'Mandalorian' reliable, 'Shazam!' offers adventure

The ides of March yielded great fun for nerds, with intriguing developments in the third season of "The Mandalorian" on Disney+ and bombastic, mostly all-ages adventures in the sequel "Shazam! Fury of the Gods."

Three episodes into its third season, there's less of a sense of urgency to the ongoing plot arcs in "The Mandalorian," which is, I suspect, why they're getting resolved more briskly, to ensure the viewership doesn't succumb to what's already been alleged in the entertainment press as "franchise fatigue."

If you were expecting Din Djarin's redemption as a Mandalorian to consume the majority of this season, it's been settled almost as quickly as Grogu's time away to consider becoming a Jedi.

SPOILER ALERT: In spite of the Empire laying waste to the Mandalorians' homeworld, the planet Mandalore itself is no longer as lifeless as its exiled peoples had been led to believe, and in spite of previously having been declared an apostate among the more fundamentalist Mandalorians, Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) has inadvertently cleansed her sins and earned acceptance among Din Djarin's devout faction of Mandalorians.

Ever since her role as Starbuck in the 21st-century remake of "Battlestar Galactica," Sackhoff's performances have always exuded an invigoratingly tense energy, so it's fun to see how uncomfortable she is, as a reflexively defiant former ruler, with being welcomed into a more traditional social order.

Given that Din Djarin still holds the Darksaber, and Bo-Katan Kryze has been shown to wield that weapon skillfully, I'm expecting a showdown between them and Paz Vizsla, the heavy infantry Mandalorian whose ancestor created the Darksaber, since he still considers that weapon the property of his clan.

As swiftly as "The Mandalorian" is wrapping up its own plotlines, this season's third episode repeated a narrative stunt from the latter episodes of "The Book of Boba Fett," that I can no longer call an experiment, simply because it appears to be a new standard of practice.

Out of the seven episodes of "The Book of Boba Fett," episode 5 was devoted almost wholly to catching up with Din Djarin, while episode 6 split its time between Din Djarin, Grogu training with Luke Skywalker, and Marshal Cobb Vanth drawing down on both Pyke spice runners and hired gun Cad Bane.

Similarly, Season 3, episode 3 of "The Mandalorian" brings back two Imperials from earlier in the series' run: Dr. Penn Pershing (Omid Abtahi), the genetic engineer who had used Grogu's blood for his experiments, and officer Elia Kane (Katy M. O'Brian), who'd served under Grogu's kidnapper, Moff Gideon.

Both are ostensibly reformed and working for the New Republic on the planet-spanning capital city of Coruscant, which is always a dazzling location due to the sheer scale of its metropolis, but Pershing is ironically tempted to defy the conditions of his "rehabilitation" precisely because he wants to benefit the New Republic, and atone for his mistakes in serving the Empire.

The partnership that develops between Pershing and Kane is unsettling because of how much it embodies the aphorism of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, and it's made especially affecting by little details such as the former Imperials waxing nostalgic over minor conveniences from their time in service.

Any military member who's eaten MREs still has their favorites (mine was the ham slice, with a side of peanut butter), and the mild-mannered Pershing is touched when Kane smuggles him a box of the yellow travel biscuits he remembers.

I've seen "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" catch a surprising amount of flak for as inoffensive and well-meaning a film as it is, because while it's hardly high art, it's also easily the equal of just about any midrange Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, although perhaps that's the point (again, the alleged "franchise fatigue").

I've always liked the essential concept behind "Shazam!" because Billy Batson is as endearing and tragic as Peter Parker when he's starting out as Spider-Man, since they're both orphaned boys who are struggling to become the adult men that the world needs them to be.

As in the first film, Zachary Levi perfectly captures that Tom-Hanks-in-"Big" sense of an enthusiastic kid unsteadily piloting a grown man's body, but this time around, it's also layered with the melancholy of an abandoned child who's quietly terrified of losing his newfound surrogate family, so he's adulting as hard as he knows how to try and earn permanence in their hearts.

Jack Dylan Grazer, of "It" and "Beautiful Boy," resumes his role as Billy's disabled adoptive brother Freddy Freeman, one of the foster siblings with whom Billy has shared his "Shazam!" powers, and the films' producers must have noticed how much Dylan Grazer continues to steal every scene he's in, because Freddy gets a much-expanded role in "Fury of the Gods," including his own love interest.

Indeed, Freddy spends a significant portion of the story paired with the wizard who gave Billy his powers, because Djimon Hounsou is a criminally under-used comedic actor, and his disapproving wizard is hilarious when paired off with the genre-savvy Freddy, who knows everything about superheroes and ancient myths, albeit filtered through the lens of pop culture such as "Dungeons & Dragons."

This matters because "Fury of the Gods" lives up to its title by casting Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu as the daughters of Atlas, out to reclaim the powers of the gods that were stolen to turn Billy and his siblings into superheroes.

Both Liu and Mirren get to flex their vamping muscles as villains, but Mirren proves especially entertaining in her attempts to decipher the language and mindset of modern teenage boys.

Although this film's imagery goes dark with its mythological monsters - even its unicorns are chillingly sinister - it remains so wholesome that even a cutaway from one of the kids nearly (but not quite) dropping an F-bomb manages to seem sweet, as does a scene of another member of the family coming out of the closet.

The DC Extended Universe isn't dead yet, since we get brief but important cameo appearances by characters from "Justice League" and "Peacemaker," with both midcredits and after-credits scenes spotlighting the last bad guys we saw in the first "Shazam!" film.

No, the in-story promo for Skittles doesn't live up to how organically Reese's Pieces were integrated into "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," but it's still cute.

Bonus points to Meagan Good as Darla Dudley, Billy's younger sister, for remaining the most adorable member of the "Shazam!" family, and to scriptwriters Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan for fleshing out the family's Rock of Eternity, including its virtually countless dimensional doorways and its library of flying books.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
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