Zoom: Academy For Superheroes
Zoom: Academy For Superheroes (also known as simply Zoom) is a Superhero Comedy film created by Peter Hewitt and written by Adam Rifkin and David Berenbaum, and was released in August 11, 2006. It is based off of the children's book Amazing Adventures from Zoom's Academy by Jason Lethcoe.
Plot
Thirty years prior, Team Zenith, led by the Shepard brothers Jack / "Captain Zoom" and Connor / "Concussion", fought to protect the world from various threats until the U.S. military used experimental "Gamma-13" radiation to enhance the Shepards' powers. Zoom became faster and stronger, but Concussion suffered a psychotic break and killed his teammates. Zoom seemingly killed Concussion in turn via a vortex, but lost his powers.
In the present, original Zenith Project scientist Dr. Ed Grant discovers Concussion was trapped in a dimensional rift and is returning to Earth. Zenith military officer General Larraby commissions the formation of a new Team Zenith, recruiting a reluctant Zoom as an instructor and Marsha Holloway, a clumsy psychologist and a fan of the original Team Zenith's comic books.
Following a round of auditions, the Zenith Project recruits teenagers Dylan West and Summer Jones and children Tucker Williams and Cindy Collins, who possess invisibility, psionic powers, self-inflation, and super-strength respectively. Over the course of the team's training, Marsha and the recruits become disappointed by Zoom's bitter and sarcastic personality, Dylan mounts failed escape attempts, and Tucker struggles with self-esteem issues and controlling his powers. After the team confront Zoom over his failings, they reconcile and slowly improve their abilities.
Hours before Concussion's return, Zoom helps Dylan unlock a new ability dubbed "mindsight", which he uses to pinpoint where Concussion will emerge and learn the military intends to expose the new Team Zenith to Gamma-13 and use them as a distraction so they can test new weaponry on Concussion. A horrified Zoom asks Marsha to help him rescue the children and travel to Concussion's location, during which she reveals her ability to produce super-breath. Upon arriving, Zoom resolves to face Concussion alone, but Marsha and Team Zenith refuse to abandon him.
When Concussion returns, Larraby fires a neutralizing net at him, but the former blasts it away towards Cindy. Fearing for her safety, Zoom's powers return, allowing him to save her before he uses his speed and Gamma-13 to recreate the vortex while Team Zenith and Marsha guide Concussion into it. After Grant reveals he can save Concussion, Zoom closes the vortex, with the subsequent energy vacuum draining the Shepards' Gamma-13, restoring their original powers and curing Concussion.
Three months later, Team Zenith have returned to their normal lives while continuing to work with Zoom.
Why This Film Is Not An Academy For Superheroes
- Very weak, lazy, clichéd and a buzzar written plot that's been used in numerous better films with lots of filler moments, as mentioned below.
- Some unlikable characters:
- Jack(tho not nearly as unlikable as some other protagonist talks about on this wiki) is a very poor protagonist, altho good in heart, he comes a cross as very lazy after what happen 30 years ago and show no interest in helping his team mates, its only after realizing what the military is gonna do with the kids does Zack does something substance.
- Dylan West, while being the most likable of the four, has little-to-no personality and comes across as a generic slack-off character.
- General Larraby is among one of the stupidest and worst characters in the film, seeing that he desiccates to use two teenagers and two children with super powers to become partners with Zack, even though its implied that he he's never actually asked their parents, the kids or even Jack about the plan. He also comes across as a gigantic and hateful jerk as General Larraby is willing to use kids of all things as bait for a psychopathic Super Hero in order to use a trap for him after given them the Gamma-13 and does not even show any care of what would happen to the kids or the whole world of that matter if his plan were to not work (thus making him more like the antagonist then even Concussion). And even worst is that despite his actions(that again, makes him more like a villain), General Larraby gets off scot-free and never gets any repercussions, nor does he ever apologize Zack or even Dr. Marsha for his said careless actions. Which makes him a Karma Houdini.
- Tucker Williams is a generic "Fat boy that loves to eat", a Character-Trope that has been done multiple times in previous better media.
- Poor acting from some of the characters. The acting as a whole ranges from bland to terrible. An example is Chevy Chase mugging and making faces as if he's still headlining one of his 1980s comedy roles or Community. Another one is that Courteney Cox attempts a role that she was not fit for. Plus, Tim Allen has a lack of understood emotion. Kevin Zegers probably has the worst performance in the film, playing Captain Zoom's brother Concussion (who is young in the final act probably due to suspended animation).
- Jack Shepard's design and personality, in the beginning, rip off that of Tony Stark from Iron Man, with the same superpower speed from Dash Parr from The Incredibles.
- Speaking of ripoffs, three of four superheroes are majorly ripoffs of both The Incredibles and 2005's Fantastic Four, since the movie was released two years after The Incredibles and a year after 2005's Fantastic Four movie was released, as three of them have the same signature superpower abilities Invisibility (Violet and Sue Storm: Dylan), Elasticity/Flexibility (Mr. Fantastic and Elastigirl: Tucker), and Strength (Mr. Incredible and The Thing: Cindy) as both movies superhero counterparts.
