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One more edit nobody asked for!
Out of all the DCEU movies I have not edited, I always felt Shazam was simply too kid-focused a movie for me to tackle. But ever since seeing Black Adam, and being pretty disappointed at the MANY different films it tried to be, I wondered if a Black Adam/Shazam parallel story could be told from the POV of the younger supporting characters. So after a little fanediting break and a very hectic family summer, I'm getting back to some "me" time, and started chiseling into the raw stone blocks of Shazam and Black Adam.
But as I compared the two, I realized that Shazam, in parallel, just feels too shallow compared to the socio-economic effects of vigilantism examined in Black Adam, and their journeys are far too different. Amon, as the audience's main character to learn about Adam, made the Black Adam movie feel childish, but much of the politics touched on were much more mature. So, I have decided that a proper Black Adam edit that feels less "childish" needed to be attempted first. And thats what this edit aims to be.
Original runtime: 2h 04m
New runtime: 1h 35min
MANY valid criticisms have been made about this film, which means it will most likely be another trademark "Bad Movies Made Less Bad" edit. And its still Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which is kinda hard to NOT notice. But we press forward!
The main goals here are:
Out of all the DCEU movies I have not edited, I always felt Shazam was simply too kid-focused a movie for me to tackle. But ever since seeing Black Adam, and being pretty disappointed at the MANY different films it tried to be, I wondered if a Black Adam/Shazam parallel story could be told from the POV of the younger supporting characters. So after a little fanediting break and a very hectic family summer, I'm getting back to some "me" time, and started chiseling into the raw stone blocks of Shazam and Black Adam.
But as I compared the two, I realized that Shazam, in parallel, just feels too shallow compared to the socio-economic effects of vigilantism examined in Black Adam, and their journeys are far too different. Amon, as the audience's main character to learn about Adam, made the Black Adam movie feel childish, but much of the politics touched on were much more mature. So, I have decided that a proper Black Adam edit that feels less "childish" needed to be attempted first. And thats what this edit aims to be.
Original runtime: 2h 04m
New runtime: 1h 35min
MANY valid criticisms have been made about this film, which means it will most likely be another trademark "Bad Movies Made Less Bad" edit. And its still Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which is kinda hard to NOT notice. But we press forward!
The main goals here are:
- Remove Amon's POV as much as possible
- Minimize the hypocrisy of the Justice Society morals
- Minimize the overt foreshadowing of Ishmael evil intentions.
- Minimize exposition.
- Replace some needle drops to be more culturally relevant thematically.
Using a new text intro, establish the following:
Eternium is highlighted less as a "magical" element, and is simply more akin to oil or diamonds - where outside powers come in to exploit the resources of a poor country.
The crown is initially described as becoming a symbol of the domination of the people of Kahndaq to the foreign warlords that fought for control of the resource.
The INTERGANG in the DCEU as a "private military contractor supported secretly by major world powers and international corporations." (This would better support why Kahndaq receives no outside help.) I initially wanted to make Intergang's former name "Blackwater", but the intro seemed too wordy already.
Subtitles capitalize INTERGANG to give it a pseudo-connection to real organizations like INTERPOL.
Change List:
- Movie begins in modern times. Remove most of Amon's narrations, and rescored "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" to blend foley from Amon skateboarding with the song ending at the military checkpoint.
- Removed shot Ishmael's pistol
- Trimmed down Amon talking back to gate guard.
- Trimmed Samir asking Adrianna about her pendant.
- Trimmed part of Karim's bald spot joke
- Tightened up Ishmael asking about the Crowm outside the mountain, and removed most shots of him looking sinister outside the mountain.
- Removed shots of Ishmael looking sinister As they move through the caves.
- Trimmed some of Karim's Car karaoke
- Trimmed Merc dialogue to Karim
- Trimmed Ishmael being creepy when he returns to Adrianna, removed her inquiring about Samir, as Ishmael just telegraphs evil here.
- Trimmed Ishmael face shot when he is inquiring about why they buried Adam down there.
- Trimmed Ishmael face shots while Adrianna is retrieving the crown.
- Slowed and extended the shot of the crown inscription right after retrieval, and added Adrianna reading it for the first time
- Trimmed some of the Merc dialogue and shots of Ishmael looking evil, needed to speed up the countdown to make it work
- Trimmed more of Ishmael looking evil
- Trimmed some of Adrianna's recitation
- Trimmed the Merc's line to Adam when they first encounter him.
- Trimmed Adam's face shot when he mentioned their magic is weak.
- Trimmed a little of Ishmael getting crushed to be less obvious
- Trimmed some of the face closeups of Adam as he battles INTERGANG
- Change the needle drop song "Paint it Black" to something that feels more culturally appropriate. Using the track "Full Moon Fight" from the Moon Knight soundtrack.
