Shazam!’s Director Is Totally Reading The Early Reviews

Shazam!’s Director Is Totally Reading The Early Reviews

On Thursday night, early viewers of DC’s Shazam! were given the go-ahead to share their early reactions of the film ahead of its April release… and the reviews are glowing! Critics are raving about the upcoming superhero flick for being a delightful, humorous and lovable addition to the DCEU.

Looks like Shazam’s director David F. Sandberg was lurking around Twitter just as fans started to sing their praises. The filmmaker recently took to Instagram to share some of the positive reactions to the film. Take a look:

David F. Sandberg captioned the slideshow of radiant reception with “my evening” – probably amidst celebration and sighs of relief to see his film out in the world and embraced with open arms.

Since most of us have yet to see Shazam!, the Twitter blurbs offer some hype for the coming blockbuster. Early comparisons are to 1978’s Superman, The Goonies, Harry Potter, Big and Home Alone. There have also been reports that it’s the best DCEU movie yet, while being family-friendly and heartful. The main cast of Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer were additionally given a pat on the back as well.

The Instagram post ends with the filmmaker hitting F5, a.k.a. the refresh button, to probably bask on more positive takes on Shazam! We can imagine David F. Sandberg is on cloud nine after all of those nice words about a project he has been developing for some time and many fans are getting ready to buy their tickets!

Shazam! is certainly David F. Sandberg’s biggest directorial project to date, as he has helmed just two other feature length films prior: horror films Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation. The hero also isn’t exactly as popular as say Batman or Superman. The DCEU hasn’t always been seen in a positive light, so it was certainly wasn't a surefire winner when the filmmaker took it on.

The upcoming movie looks like it delivers on humor and action, per the footage we’ve seen thus far. And these early reactions certainly give moviegoers more confidence to check it out. Shazam! follows a 14-year-old foster kid, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) who is chosen to become an adult superhero (Zachary Levi) and has fun with his new powers alongside his friend Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), until a formidable villain, Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong) comes into the picture.

Shazam! will hit theaters on April 5, in between Marvel’s releases of Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. Early tracking has Shazam! opening at $50 million but as the release draws closer, we’ll have a better idea of how much of a success it will be. Last time DC released a superhero flick it made over one billion worldwide (Aquaman), so who knows? This early positive buzz certainly can only help the movie at the box office.

New Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge Image Reveals How Massive The Land Is

New Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge Image Reveals How Massive The Land Is

Disney told us from the very beginning that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge was going to be the single largest land expansion in the history of Disneyland when it was finally here. However, Disney Parks are already so massive that it's difficult to get an idea of exactly what that means. Just how big is Galaxy's Edge?

While the land doesn't open to the general public (or more specifically, those with reservations) for a little over a week, Galaxy's Edge has been giving sneak peeks to some including press members recently, and it recently held a cast member event in the space. From that event has come one of the few official photos of the new land that has been released, that includes 1400 people surrounding the Millennium Falcon. Check it out.

While there's certainly a lot of people in this photo, the fact is that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is so much more than what you see in the picture, that it's going to clearly be able to hold an insane number of people due to its size. The other major E-ticket attraction, Rise of the Resistance, though it won't be open on May 31 with the rest of the land, isn't even visible in this picture. That means there's a lot of space left empty that thousands more people will be able to inhabit.

The picture, posted on Instagram by Disneyland President Josh D'Amaro, also shows just how big the Millennium Falcon actually is. For many, simply standing in the presence of a full sized replica of the iconic ship will be the ultimate Star Wars experience.

One can certainly imagine an aerial photo of Galaxy's Edge looking this packed most of the time if Disneyland actually lets enough people into the new land. Of course, it's not clear at this point exactly how many people will actually be getting to Galaxy's Edge when it opens.

Getting access to Galaxy's Edge for the first three weeks will require a reservation. All of the reservations made available to the general public in that time are already gone. The only way to be able to visit the planet of Batuu now is to book a reservation at a Disneyland Resort hotel, for which rooms are still available even now.

After the first three weeks, access to Galaxy's Edge will be handled through a digital queue system where guests will be notified on their smartphone when they can visit the land. One assumes this process will last until the crowds die down to a level where people will be able to enter and exit at their leisure, although, considering how popular the new land is going to be, it could be quite some time before that happens.

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens at Disneyland May 31 and an identical land will open at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World August 29. A second phase including the second E-ticket attraction, Rise of the Resistance will open at an as yet undisclosed time in both parks later this year.

