If superheroes have one thing in common, it’s not so much capes or extraordinary abilities, but memorable enemies. The new movie “Shazam! The Fury of the Gods” has taken its antagonistic factor to another level by opting for immortal divinities, in the plural.
That’s how Billy Batson (Zachary Levi), whose superhero name is Shazam, and his friends find themselves fighting the daughters of Atlas. The daughters are played by Helen Mirren, 77, who plays Hespera, the bossy older sister, and Lucy Liu, 54, who is the Kalypso who looks like she’s made of steel.
These are edited excerpts from a video interview with Liu and Mirren.
Hespera and Kalypso are presented as gods, not goddesses. Is it an important distinction?
LUCY LIU We’ve been talking about this. It’s “The Fury of the Gods” and I was like, “Shouldn’t they be goddesses?” We think, “We’re already in that realm, as long as it’s not human, we’re fine.”
HELEN MIRREN: Look, I love being an actress. She feels very Belle Époque, very 19th century. Certainly, if I’m a god, I would consider myself a goddess, I have to say.
LIU: With the press, we usually say that we are goddesses. (Both laugh.)]
What led you to film your first superhero movie?
MIRREN: I’m not going to watch a lot of superhero movies, but I saw the first “Shazam” and I loved it. So when “Shazam 2” came out, I thought, “Well, if I was going to do a superhero movie, that’s the one I’d want to be in,” clever as it was.
LIU: Having that experience with each other was really special. I don’t immediately think about the characters so much as the relationship that was built from that moment on. We were all learning what we were supposed to do, and isolated. Fortunately we were in the same capsule of Covid.
Were you surprised to see that their outfits would be so similar to those of a gladiator?MIRREN: The changing rooms are heavier than they appear. And we were staggering around in huge platform shoes—gladiators never had to deal with huge high heels.
LIU: And the cape! We often asked if we could take off the cloak because it was heavy.
Does playing a god differ from playing a normal antagonist?
MIRREN: It’s different because you don’t have to deal with normal human psychology, which is great. We didn’t have to consider “Why is this villain doing this? Was she abandoned by her mother?”
LIU: We worked with the rivalry between sisters, the level of experience that each one had. At first, I guess everyone thought, “Kalypso is going to be so strong and powerful,” but then Hespera grabs her head and pulls her back. That’s the dynamic because we embody who we are—we were given this, we were born into this, so the fight is the disagreements between us and our opinions.
For a long time, female villains used sexuality as a weapon, which is not the case here. Do you think this reflects the ways in which we now conceive of the power of women on screen?
LIU: Yes, she is not a femme fatale. I think there is still a long way to go. And I think that if a woman interprets what the public perceives as antagonistic, she automatically falls into a group or some kind of prescription of what she was in the past, instead of creating something new and dynamic.
MIRREN: You did “Charlie’s Angels” and for someone of my generation, it was a huge watershed: action by fearsome women full of strength. But controlled by a man, so even though it was a big step forward, there was still that anchor holding him back, in a way. Now that anchor has come loose, thank goodness. We move forward in a different way, hopefully.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6623102, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-03-22 00:30:09
By: Elisabeth Vincentelli
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