Shazam gives Billy the ability to summon the powers of six conveniently named gods and heroes - Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury - by shouting their names. With its February 1940 issue of Whiz Comics, Fawcett Publications introduced Billy Batson, a homeless orphan who follows a stranger into an abandoned subway tunnel (those were some seriously innocent times) and meets the ancient wizard Shazam. Still, it's best to go in knowing what you're going to get."Shazam!" was originally what Billy Batson said to become Captain Marvel Because the scene takes place as part of a television news broadcast inside the movie, everything gets bleeped.Įverybody's kids are different, and so how much any of these issues are actually problems will certainly not be the same across the board.
The movie never uses any F-bombs, although one minor character does break into a profanity laced diatribe near the end of the movie that clearly would include the F-word if you could hear it. A few characters do use profanity but it is primarily, if not entirely, the adult characters (I don't recall hearing the teen or child characters using words they should not), who tend to use it to punctuate lines of dialogue at highly emotional moments. As a PG-13 movie, Shazam! is allowed to use profanity in a limited fashion and it certainly does. For what it’s worth, both characters take one sip of the beer, spit it out because they think it tastes awful and go back to buy soda, energy drinks and junk food.įinally, we have the question of language. Somehow he ended up with some glitter on his face.Īnother scene played for laughs sees our two main characters purchase beer at a convenient store, since Zachary Levi clearly looks older than 21. Freddy takes his time exiting in the latter sequence. The camera never goes inside the building either time, so we never see anything, but references to what can be seen are certainly made. The same location makes a second appearance later in the film as well and several kids end up inside the club. He comes out with chicken wings, but all his friend Freddy wants to know is what he saw inside. During the sequence when Billy Batson is first testing his grown-up body, he uses his new adult look to get by the doorman at a strip club. Shazam! is a funny movie, and while most of the humor is perfect for kids, some of that humor, as is often the case with young teenagers, is sexual in nature. If the viewer can handle watching a dinosaur eat somebody, as well as the tension of velociraptors stalking children, then they can handle Shazam!'s darker moments.īeyond the violence, there are a few other elements parents should be aware of. Sandberg compares the scares and the violence to the original Jurassic Park, and that's probably a fair comparison. I could certainly see some kids hiding their faces to avoid seeing some of this. These potentially scary moments feel that much more violent because you didn't see them coming.
I’m not sure if the way we see these characters die is inherently any more violent than characters in other superhero movies, but the juxtaposition feels far greater because so much of the rest of the film is silly fun.
Again, there's no blood, but what's happening to them is being made perfectly clear. Their bodes are thrown up against the wall and we hear them screaming.
We see several others get killed by the creatures from the other side of a translucent wall. One victim is thrown from a window dozens of stories in the air, and we watch the body go falling out of sight.
However, beyond what the creatures look like, what they do is equally disturbing, The Sins kill an entire conference room full of people at one point.