How Tim Burton Is Different From Every Other Director Danny Elfman Works With

How Tim Burton Is Different From Every Other Director Danny Elfman Works With

The collaboration between Tim Burton and Danny Elfman is one of the great director/composer relationships in modern cinema. The two men first came together for Pee-wee's Big Adventure back in 1985, and while they’ve both worked with other filmmakers in the time since then, that does nothing to undercut the fact that they’ve made 17 features together (18 if you count Henry Sellick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas). Clearly it’s a special relationship for both men, and as I recently learned during an interview with Elfman, it’s one that is unique in some very key ways.

Specifically, it comes down to the amount of time that Danny Elfman and Tim Burton actually spend talking about the work. When working with other filmmakers, having discussions about music and the proper approach can take multiple days of analysis, but that just apparently isn’t the way that Burton functions. As I learned from the legendary composer during the recent Los Angeles press day for Dumbo, going through a score discussion with the director apparently barely takes more than an afternoon. Said Elfman,

The spotting sessions we do, where we go through the whole film and talk a little bit about each piece of music, Tim is quicker than any director I've ever worked with. I'm working right now on a film where the spotting session will take two days. We did half of it last week, and I do half of it tomorrow. And with Tim, if it's a two hour movie, the spotting sessions are two-and-a-half hours. If it's an hour and 45 minute movie, it's two hours and 15 minutes.

That’s pretty intense, but one could argue that it very much speaks to the power of the collaboration between the two men.

When I followed up by asking why it is that Tim Burton is able to plow through those spotting sessions, Danny Elfman’s explanation was simple: he doesn’t like to dissect, and instead is more interested in just jumping around and just expressing where it is that he wants specific cues. Music is apparently a detail of the filmmaking process that he doesn’t put a tremendous amount of thought into – but Elfman also made it clear that part of that extends from the fact that there is a lot of trust in their collaboration:

He doesn't want to talk about it. It's just like, 'Okay let's start the music here. And then skip to the end of the scene.' He skips to the end. 'I think this is a good place to come out.' And then he might have like three words. He goes, 'Keep it kind of understated here. Okay, next.' It's like, 'Oh yeah, make sure you play the something here. Okay, next.' He doesn't analyze. Some people get very analytical, and they really want to talk about the psychology of a scene, and Tim doesn't. He's like, 'You know, there's music. You'll find it. When you find it, I'll know it.'

What’s extra funny about this, though, is that it’s not exactly a recent development that began with their work together on Dumbo. This whole conversation was accessed when I asked Danny Elfman about the evolution of his relationship with Tim Burton since they first started working together in the mid-1980s – and the four time Oscar nominee explained that things have basically been the way they are now since the very beginning. Said Elfman,

It's still more or less the same, other than he's much more sure of himself and what he likes and doesn't like then when we started, obviously, in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and he was just like, 'Oh, great. Music. Cool.' And now he's much more selective. But other than that, the process is really similar. He doesn't talk about the movie a lot, and he doesn't talk about the music a lot.

It’s pretty incredible to learn this when you consider the power of their work together – but also clearly a situation of “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Audiences can now hear the latest score from Danny Elfman in theaters everywhere, as Dumbo is now playing in wide release. And for those of you interested in playing it at home, the MP3 album is available now, and CDs will be released this Friday, April 5th.

Explaining John Wick, The Continental, And The Rules The Assassins Follow

Explaining John Wick, The Continental, And The Rules The Assassins Follow

Last weekend, action fans flooded movie theaters to check out John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, the latest adventure of Keanu Reeve's increasingly iconic, deadpan, dog-loving assassin. The John Wick films are known for incredibly slick choreography and memorable action sequences, but one thing that never gets much attention is the surprisingly complex mythology. John Wick may go around tallying up head shots left and right, but even he has a strict set of rules that he needs to follow.

Obviously the main draw for a John Wick movie is action over the story, but the films place such emphasis on the hitman's world that it's tough to ignore. There's a unique mythology at play here, as John Wick's word is populated by secret clubs, assassin hotels and a whole network of goods and services purely for people of the underworld.

Each film expands the lore, but it doesn't give any real explanation. It lets the audience try to figure it out before moving right into the next action scene.

It can be kind of confusing, but that's where we come in! John Wick likes to throw a lot of seemingly random rules at you, but when you piece them all together, it starts to make some sense. Here are some of the most important aspects of John Wick's underworld and how it works.

The Baba Yaga

It makes sense to start right at the beginning with the man himself. John Wick's backstory is never really brought up in detail, though Parabellum tries to shed some light on the subject.

