The Four Color Media Monitor

It's already old news that Shazam: Fury of the Gods has flopped in ticket sales, but here's more from Variety that I may not have noticed earlier, about what its star, Zachary Levi, had to say regarding the film's failure, and how Dwayne Johnson of Black Adam infamy undermined the Big Red Cheese film by extension:

The “Fury of the Gods” post-credits scene finds Shazam being recruited to join the Justice Society, a group of heroes introduced in Johnson’s “Black Adam.” In the film, it’s Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and John Economos (Steve Agee) from Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” and “Peacemaker” who appear to recruit Shazam, not Cyclone and Hawkman.

Levi originally made headlines for sharing The Wrap’s post on his Instagram story with the caption: “The truth will set you free.” While he did not name Dwayne Johnson then or in his new Instgram video, he did confirm that Cyclone and Hawkman were blocked from appearing in the post-credits scene.

If the actress playing the Cyclone role was taking up the "non-binary" identity politics, as was indicated by earlier reports, it doesn't make much difference, because she'd prove just as embarrassing with that kind of position as the Pedro Pena character was when they characterized him as homosexual. Besides, this is just more efforts to avoid questioning whether such wokeism blew the film's chances.

“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” opened to $30 million domestically, well below the $53 million the original “Shazam!” opened with in 2019. It was a big loss considering the sequel cost north of $110 million to make and another $100 million to market. Levi wrote in a Tweet that the film’s marketing was a big issue as it was not promoted as a family movie, and he also agreed that some Zack Snyder fans were happy the movie bombed as a kind of revenge against Warner Bros. for dropping Snyder’s DC Universe in favor of Gunn and Safran’s new one. The SnyderVerse was defined by its brooding and dark tone, which is the direct opposite of the more light and goofy “Shazam” movies.

If you know where to look, the "SnyderVerse" also has traces of wokeism in it too, right down to a cameo by the Ryan Choi character who was introduced as a diversity-pandering replacement for Silver Age Atom Ray Palmer in the mid-2000s, soon after Identity Crisis came at Ray's and Jean Loring's expense. What do these "fans" they speak of see in such overrated blockbusters? Maybe the problem is that they're equally woke themselves, and see the dark tone representing everything they believe in. But as I'd stated earlier, if said wokeism is applied to an ostensibly lighter toned movie as well, then that ruins everything. Again, this is something Levi's sadly not willing to consider.

“If you don’t want to watch a movie with humor in it because you’re more into straight up hard action, I get it,” Levi said in his new video. “I’m not trying to force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. But let me remind you where comics and Captain Marvel/Shazam started… These were comics geared toward younger people and the fun and the silliness and the goofiness.”

“It’s a real shame if comic book movies have gotten to place where they have to be nothing but serious and nothing but intense and nothing but dark,” Levi added. “That’s a sad day. I don’t know what else to say about that.”

If he's got nothing to say about how comic books got to that point in the past 2-3 decades, what's the use of complaining? And, what we see now with LGBT allusions shoehorned into these films is actually part of the woke agenda, yet Levi's too naive to understand that. That's why it's such a sad day.

Also, in a related subject, there's an article at the Sioux City Journal about a specialty store manager who got a role as an extra in the movie:

Call it an occupational hazard since Kevin, who co-owns of ACME Comics & Collectibles with Fran, has started a second career as a background actor (also known as an extra) on shows like AMC's "The Walking Dead" and Netflix's "Ozark."

[...] Most of the roles have been in the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. However, his role in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" -- a big screen adaptation of the popular DC Comic superhero character of Shazam -- may be Kevin's most prominent role to date.

Or maybe it won't be.

"You see, I haven't watched the movie yet," Kevin said of the movie, which was released nationally March 17. "My scene may be in the final cut or it may have been left on the cutting room floor."

With the reception it got, the woke screenplay and the lackluster box office receipts, I'd feel better if the role weren't in the master footage if I were in his shoes. Seriously, what's so great about being even an extra in a movie like this? I'm wise enough to not to crave that kind of "fame", and most others should be too. Fame at all costs can lead to embarrassment in the long run. And Netflix, lest we forget, is one of the worst TV streaming channels around, with a whole shipload of woke productions in the past decade.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Justice Society of America, msm propaganda, politics