When we got the official description earlier this month of the upcoming Shazam! movie from DC and New Line, it seemed clear the story would be borrowing largely from the New 52 version of main character Billy Batson (to be portrayed by Angel Asher), in which he’s a 14-year-old living in foster care, and gets the power to transform into an adult-bodied superhero (Zachary Levi) by yelling the word “Shazam!” (Man Of Steel, this is not.) Today, Batman-News.com posted a photo taken from the set, and it appears to reveal a very accurate-looking version of the Shazam costume. It also, uh, makes us a little judgmental, because, well, color-wise, it’s a lot.
Look, the movie is intentionally geared toward a very light-hearted tone, and part of the fun of Shazam as a character is watching this young kid get to play around inside the body of a big, golden-age-looking super-dude. So we’re going to remain optimistic about the creative decision here. But even with that caveat, we can’t help feeling a bit like the reaction of a nearby coworker, upon seeing this image for the first time, was correct: “Yikes, that is some dorkus malorkus nonsense right there.” And as Screen Crush points out, there’s nothing stopping director David Sandberg from tweaking the film’s color grading to really wash this out. But those boots will still be those boots, and that cape will still look an awful lot like McMansion drapes. Let’s just hope the film is leaning into the exuberant silliness of it all. Shazam! will yell its title repeatedly when it hits theaters next year, April 5, 2019.