While the movie doesn't spend a lot of time explaining, it's implied that John Wick was raised by Angelica Houston's The Director, the leader of the Ruska Roma. In addition to teaching ballet, she apparently trains orphans to become assassins, and John Wick (whose real name is Jardani Jovonovich) eventually became her most successful student.

Basically, John was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived. He was so deadly that he earned the nickname Baba Yaga, which means The Boogeyman. John Wick spends an unknown amount of years racking up the kill count, building his reputation, and meeting a ton people.

The movies make it seem like basically every assassin knows who John Wick is. However, one day he falls in love with a woman named Helen and decides to get out of the life, something that is implied to be very hard to do and no one has ever done.

Apparently, you can't just leave the underworld, so John had to undergo an "impossible task" to earn his freedom. We don't know what he did, but it involved killing a lot of people. He succeeded and left his old life behind to start a new one with Helen. It didn't last long however, and that's where the first John Wick begins.

Assassins Have Unbreakable Vows

In John Wick: Chapter 2, we learn that John didn't complete his impossible task on his own. He needed help from an Italian crime lord named Santino D'Antonio. In order to secure this help, John offered his marker, which is the underworld's version of an unbreakable vow from Harry Potter.

The marker is essentially an amulet with a bloody fingerprint inside. If someone gives their amulet away for a favor, it means that they are making a blood oath to do any task the person asks of them in the future. If someone like John Wick gives away his marker, then that means you basically have the world's greatest assassin in your pocket for one favor.

If you give away your marker, then the debt must be honored. You have to do whatever it is that the person asks. The assassin world takes this very seriously, and it's one of the only two unbreakable rules. John Wick tried to break it and his house was burned to the ground as a result.

The Continental

One of the major locations of the John Wick films is the Continental, and it's more than just a fancy New York City hotel. The building caters exclusively to assassins and all its amenities are geared toward their specific purposes. For example, instead of recommending a nice restaurant, the concierge will point you to the secret backdoor of your target's safe house.

The Continental is a branch of worldwide hotels, and each one is run by a manager. Ian McShane's Winston runs the New York location, Halle Berry's Sophia is in charge of the Casablanca Continental and Julius looks after the Rome Continental. It's implied that each Continental offers the same services and follows the same guidelines, but the day-to-day stuff depends on the manager.

The most important thing about the Continental is that absolutely no business can be conducted on hotel grounds. In other words, no assassin is allowed to kill another assassin inside the hotel. It's the No. 1 rule of the underworld, and if broken, it's punishable by death or being labeled as "excommunicado."

That means that the assassin loses all access and privileges to the Continental's underworld resources. That's a major setback for any professional hitman, but it becomes a real headache if they have an open contract on their head. John Wick dealt with that exact scenario after he killed Santino in the Continental, as the High Table doubled the contract that was already out on him.

The Goods And Services

The life of a professional killer is dangerous and there are a number of resources scattered around the world to help assassins. For instance, a seemingly ordinary doctor's office can be a late night emergency room for a quick patch up if a mission goes wrong. Or you can visit a historian and get old blueprints or maps to find secret pathways to a seemingly impenetrable fortress. Even taxi drivers are in on it.

Assassins can also find the best guns and ammunition to fit their specific needs. There are also tailors who will custom make bullet proof suits to help protect the killers who still want to look damn good. All of these services are pretty much hidden right in the open, but a well-connected assassin knows the best spots.

All of these services don't come free. The underworld has its own special form of currency in the form of gold coins. If an assassin kills their mark, they get rewarded with coins, which can then be spent at the Continental or any other underworld establishment. A skilled assassin like John Wick will tally up enough coins to save for emergencies and keep secret stashes in convenient places.

The High Table

All these rules had to come from somewhere, and in the underworld, the High Table is the highest authority. Not much is known about the group, but they are a council of crime lords who oversee all the wheeling and dealings. They set the rules and if anyone breaks them, then they decide the punishment through an agent called The Adjudicator.

Basically everyone in the underworld works for the High Table in some form or they are at least expected to serve when called. For example, the Continentals all answer to the Table.

The only person that we know of who is ahead of the High Table is the Elder, who lives out in the middle of dessert and does... something. His job is pretty unclear, but he's the only one who can reverse a decision made by the Table. Only a few people know who he is or how to find him.

We don't know the identity of anyone currently on the High Table, how many members there are or what their origins are. However, they seem to be fairly disliked by the people who have to answer to them, and John Wick is especially not a fan by this point. The High Table essentially marked him for death, and he's been a frequent source of trouble.

