Ryan McNeil
There’s an old saying that you can’t choose your family. The thing about old sayings is that they don’t exactly keep up with the times and the way the world changes. So no – you can’t choose your family…but every now and again, your family can choose you.
SHAZAM! Begins by introducing us to a young Thaddeus Sivana. One Christmas Eve, he is pulled from the car he rides in with his father and brother and offered a chance at great power by a wizard (Djimon Honsou) in a mysterious temple. Unfortunately, he fails the test to determine if he is worthy. When he is sent back to the moving car, he manages to cause an accident that incapacitates his father and brother.
35 years later, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is running amok in Philadelphia. He is being shuttled from foster home to foster home, all the while sabotaging his own well-being in the hopes of reconnecting with his long-lost birth mother. He is soon entrusted to the Victor and Rosa Vasquez, who already care for five other foster children; Freddy, Mary, Eugene, Pedro,, and Darla.
Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the one who tries to open-up to Billy – sharing conversations about superheroes and life as a foster child. Unfortunately, Billy largely has his guard up and is unresponsive to Freddy’s attempts at connection. However, he’s not completely heartless, and when he sees Freddy being harassed at school, he steps in to fight off the bullies.
This act of courage brings him to the attention of the same wizard in the same temple, and Billy is pure enough of heart to pass the test. He is sent back to Philadelphia as Shazam (Zach Levi) – an adult superhero in a bright red costume that has is bulletproof, super-strong, super-fast, and contains the ability to send off volts of electricity through his hands.
Freddy suddenly becomes the only person he can trust, and the boys become fixated more on what Shazam can do with his abilities, and less on what he should do.
Meanwhile, across town, an adult Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) has finally found his way back to the temple, but has become no more pure of heart in the time in-between. What he comes away with are abilities that are equally amazing to the gifts Billy was granted…but seem destined to do far more harm than good.
SHAZAM! Is a story about the nature of family and choices.
The very nature and definition of family has changed so very much over the last several decades. More and more, people are being chosen in ways they seldom were before. These demonstrations of communion are special in the way that they can often take so much more effort to bring together. They are built on true acceptance…and sometimes true acceptance can be hard, well, to accept.
This is Billy Batson’s hardest fight in SHAZAM! – not against Sivana (though that fight isn’t easy), but against himself and his level of acceptance. So fixated is he on being lost at a young age that he has difficulty being found. The Wizard instills great power within him, and yet he doesn’t understand what to do with them. He opens the gift but has trouble truly accepting it since he doesn’t understand how or why he is worthy. His struggle with acceptance is that much harder at home, where he can’t fully understand and appreciate the love the Vasquez family is offering him without condition.
Like The Wizard and his powers, The Vasquez family wants to instill Billy with feelings of unconditional love. Like his superpowers, Billy doesn’t understand what to do with the love of his foster family…and has trouble truly accepting it.
This boy has been offered mighty abilities and the love of a family – in both instances, he has been chosen. And yet, he still has to choose to embrace the offering. He struggles with it, as do many of us.
Billy is continually searching for his birth mother – so convinced is he that only she could offer him what he needs. It’s a a more common occurrence than we realize. Billy’s quest evokes the way we hold the torch for one romantic partner…one absentee guardian…one dear friend whose path has pulled away from our own. These departures from our lives are certainly tragic and hard to handle, but often we are presented with new people willing to step into these roles. Whether we allow them to is a choice, and often one that is hard to make.
This is what makes SHAZAM! Special – it’s a personal story, a singular journey. There’s no talk of how the hero must rise lest the world be destroyed. What is at play is a villain and a hero both seeking acceptance; a villain and a hero both struggling to make the right choice. They fight as grown men, and yet at-heart they – like so many of us – still feel like children.
It’s a lonely feeling – a feeling even the mightiest heroes can fight with. If we’re lucky, we find ourselves with a loving family surrounding us…ready to fight by our side