Billy Batson may have the combined powers of six Greek immortal gods, but he still needs Batman’s help sometimes. The new trailer for Shazam! starring Zachary Levi showcases the movie’s fun and humor, which we’re happy to report totally works. It’s a film where Shazam chucks a plastic, talking Batman doll at bad guys. If Shazam! is as good as the trailer promises, it’s going to be a new superhero comedy classic.
On Monday, Warner Bros. released the latest trailer for Shazam!. More concerned with emphasizing its humor and super-powered hijinks than explaining the origins of Billy Batson, the trailer runs down Shazam’s incredible powers in some of the funniest ways possible. Sure he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but in this trailer he doesn’t quite clear the nearest skyscraper. Instead accidentally crashing through a window in what’s basically a case of breaking and entering. (Watch the full trailer at the top of this page.)
In one of the new trailer’s funniest gags, the evil Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), who moves with the same swagger as Mr. X from Resident Evil 2, slowly walks towards Shazam in a crowded toy store. In Billy Batson’s prepubescent brain, his idea of “stopping” Dr. Sivana is to throw at him an oversized Batman action figure that says “I’m Batman.” It is unknown if that’s Ben Affleck’s voice, although at this point it’s pretty unlikely.
"Get him, Batman!"
There’s some other funny stuff too. In a spoof of the trope that superheroes are reckless, the trailer reaches its climax with Shazam saving a bus full of people, only to be reminded he caused the bus to crash in the first place while showing off his lightning powers all willy-nilly. The gag strikes me as a comedic version of the morose narrative that Marvel explored in movies like Captain America: Civil War, given that it was actually Tony Stark who created the mad A.I. Ultron who wiped out Sokovia and prompted the government to clamp down on superheroes.
And the final gag, where Shazam literally leaps into a tall building in a single bound to the utter panic of the people inside it, had me laughing so loud in the Inverse office that I bothered my coworkers.
If you don't find this amusing, you're not any fun.
I’m just going to flat out say it: Shazam looks great. The movie strikes the fun, breezy tone of superheroism that Shazam/Captain Marvel comics have long evoked. In 2019, when superhero comedies are so often explicitly not for kids (Deadpool, Doom Patrol), it’s great that there’s finally a good superhero comedy that people of all ages can enjoy.
Shazam! will be released in theaters on April 5.
