'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' is a near myth

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/ [login to see] /shazam-fury-of-the-gods-review
The 2019 film Shazam! followed on the heels of Wonder Woman (2017) and Aquaman (2018) — two DC superhero movies that had already managed to step out from under the grim-dark era of filmmaker Zack Snyder, with its muddy, grayish-brown color palette and even muddier, brownish-gray emotional palette.

Yet there was something distinctly bright, fresh and colorful about director David F. Sandberg's movie, which starred Asher Angel as lonely foster kid Billy Batson, who gets granted powers by a mysterious wizard (Djimon Hounsou) that transform him into an adult (albeit naggingly unnamed) superhero played, with bracing gusto, by Zachary Levi.

The idea, then and now, is Tom Hanks' Big-meets superheroes: When he says a magic word, young Billy's body transforms, but his mind stays the same. Thus the film unspooled with its every superhero cliché (training montage, random acts of heroism, climactic battles with various villains) inflected with something new: the heedless joy of a kid being granted a wish. Levi played his superhero as an over-enthusiastic try-hard who was desperate to figure things out. Sure, he tossed out the occasional pop culture reference or wincingly dumb joke, but that resultant doofiness was endearing, novel, fun.