It's not every day that an action franchise comes along that tries to build its own unique world. The star of John Wick is unquestionably the action, but part of the reason that these movies are so popular is that it's a cool world. Nothing is every really explained and literally everyone seems to know who John Wick is, but that does help to make the world feel lived in.

At the end of the day, you don't want your action movie to spend five minutes explaining the bureaucracy of the hitman's job when you could be watching a sword fight on motorcycles. However, it's still fun to piece it all together once the gunfire dies down.

The John Wick franchise will continue with the release of Chapter 4 on May 21, 2021.

Yes, Disneyland Will Hand Out Bathroom Passes For People In Long Galaxy's Edge Lines

Yes, Disneyland Will Hand Out Bathroom Passes For People In Long Galaxy's Edge Lines

Disneyland is a place where we love in indulge ourselves. While buying food at Disneyland tends to get expensive, it's also incredibly good, and so whether you schedule reservations for dinner at the Napa Rose or just eat your weight in churros, food is as much a part of the Disneyland experience as anything. However, with Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge about to open, and insane lines expected from day one, guests might have been afraid to drink gallons of blue milk, so as not to have to worry about bathroom runs while standing in line for Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run. However, you won't need to choose because Disneyland will be providing bathroom passes for those in line at the new land.

It's also all the more important as Disneyland will apparently make snacks and drinks available for purchase to people standing in line. The queues for both new E-ticket attractions will also be designed with interesting things for guests to look at and interact with to keep guests' attention as a way to make the prolonged waits a little easier to deal with. Although, Disney has yet to reveal much about exactly what the queues will include. A collection of app based games that are only available while inside Galaxy's Edge will also be playable for guests to keep them busy while in line.

In actuality, according to People, hopping out of line to use the bathroom has always been an option at Disney Parks, though it's not something that the parks have made much a point to publicize. Still, it's good to know for sure that the option will be available when Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens, as it's likely to be even more important. Galaxy's Edge will be the first place the public can purchase alcohol at Disneyland, so the restrooms will probably be getting more a workout than ever before.

Star Wars; Galaxy's Edge is set to open at Disneyland in less than two months. The crowds might not be quite as insane on opening day as anticipated, because for the first three weeks after opening the land will require reservations to enter. Still, one certainly expects that nearly everybody who can get into the land will be making their way to the Millennium Falcon attraction first. The Rise of the Resistance attraction won't be available on opening day, which means the crowds won't even be broken up between the two attractions and the line for Smuggler's Run will be even longer than expected until the second attraction opens. That will happen later this year, though an exact date is unknown.

So the good news is you can drink as much blue or green milk as you want an you won't need to worry about losing your place in line. Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens at Disneyland May 31  and at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World August 29.

Andy Serkis Went Through Extensive Makeup For Long Shot, Despite Nobody Asking Him To

Andy Serkis Went Through Extensive Makeup For Long Shot, Despite Nobody Asking Him To

Since his breakout role as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Andy Serkis has established himself as one of the most brilliantly transformative actors in modern Hollywood. Obviously a big part of it is his dedication to and expertise in the world of performance capture, but even when it comes to his “live-action” parts he rarely appears as he does in everyday life.

All that being said, you wouldn’t necessarily expect him to bring that same kind of energy to a role in a comedy like Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot, and yet he did… with absolutely nobody actually telling him to do it.

I learned the full story about Andy Serkis’ serious commitment when I attended the Los Angeles press day for Long Shot late month and had the pleasure of sitting down with the director and stars. Having gotten word about Serkis’ special initiative in the making of the movie, I first brought up the actor’s work during my interview with Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron, and both of them expressed their genuine surprise about their co-stars’ transformation into the role of Australian media mogul Parker Wembley:

Seth Rogen: We offered him the role, and then he was like, 'Okay.' And then he started sending ideas for what he would look like. And we were like, 'What do you mean? I thought he kind of looked a lot like Andy Serkis.' But he was like, 'No, I got this whole thing.' And we were like, 'Whatever, man!'

Charlize Theron: It was impressive!