- Removed Adam and the grenade interaction
- Tightened the Eternium rocket sequence, Adam no longer gets injured.
- I had issues with Hawkman hearing "news reports" about Teth Adam destroying the initial INTERGANG forces at the mountain, which initially let it go. But eventually it started bothering me too much. To fix this, I have used the shots from the trailer of Adam and the fighter jets as a transition between Adam leaving Adrianna and when we see Hawkman watching the feeds. I have also not trimmed those feeds, and subtitles list them as intercepted transmissions from INTERGANG.
- Tightend up the Carter/Waller scene. Tried to edit Waller to look like she is just reaching out to an outside team, not that they work for her. No team intros, Carter simply works WITH her for containment in this instance. Carter seems to be the equivalent of an Iron Man in the DCEU, and more concerned with rules than heart.
- Fate's reply to Smasher about passports merged from two lines into one.
- Removed the Nth metal references when entering the ship. My reasoning - there is just too much insider stuff in this movie in reference to the Justice Society players. I'm all for fan service, but this is getting layers deep and really isn't needed IMO to advance the story. I'm picking my battles here.
- Removed Amon and Adam's scene in Amon's bedroom.
- Adrianna locking the doors and analyzing the crown is trimmed. No TV shots, and the crown-reading footage is reversed, since Ancient writing in Farsi and Arabic was written right to left.
- Its trimmed so that Adam just shows up in their home, since Adrianna is the one that woke him up.
- Trimmmed down the gunfight on TV
- Most of Amon has been trimmed here, and removed Amon following Adam in the stairwell.
- Removed Kent mentioning that a day had passed.
- Removed Cyclone mentioning Kent is possessed when he wears the helmet.
- Removed Amon trying to get Adam's attention by “throwing up the roc.”
- Rescored the needle drop gunfight song between Adam and the Merc to be more culturally appropriate.
- Tightened the initial clash between Adam and JS for better pacing and less dialogue and a little less of Smasher being goofy.
- Replaced Fate telling Adam "Kneel or Die." with "Let's got to prison, shall we?"
- There is a subtle visual theme of Adam doing his full body energy burst that gets those around him hurt. But when he first does it against the JS and Fate has to rescure Adrianna and Amon from the pipes, his eyes don't do the warning glow. I added the glowing eyes to this instance to show the relation here to the other times it happens.
- Trimmed down Smashed fumbling his words with Cyclone
- Tightened Adrianna's flashback of Adam's true history to fit better with the crown lore up to this point.
- Trimmed some of Ishmael's speech to Amon in their apartment
- Tightened Amon's stairwell escape scene, removed catchphrase references.
- Tightened the flybikes chase scene, removed the shot of Adam zooming and his head getting bigger.
- Tightened the group discussion about the crown for less exposition, and focused on the JS not caring about Adrianna's family issues.
- Replaced Kanye needle drop song with the banned Egyptian underground hip hop chart topper "Salka"
- Removed bad CGI shots of Adam racing for the bullet, instead his hand stopping the bullet is the first we see of Adam in action here to save Amon
- Tightened the Hurut flashback reveal to fit this story better, slow mo of the arrow being fired is shown before Hurut gets hit, removed the black suit change.
- Adam's transfer to Harcort is tightened to be straight to the point.
- Tightened Cyclone and Adriannas discussion about the crown to only reveal the underworld mirror aspect.
- Ishmael in hell is trimmed
- I can't make Sabbac more compelling, but I can give him less cheezy screentime. Closeups of his face are trimmed when appropriate to give a more menacing impression
- Vfx removal of Carter firing shots at Sabbac as he sends fire at the plane
- Tightened the fight of JS and Sabbac
- Moved up the "fighting the undead hordes" scenes so the people are already fighting by the time the statue falls.
- Fate uses the name "Black Adam" in the trailers, but never does in the movie. But not anymore! The line in the "motivational speech" Fate gives Adam where he mentions that "Maybe a White Knight isn't always needed, sometimes you need something darker" that always felt slightly racist to me. Now, at the end of the speech, Fate gives Adam his "Black" moniker here.
- Movie ends with Adam destroying the old throne.
- two new songs used for the credits: Arab Trap 2 - Habibi by DJ KABOO and Si Al Sayed by Tamer Hosny ft Snoop Dogg
- Post credit scene is trimmed to remove Cavill's Superman cameo. Admittedly awesome, but come one - we all wanna see Black Adam vs Shazam matchup! So...
- Added a trimmed post credit scene from Shazam 2 of Harcourt recruiting Billy Batson to the JS
In the established late era DCEU, as superheroes seem to suddenly be commonplace, this edit seems to actually fit in quite nicely, just a few classic characters clashing over ideals. Still not great, but I think its much more fun. I do find it interesting that Blue Beetle gets points for representation and this got absolutely nothing similar. Its probably still offensive to native Egyptian people... anyone who can speak to this, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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