam’s temple and undergone the test. He finally figures out the symbols which when placed on a wall cause a door to appear which takes him back to Shazam. Sivana now comes under the influence of the seven deadly sins in the form of demons imprisoned in statues. He sets the demons free and they enter Sivana, giving hi m great power. Meanwhile at school there are two bullies constantly picking on Freddie. Billy stands up for him and then runs from the bullies onto a subway train.

Although this is supposed to be Philadelphia it was obviously shot in Toronto. The subway is definitely the TTC and the trains the old ones before they were upgraded. The school looks like it might be Danforth Tech and the other locations look like Toronto’s east end. 

The subway car Billy is on is empty and takes him to Shazam’s temple. Shazam says he’s looking for someone pure of heart. Billy tells him he’s not going to find them. There’s a funny scene when Shazam says, “Hold my staff and say my name!” Billy says, “That’s gross!” Billy finally holds the staff but doesn’t know the wizard’s name. When he says it’s “Shazam” Billy starts to laugh but finally says it and is transformed into Captain Marvel just as Shazam turns to dust. Billy does not know how to or if he can change back. He can’t return to the foster home but contacts Freddie and convinces him he’s Billy. Freddy is a superhero fanatic and owns a bullet that once bounced off Superman. Freddy is excited about Billy’s transformation and begins to test him to find out his powers. They learn he has super strength, speed and can shoot lightning. Billy also does what a lot of fifteen year olds would do if they suddenly found themselves in an adult body. He goes to legally buy beer but in the variety store there is a hold-up by two armed robbers. Billy confronts them and they shoot but the bullets bounce off. The next moment is funny as Freddy says that it might be the costume that’s invulnerable and so he urges the crooks to shoot Billy in the face. They do so and the bullets also bounce off. Billy beats the crooks and he and Freddy get beer but it’s their first time and it tastes like puke to them. Freddy sneaks superhero Billy home and he says the word shazam by accident just before Victor and Rosa walk in and turns back to a boy. During the next few days Billy uses his powers in public to show off and make money like a busker. But Sivana learns that Billy is Shazam’s champion and comes after him for his power. Confronted by a super villain with experience and an adult mind Billy is frightened and escapes. Eugene, one of Billy’s foster brothers, is a computer whiz and he tracks down Billy’s mother for him, finding that she lives nearby. Billy goes to see her but discovers that years ago when he got lost she was only seventeen and when she saw that Billy had wandered off and saw that a cop had found him she’d decided that the state could take care of him better than her. Billy realizes he’s already found his real family at the foster home and so he goes back. Sivana finds out where Billy lives and takes the other kids hostage. To save his foster siblings Billy agrees to go to Shazam’s Rock of Eternity with Sivana to give him his powers. But the kids follow and Billy decides to attack instead. They all escape to a carnival where Billy uses Shazam’s staff to give some of his power to each of his foster siblings. They each transform into an adult superhero and the best moment in the movie is when Darla with her seven-year-old brain in an adult woman’s body saves a mall Santa from one of Sivana’s demons. She believes he really is Santa and says to him, “My name is Darla and I’ve been really good this year!” The mall Santa looks at her like she’s crazy. Together they defeat Sivana and his demons and Billy has found a home.

Freddy keeps on coming up with names for Billy’s hero persona like Captain Sparkle Fingers but the name Captain Marvel is never mentioned. In the comics Freddy becomes Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary becomes Mary Marvel. I assume that they were legally required to not use the name Captain Marvel because Marvel Comics owns the rights to the name now even though the Shazam character was the original Captain Marvel.

In the comics Dr. Sivana doesn’t have all the powers he displays in the movie. He is basically a mad scientist with two powers. His left eye can discern hidden magic and so he knows Billy is really Captain Marvel. He has also worked out a mathematical formula that allows him to walk through walls. Except for Sivana I thought this movie handled the Shazam story charmingly well and expanded on characters like Freddy in ways that the comic never did. In some ways it was like a superhero version of the Tom Hanks movie Big and there was even a little nod to that picture as Captain Marvel and Sivana are fighting in a toy store on top of the giant electronic piano keys.

I give it an A minus and look forward to the sequel, which will apparently have Duane Johnson as another Captain Marvel villain from the comics, known as Black Adam.