The same sentiment was echoed later by Jonathan Levine, who confirmed that nobody actually asked Andy Serkis to sit in the make-up chair for many hours each day so that he could fully embody his vision of the character. At the same time, though, the director ultimately came to the realization of what the actor was doing, and got to understand the importance of physicality in the parts that Serkis takes on. Said Levine,

Andy Serkis made choices that nobody asked him to make, and that sounds like a negative thing, but as a director, actually, that's one of the most beautiful gifts you can give a director. Because he really dove into the character, and he really wanted to make it his own. The biggest thing was that he decided to be in prosthetic makeup for six hours a day. But you start to realize that this is how Andy Serkis accesses characters. If you think about Andy Serkis' career, it's facial expressions; it's very primal stuff. And so that really helped him figure out this guy.

In Long Shot, Andy Serkis’ Parker Wembley is basically halfway between Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson, and is quickly introduced to the story as an antagonist. He winds up purchasing the independent newspaper for which Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) works as a reporter, and because Flarsky disagrees with Wembley’s politics he decides to quit. This quickly establishes legitimate conflict, but his role becomes more substantial because of his interest in gaining influence over Secretary of State Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), who has ambitions to run for President of the United States.

Andy Serkis’ level of devotion to his craft should be obvious to this point, but what makes the whole thing even more jaw-dropping is the extra detail that Seth Rogen dropped during our conversation. After all, it’s one thing to be willing to sit in a make-up chair for six hours every day, but the choice becomes even more extreme when you learn that sometimes he would go through the entire process and then not shoot a single frame of footage:

Seth Rogen: It was ridiculous! And there were some days, because it was self-inflicted, there were some days - and this happens a lot of movies - where you think you're going to shoot a scene, and then you don't, and then you shoot it the next day or something like that. And he would go through like six hours of makeup or something like that, and then we would just be like, 'Oh, we're not to do it today.' And he's just like, 'All right!'

Charlize Theron: He was fine!

Seth Rogen: You're just like, 'Dude! Like, wow.' He's truly one of the nicest dudes in the world, which is weird cause he like exclusively plays evil people. [laughs]

This is pretty insane to think about, particularly when you consider that actors regularly complain about the process of going through extreme transformations – but perhaps it’s a bit like taking long car trips: if you go on them regularly enough, eventually you just kind of get numb to their monotony.

You'll obviously be able to see Andy Serkis' full performance in the film, but he can briefly be spotted a couple times in the trailers - the first being in the screenshot above, and a second time in the shot below:

Regardless of exactly how Andy Serkis was able to put himself through that painstaking process in the making of Long Shot, at the end of the day it was something for which Jonathan Levine expressed extreme admiration and appreciation. Said the director,

It was amazing for us, because for me it reminded me of Coming To America or Dick Tracy, you know - movies where you're like, 'Who is that guy?' and that part of it becomes part of the fun of the movie. So it was always came from a fun place, and it was always consistent with what we were going for tonally. What's great about Serkis is he's a director too, so he knew he wasn't like 'going rogue.' It was a collaborative decision, but it was one that I was just kind of like, 'Dude, you really want to be here six hours longer than you have to?' I love directing, but you know, as soon as that whistle blows, I'm out the door. [laughs]

You can watch Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron, and Jonathan Levine discuss their time working with Andy Serkis in the making of Long Shot by clicking play on the video below.

Also starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Ravi Patel, June Diane Raphael, Alexander Skarsgard, and Bob Odenkirk, Long Shot is a romantic comedy that ultimately follows the relationship between the aforementioned Fred Flarsky and Charlotte Field, the latter having previously been the former’s babysitter. After losing his job, Flarsky winds up becoming a part of Field’s speechwriting team, and while he starts to learn how to not constantly get in his own way, she is also inspired to stand up for the ideals in which she believes. It’s one of the best comedies of the year so far, so be sure to look for it in a theater near you when it’s released this Friday.

Shazam! Made A Major Change To Billy's Parents And It Really Worked

Shazam! Made A Major Change To Billy's Parents And It Really Worked

Warning: SPOILERS for Shazam! are ahead!

Lost parents are a common trope when it comes to superhero storytelling, particularly in the DC universe. Occasionally ‘lost’ is literal, but more often than not it’s figurative, with the mother and/or father being deceased. Billy Batson is among the many DC superheroes who has lost his parents, although depending on the continuity, they’re either killed (usually the case) or are indeed missing. Shazam! took the latter approach, although it applied a unique twist that did a wonderful job reinforcing the ‘family isn’t blood’ theme.

After kicking off with showing us the adolescent Thaddeus Sivana being brought to Rock of Eternity in 1974 and failing to be selected as the wizard Shazam’s new champion, Shazam! flashed forward to show us Billy Batson as a small child attending a carnival with his mother, Rachel. Billy’s mother was trying to win Billy a stuffed tiger at a balloon-popping game, and while she didn’t succeed in doing so, she did win him a compass, which she told him he could use to find his way home.

