Pierce Brosnan's turn as Doctor Fate gave that movie what quality it had. Well, that, and being a soft sequel to Shazam, which was itself surprisingly good.
The Authority is a mouth-breathing sociopaths (read: Garth Ennis's) idea of a super team. The only thing they're good for in a larger universe is jobbing for actual characters and hopefully being the subject of a Redeemers-esque massacre by a greater scope villain.
Meanwhile the actual sequel to Shazam was even worse than Black Adam.
The only Captain Marvel villain I even know is the little bald dork with glasses. So I check who’s in the sequel and it’s like… three random Greek nobodies? They aren’t even from the comics.
Warren Ellis actually. Planetary was the better book by him and faggot free too.
Yeah Captain Marvel is fun, but doesn't have that big of a villain pool. Dr Sivana, Black Adam, Mr Mind and Captain Nazi are the only ones I remember.
Hear me out…
One thing in your post I disagree on. Mr. Mind is so off-the-wall and opens so many doors to wild scenarios that he'd be an excellent villain. Want Billy fighting his super-powered siblings? Mr. Mind can bring that. Want an interdimensional or alien threat? Mr. Mind can do that. Want government agents and military treating Shazam as a threat and acting against him? Billy wrestling against Mr. Mind's control, Billy being an evil Shazam for a while (or just an evil Billy), Billy's mom re-appearing as part of some Mr. Mind scheme? Mr. Mind is your "introduce any theme / conflict" you want card. He's a bizarre alien manipulator. Plus he's hilariously weird which is what you want in a Shazam movie. You couldn't use him in Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman - not movie versions, anyway. It'd be a stretch to include him in a Flash movie. But Shazam he works. Billy is a kid, talking caterpillars work for the tone in that Mind is both silly and horrifying at the same time.
You can always tell when someone got cast because the director just wanted to hang out with them.
That team being a psychopath's take on a super-team would explain many things, as the cast is made by the stupid meme of Bats and Supes being gay (even worse, they're pretty much that but improved as the Solar guy doesn't have any weakness IIRC), a super nanomachine hacker woman that can do magic with tech and powerful enough to stand out on her own, a city elemental, a knock-off Sorcerer Supreme with a focus on Earth... Not sure if there's anyone else. By themselves the idea could work, but their edgy attitude is what eventually rubbed me off the wrong way.
Planetary was good, but this one had a different flaw: Characters' relationships were relatively weak. The cast felt cold and a bit bland, likely because the characters aren't sufficiently developed. The idea of skipping the final fight to defeat the bad guys by using a trap was okay, but it felt anticlimactic*. There's a reason why the climatic fight is a thing. Nevertheless, the sense of wonder was there, with weird shit everywhere.
Authority's later lineup of mostly former W.I.L.D.CATS members massively downscale the team Mary/Gary's Sue OPness. Going by the online wikis of the team. .
The funny thing is, thats not the meme: the actual meme is Batman and Robin being gay, but leaning into that would involve having father-son incest in your 3edgy5u superhero story... which im pretty sure has too much actual edge for these supposed rebels.
Ah, that's an old one. Jokes were made since the 60s or so, but yeah, it would be too much for that comic, even if the not-Robin is adopted.
Reminds me of the "FUCK BATMAN" line from the first Titans trailer.
I think the funniest thing about the Authority is that nowadays, people only know them as "That one team Manchester Black and the Elite were parodying."
I take the movie in two separate terms.
It wasn’t. Gunn was a last resort as no one wanted to lead DC after Snyder. Hell, Gunn wouldn’t have even done it without the Twitter cancellation. Wish Warner would just let some unknowns from their animation department take over as they would do 10x a better job than this.
Gunn specializes in one thing and one thing only, that being edgy man child characters and casts. It works with D-listers no one cares about like the Guardians of the Galaxy since there is little fan base to push back on him, but not with an icon like Superman. This isn’t new, he hated the Guardians as well and completely changed them from being bad ass space police to a goofy joke, then he changed Peacemaker and the Suicide Squad into the same thing.
Hey, the Elite parody was actually better, as they were painted as bad guys.
I wonder how this will apply to the Authority, once again. Not-Batman and not-Supes were very gay, edgy, and little else by default, the Engineer is a horndog who fucked an ugly, fatty Mexican in a waay-too-graphic scene, the wizard guy is a stoner 24/7, and the city elemental and the Spark girl had little personality.