Movies & TV / News

Zachary Levi Asks Fans to Stop Trolling Captain Marvel: ‘You’re Not Helping Anyone’

February 25, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Shazam Zachary Levi

Zachary Levi doesn’t believe in a Captain Marvel vs. Shazam feud, and is asking fans to stop making up things about the Marvel movie. Levi, who plays the title character in the DC film, did an Instagram Live post in which he asked fans to stop trolling Captain Marvel by spreading false stories about things that aren’t actually in the film, and things that haven’t actually happened.

“There are people out there,” Levi began, “making a lot of like, really inflammatory, defamatory, and completely fictitious reviews and posts of Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel and trying to pit Shazam against it. And saying they’re going to support us and not them. Because of things that they are, by the way, making up. Things that they’re saying, they saw some screening and this, that or the other is in the movie. I just found this out last night and…for anyone out there who thinks you’re doing me a favor, or you’re doing Shazam a favor, or you’re doing Warner Bros…you’re not. This is not helping anyone or anything.”

The message is in response to a negative campaign against Captain Marvel that has included the film’s Rotten Tomatoes site being bombarded with fake reviews. Many of the posts say things like “Billy Batson is the real Captain Marvel” or “this captain marvel is a fake. captain will always be the supper hero dressed in red with a lighting bolt in front of his chest.” As of now, the film has 47,806 user reviews before critic’s full reviews have even hit and over a week before the film releases, 73% which are negative. By perspective, right now Avengers: Infinity War had 52,573 total user reviews.

The enmity has been building for a while due to the film’s female hero and Larson’s outspoken activism, but kicked in hard after Larson said in a Marie Claire interview that she pushed for more diversity among journalists on the press tour, having noticed that most of press tours are populated by “overwhelmingly white male” critics. Shazam appears to have been selected because of the timing of their releases near each other (Shazam opens on April 5th), paired with the fact that the hero was known as Captain Marvel in the DC universe up until 1972.

Levi added that there’s no competition between the films, and said “Just because Shazam used to be called Captain Marvel way back in the day doesn’t mean that somehow Brie or Marvel’s Captain Marvel pitted against us. We’re both movies and we’re both going to be out in theaters at similar times. And the irony of that timing is really interesting, but there is no conspiracy.”