Unfortunately (and ironically) for Billy, he was soon after separated from Rachel at the carnival. In the years following he bounced throughout the foster care system, never staying too long at a home, no matter how loving the family was, because he was determined to find his mother. Billy failed to accomplish this one his own, but luckily for him, one of the members of his latest foster family, Eugene, is a computer whiz kid, and he not only tracked down where Billy’s mother was currently living, but also discovered that her real name is Marilyn, just like in the comics.

You’d think that a reunion between mother and son would be a happy occasion, but as Billy learned upon arriving at his mother’s apartment, she didn’t reciprocate his excitement. It turned out that Marilyn did track down Billy at the fair after briefly losing him, but when she saw him being cared after by police officers, she decided he was better off being looked after by another family. Apparently our previous look at Billy and Marilyn together had been filtered through Billy’s romanticized memory, and Marilyn was actually having a difficult time caring for her son as a single parent. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Billy’s dad, C.C., is in prison.

Learning that your mother abandoned you is bad enough, but sinking the knife in further, Marilyn also told Billy that now wasn’t a good time for her to begin forming a new relationship with him, and assumed that he was doing just fine with whatever family he was living with. Understandably shocked and disappointed with how this reunion turned out, Billy handed his mother the compass she’d given him years back and returned home, at which point he returned home, gave his adoptive siblings superpowers, defeated a glowing-eyed maniac and realized he finally had found his true family. Yay, there was a happy ending for the kid after all!

When you’re making a comic book adaptation, it’s obviously necessary to take creative liberties in order for the story to flow smoothly within a cinematic framework. Every now and then, one of these changes ends up being better than what was originally depicted on the printed page, and with the kind of story Shazam! was telling, it was a better call to simply not have Billy’s parents in his life as opposed to them being dead or their whereabouts being a big mystery needing to be solved.

For those unfamiliar with the Shazam mythos, in the various pre-Flashpoint continuity stories, C.C. and Marilyn Batson usually due while traveling, with Billy being forced to live with his cruel uncle Ebenezer until being tossed onto the street. In the graphic novel The Power of Shazam!, Billy’s parents were archaeologists killed by Theo Adam, descendant of Black Adam, while on a dig in Egypt. In the New 52 universe, it’s never specified what happened to C.C. and Marilyn, although in the current Shazam comic book, Billy’s father has returned to reunite with his son. Whether this is the real C.C. or an impostor has not yet been revealed.

Regardless, had Shazam! gone the route of having Billy’s parents be dead/gone tied to some kind of conspiracy, similar to what was done was done with Peter Parker’s parents in the Amazing Spider-Man movies, would have been a mistake. Shazam! was about how people don’t need to be biologically related in order to be a family. Billy spent so much time looking for his mother that he didn’t open himself to the possibility that he could find love elsewhere in his life. With the Vasquez’s, he’s finally found that home and sense of belonging that he wanted.

There are more than enough Shazam stories from nearly 80 years to provide material for more Shazam! movies; a big mystery surrounding Billy’s parents didn’t need to be one of them. And while it may seem ridiculous commenting on realism in a movie about a boy who turns into an adult superhero by saying a magic word, it was a novel and logical idea to have Billy’s mom not caring for him because she didn’t want to. As heartbreaking as it is, there are people who have just been abandoned by their parents for selfish reasons, and by taking this approach, Asher Angel’s Billy becomes a more relatable character.

It’s also worth mentioning that this ‘family isn’t blood’ idea extends particularly well to one of Billy Batson’s siblings, Mary Bromfield. Before The New 52, Mary was Billy’s biological sister, reuniting with her brother years after their parents died. However, like in the New 52, Shazam!’s versions of Billy and Mary are not related by blood, but by the end of the movie they finally form that brother/sister bond and still get to be superheroes with their other siblings. It’s a win-win.

It’s possible Billy Batson’s biological parents could factor into future Shazam! movies. Maybe Marilyn will change her mind and decide she does want to build a relationship with Billy, and/or maybe his father will be freed from prison and decides to seek out Billy. But even if this does happen, Billy already has a family who loves and cares about him. These people care about him and have his back, and vice versa. And especially with his siblings, there won’t be any lack of excitement in their lives going forward.

Be sure to read CinemaBlend’s review of Shazam! and stay tuned for updates on how Shazam! 2 is coming along. You can also look through our DC movies guide to learn what else is in development for the DCEU.