They’re making Shazam: Fury of the Gods. It’ll be the sequel, Black Adam will most likely be in it.

I’m not a fan of these big interconnected movie webs. Just give me “Movie 1”, “Movie 2”, “Movie 3”, please. Maybe throw in a prequel if you wanna get real crazy. Do not give me 3 disconnected movies that all play into a collective sequel.

But comic books, the source material, are full of interconnected webs of cameos and cross overs. It's also a pretty uniquely comic book movie thing. Stripping them of that would be like stripping mechanics from a role playing game, as with Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4. Sometimes you're just not the target audience, and thats okay. People do not have to enjoy and consume everything. I personally won't be consuming this because I find the Rock to be pretty bland and hard to chew.

I dunno, it’s more of a recent comic book movie thing, and the old stuff is still considered pretty good. Like, if I wanted to keep up with X’Men or Batman, I’d watch the X-Men or Dark Knight movies. Now, if I wanted to keep up with, say, Doctor Strange I’d need to go watch all these different movies that have nothing to do with him just to know what’s going on. Just seems tedious. I’m no expert on the comics, but didn’t they have a system similar to the animated movies? Where things did share a universe, but crossovers were more of special occasions rather than the focus of the plot?

They crossed over all the time in comics. Just look at the Justice League and Teen Titans. On the Marvel side, several X-men have also been avengers. Villians will also face off against various heros that aren't their "main rival" as well.

The way I’ve always kind of envisioned the comics working when it comes to crossovers is; A. The crossovers are small enough to be more like cameos (i.e. you don’t need extensive knowledge about the guest character to know whst’s happening) B. The big crossovers tend to be their own story arcs. So you can go through, say, most of the Batman comics just fine, without needing to know much about the Justice League because most of the JL stuff usually has its own stuff, even though Batman’s a part of it. Or, at the very least, that’s how I think it should work. I was able to watch through the entire Damian arc of the animated movies (Son of Batman > Batman vs. Robin > Teen Titans vs. Justice League > Teen Titans: The Judas Contract) because that was the story arc I was interested in. Like, the Justice League made an appearance, but I didn’t have to know anything about the Justice League besides the basics. And, at the same time, if I really wanted to get into the movies, I could watch the whole backstory behind the Justice League forming, and allthe movies behind the heroes that joined, and I could see this big interconnected web, but I didn’t have to, and that’s the big thing. I’m just not a big movie goer. I like to watch movies every now & then, but not a ton. So, when you tellme I have to watch 5 different movies to keep up with the one super hero I like, I’m just like “Ugh. Why?”.

I don't think you HAVE to, you just miss out on details. I suppose it's not dissimilar the suspension of disbelief vs. understanding theoretical mechanics of space travel in sci-fi. You can know a character's backstory or just accept them as presented.

I don't watch too many superhero movies, so perhaps people have just talked about it in a way that makes it sound like you need a deeper understanding than you do, but the way people have talked about it, it does sound like you need to watch the majority of movies of these different heroes to really get it. Like, if Character B appears in Character A's movie as a major hero/villain, with only half a character arc that began in their own movie, then it'd feel a little off just watching that movie on its own. Or, if Character B is a major plot element, but what their powers actually are isn't explained because it was already explained in Character B's own movie, then it might just be confusing to watch. But I dunno. I don't mind [i]too[/i] much in this particular case with Black Adam/Shazam, as long as it's just Black Adam/Shazam.

With the exception of some of the bigger films like avengers where you have 20+ characters so there's no time for individual development, the worst you'd miss out on is knowing why two characters seem to distrust each other. You'd know it had to do with history, just not the actual event. I think people play it up that you have to see them all is a combination of A) they're cultural events and therefore will be frequently referenced and B) while you don't NEED to see the other films, you'll certainly appreciate them more if you have. It's like if two friends share a funny anecdote you weren't there for. It's kinda an inside joke but you still get it. It's also kinda funny but not as funny to you as to them because they were actually there.

I can see that. I mentioned the animated movies, but back when I was watching those the person who was telling me which ones to watch was also telling me I needed to watch all the ones that led up to the formation of the Justice League, even though I really didn’t.