Movie Review: Shazam! Fury of the Gods

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A fun follow-up that has a strong emotional core, but trio of villains with vaguely-defined powers and motivations hamper the much of the film. The movie tries to balance out the time spent between the six members of the Shazam family in both their human forms and their super-powered forms. They do a decent job, leaning more towards the heroic versions of the characters. While Billy Batson and Freddie Freeman were the leads of the first film, here Freddy is once again human most of the story, but Billy appears in his Shazam form almost the whole time. The plot is solid, but the villains’ masterplan is too poorly-defined until late in the film, which makes it hard to understand the stakes. Having three bad guys doesn’t really help either. Their motivations are all over the place, their abilities aren’t explained very well and having multiple villains doesn’t even really help even out the odds and give all the super-heroes more to fight. The finale could’ve been strong, but I never really bought that they were going to go the route they were building towards. The effects were decent, and there was a lot of obvious CG, but the character designs were well done and kind of popped when on screen. There’s a mid-credit scene they could have led to something cool, but with the DCEU reboot on the horizon, it probably doesn’t matter. The end-credit scene is more stand-alone, but not really worth sticking around for.

***1/2 out of *****

TV Review: The Last of Us (Season 1)

**This review may contain minor SPOILERS**

Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube

Attempting to not only break the “video game curse.” “The Last of Us” also attempts to adapt one of the all-time greatest video games beloved by millions of fans. And aside from some glaring omissions, the show succeeds.

The main plot, and most of the subplots, faithfully follow that of the game. Virtually every major character-related moment I remembered from the game (and some I forgot) are brought to life, often word for word. They also add a fair amount of original material to the show, from new characters to expanded backstories to characters from the game. This is most noticeable in the critically-acclaimed third episode. While it is a solid hour of television, it deviates so much from the source material and feel so far removed from the main plot that it feels like a separate spin-off show. (It also stands out for taking its own sweet time to tell its story even though parts of the main story feel rushed.)

While the story was the best part of the video game, the confrontations with the infected lead to some memorable action sequences that were an important aspect of the overall experience. Unfortunately, the TV series eliminated not only most of the action against the infected, but they also stripped down the run-ins with them to the point that they’re almost a non-factor. (They seemed to try to compensate for this by making the infected “World War Z” fast and hard to kill in order to make amp up the tension when they do show up, but instead of feeling like there’s a potential threat around every corner, it just feels like the infected only show up for special occasions.)

Thankfully, since the show doubles-down on story over action, they picked some fantastic actors to anchor the show. Both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey perfectly capture their pixelated counterparts while bringing their own take to Joel and Ellie. The rest of the supporting cast is strong, but they suffer from the fact that most only appear in one or two episodes and are never seen again. While they also come and go in the game, it feels like you spend a significant more amount of time with them there compared to the show where don’t interact with the leads enough to feel like they’re part of the main plot.

The show looks amazing, perfectly capturing the game’s unique look of bombed-out cities reclaimed by nature. And while we don’t see the infected very often, when we do they’re realized incredibly well, especially the terrifying Clickers. Small touches like costuming, locations, the score and other easter eggs make it so fans of the game will know this is an adaption just by seeing a few screen shots.

“The Last of Us” is the best video game adaption so far, bringing to life an award-winning game. Unfortunately, much of the action is removed and replaced with new scenes, brand new characters and new backstories for established characters. (Some that works, some that doesn’t.) Thanks to fantastic performances from the cast, the game’s characters are brought to life and deliver emotional story arcs that will satisfy fans of the games and casual viewers alike.

**** out of *****