Just say the word.
Shazam! (2019)
A boy is given the ability to become an adult superhero in times of need with a single magic word.
rating 7/10 User rating 10,075 votes 70% ❄ Christmas Connection
Shazam! is set entirely during the Christmas season in Philadelphia, with decorations, holiday shopping malls, and winter nights as the consistent backdrop. The movie's opening sequence takes place at a Christmas party in 1974, and its climax unfolds at a winter carnival. Christmas is the atmosphere, not just window dressing.
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Our Review
Shazam! arrived in April 2019, which means most people saw it nowhere near Christmas. That's a shame, because it is genuinely a Christmas movie -- not in the way Die Hard is a Christmas movie (as a technicality people argue about at parties), but in the straightforward sense that it's set during December in Philadelphia, the streets are strung with lights, the kids are on winter break, and the entire third act happens at a winter carnival. The holiday is baked in, not tacked on.
The premise sounds ridiculous because it is. Fourteen-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) gets chosen by a dying wizard to carry a magical lightning bolt. Saying the word "SHAZAM" transforms him into an adult superhero (Zachary Levi) with the powers of six legendary figures: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. He's still a teenager inside. He immediately tests his new body by buying beer and playing video games at a convenience store.
Director David F. Sandberg, previously known for horror films like Annabelle: Creation, made the smart choice to lean into the comedy before the spectacle. The best sequences aren't the fights -- they're Billy and his foster brother Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) figuring out what the powers actually do, filming the experiments on a phone, and failing in increasingly creative ways.
Why This Is Actually a Christmas Movie
The Christmas setting isn't accidental. Screenwriter Henry Gayden and producer Peter Safran wanted to capture the feeling of a 1980s Amblin Entertainment film -- the kind where kids on bikes discover something impossible in their neighborhood. That genre practically requires winter. There's something about bare trees, cold air, and Christmas lights that makes magical things feel more plausible.
Billy's foster home is strung with lights. The mall where he and Freddy run their superhero auditions is doing brisk Christmas business. The Sivana family dinner that opens the movie takes place at a Christmas gathering in 1974, complete with the exact kind of cold, performative family warmth that makes the holiday so recognizable. When Sivana (Mark Strong) eventually gets his revenge on that family, the winter setting makes it feel appropriately Gothic.
The climax at the winter carnival earns its stakes precisely because the setting works. Civilians in puffy jackets on carnival rides, a Ferris wheel lit against a dark sky, children everywhere. It's a Christmas scene without ever announcing itself as one.
Zachary Levi Carries the Whole Thing
The casting could have gone wrong in a dozen ways. Levi initially declined the role, assuming Warner Bros. would go after someone physically imposing -- he cited Dwayne Johnson as his mental image of what a superhero should look like. The studio came back to him, he auditioned on an iPhone, and director Sandberg chose him from roughly 100 candidates.
It's the right call. Levi plays a 14-year-old in a superhero's body, and he commits fully to the physical comedy of that: the slightly too-wide eyes when something explodes, the posturing that reads as a kid who's seen superhero movies and is doing an impression of one. Asher Angel plays the same character as a kid, and the two performances line up in ways that aren't always easy to achieve across an age gap that large.
Mark Strong, as the villain Thaddeus Sivana, does exactly what the script asks him to do -- be menacing and motivated -- without much room to do more. The Seven Deadly Sins as CGI demons are less scary than the movie wants them to be. Strong's performance deserves a better villain role.
The Foster Family Is the Heart of It
What separates Shazam! from a lot of superhero films is that the emotional center isn't the fight. It's Billy's reluctance to be adopted. He's spent years looking for his biological mother, bouncing between foster placements, keeping people at arm's length. The Vasquez family he lands with is warm, functional, and full of kids with their own backstories.
This is where the Christmas setting does real work. The family's decorations, the shared meals, the crowded house -- it's all coded as the thing Billy doesn't trust himself to want. The arc isn't about learning to use the powers. It's about letting a family be your family. The Christmas backdrop makes that legible without the script ever having to explain it directly.
The film cost between $90 and $100 million -- the least expensive DC Extended Universe film at that point -- and grossed $367 million worldwide. For a film shot in three months of Toronto winter nights, that's a reasonable return on a genuine gamble. Producer Peter Safran described those night shoots as a "pure nightmare," and Zachary Levi reportedly yelled "it's not cold" on set to psych himself up. In Toronto. In January.
Fun Facts
Principal photography began in Toronto on January 29, 2018, with most of the film shot at Pinewood Toronto Studios during night shoots that producer Peter Safran called a "pure nightmare." The cast endured temperatures so low that electrical cables were at risk of snapping from the cold.
Zachary Levi initially turned down the Shazam role, assuming Warner Bros. would cast someone built like Dwayne Johnson. He later auditioned via a self-tape on his iPhone, and director David F. Sandberg picked him from a pool of roughly 100 candidates.
Director David F. Sandberg performed double duty: he was the physical performer inside the Crocodile-Men suits and also provided the voice of Mister Mind in the mid-credits scene -- a character less than 2 inches tall in the comics.
The film's budget of approximately $90-100 million made it the least expensive DC Extended Universe film to that point, yet it grossed $367.8 million worldwide against a $53.5 million opening weekend in the United States.
The opening scene, set at a 1974 Christmas family dinner where young Thaddeus Sivana is transported to the Rock of Eternity, was filmed to establish the villain's entire backstory in under five minutes -- a structural choice borrowed directly from the horror genre that director Sandberg came from.
Billy Batson's name combines two Golden Age DC characters: Billy Batson (the original Captain Marvel from 1939) and the wizard Shazam. The character first appeared in Whiz Comics #2 in February 1940, making the 2019 film nearly 80 years in the making.
The movie's climax at the winter carnival was filmed to evoke the feel of 1980s Amblin Entertainment films like E.T. -- director Sandberg specifically cited wanting that Christmas-adjacent wonder from the Spielberg era of family adventure films.
Cast
