The DCEU · Connected
Shazam!
A foster kid gains the power to become an adult superhero by shouting one word.
Two scenes during the credits
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Shazam!?
No. It carries part of the main DC throughline, and what comes after it assumes you have seen it. The next essential title is The Suicide Squad. In chronological order, reaching it takes about 30h 9m of essential viewing across 13 titles. See the full DC order.
Essential within the continuity and the easiest watch in it. The premise is a body-swap comedy: a fourteen-year-old in foster care can become an adult superhero by saying a word, and the first hour is two teenagers testing what he can do by filming it for the internet and buying beer.
What makes it better than that is the foster home. The film's actual subject is a boy who has absconded from placements for years looking for a mother who left him, placed with a family who are patient with him, and the superhero plot is the thing that forces him to decide whether to stay. The children in that house are all written as people, which is rare in a film of this size.
Zachary Levi plays the adult version as a child throughout, which is the whole joke and is sustained for two hours without becoming tiresome. Mark Strong's villain is given a parallel childhood that the film uses properly rather than as an excuse.
It is small by DCEU standards, made for a fraction of what Justice League cost, and the last act leans on digital creatures representing sins that look like they belong in a different picture. The family carnival setting for the climax is a good instinct.
DC guides
Where it sits in the DC order
- Release order
- #27 of 52
- Chronological order
- #29 of 52
- Released
- 5 April 2019
- In-universe era
- The DCEU
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order