- Despite being the main protagonist, Jack barely does anything though out most of the film while the kids does most of the impotent story stuff. Because of this, it would make more sense if the kids were the protagonists and Zoom was their trainer but instead, it's reversed so that we’re following Zoom’s troubles and not theirs.
- Somewhat divisive special effects, while they can look impressive and are not nearly as bad as The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D and/or The Brothers Grimm (both of which came out one year before this film's released), some of the special effects can look very dated, even for 2006-standereds, specie mention goes to Tucker Williams when he uses self-inflation ability on his rear or head, the effects look too much like something out of a computer-animated film or PlayStation 2 game made in 2002 or earlier then a realistic boy growing in size, it does not help that this film was made in 2006, and previous films with special effects (E.G. Nanny McPhee, Aquamarine and Superman Returns to name a few) look way better then this.
- Some scenes make no sense at all. A perfect example would be when the kids approach Jack in awe after learning he's a superhero. Jack goes, "Because I'm not a superhero, there's no such thing as superheroes, no matter what people told you around here, you’re not superheroes." Of course, Cindy and Tucker are like, "WE'RE SUPERHEROES?" To which Jack replies, "You're definitely white kids, I'll tell you that." It’s never explained what the line means exactly.
- Somewhat poor grasp to the original source material.
- Most of the songs comes from Smash Mouth, which can make the soundtrack for this film a bit repetitive.
- It steals ideas from Disney's Sky High, another live-action family superhero movie that also came out last year.
- The idea that the Team Zenith are considered as one big family sounds like an interesting idea and would be heart warming, tho the premise is barley use and only becomes a major plot-element in the climax, not to mention is that some of the characters already have family members of their own.
- Weak humor, most of which comes from the running gag of Dr. Marsha Holloway randomly bumping into objects and falling or Dr. Ed Grant being treated like a butt-monkey for no-reason.
- Specking of which, the film also relies on gross-out humor and unfunny other jokes that go off in many ways. (eg. Zack sticks his vibrating goatee finger in an extremely disgusting milkshake, during the audition scene, one of the kids produces a green slime snot bubble from his nose which explodes on Ed Grant, one kid in the audition scene calls himself “Jupiter the Gas Giant” and letting out a wet fart. Marsha falls down a lot (as stated earlier), Jack spits out his oatmeal into a mini bowl, and the first scene with General Larraby and Dr. Grant where Larraby says “Dr. Grant, I speak Greek, not Geek.”).
- Unlikable side characters like Dylan West's teacher, and the bullies of Tucker Williams and Summer Jones.
- Very poor pacing, as most of the movie is montages of the kids doing training exercises and goofing around with each other, inner cut with scenes of Jack realizing how unsuccessful he's been and developing a relationship with Martha.
- Poorly designed superhero costumes (e.g. the kids all wear white suits with Cindy even wearing a helmet and goggles. It’s never explained where the suits came from. Marsha wears a lab coat in the only fight scene of the film, Summer wears a pretty standard summer dress at the dance party, and the kids all wear yellow training outfits during the montages with a few exceptions such as when Cindy dresses up fancy).
- Dylan's mindsight power is introduced in the middle of the movie, and used only once at the end, just so Jack can find out about Concussion along with the project's true purpose, whats the point of introducing an all new power if its only gonna be used once in the film?
- It doesn't make sense in the opening sequence when Marsha says that the Gamma-13 radiation turned Concussion to the dark side since he's the only villain from "the dark side" which is plural. Normally there's more than one person on the dark side like in Star Wars, thus she should've instead said that Concussion turned evil.
- The first 45 minutes of the movie are just the various characters(minus the kids) hating, roasting, and being horrible to each other, which can come across as mean-spirited and not very pleasent in a film made for kids.
- Despite this being a Super Hero movie, there's only one fight scene in the film which comes at the end of the film. And the fight scene of the movie lasts only nearly two minutes and was weakly made since all four kids in addition to Marsha only use their power once.
- There are a few plot holes that are never explain:
- Why is there Halloween set during the daytime?
- Where did Dylan West, Summer Jones, Tucker Williams and Cindy Collins get their Super Powers?
- In the intro, it shows a montage of the four main characters using their powers in uneck ways to fight back agents the bullies(e.g. Cindy use's her strength powers to fling a bully away from her when the latter attempts to steal her Halloween candy, Summer use's her psionic powers to launch food at her mates when they one-by-one snatch her food tray from her hand and Tucker use's his self-inflation powers to flatten the bully when he makes fun of him), yet it the case with Dylan, when his teacher makes him do work on a chalk board, all that happens is that Dylan turns invisible as he writes on the board which surprise everyone, how the heck does turning invisible as he writes on the board a way for Dylan to get back at his teacher?
- Why did the parents agree to send their own kids to an area where they would have to fight a psychopathic Super Hero?
- Very mean-spirited running gag of Dr. Ed Grant being mistreated and/or being treated like a butt-monkey for no reason.
- Scenes keep ending on non-jokes like this exchange: "No way!" "Way!" (that gets old very quickly and will get you on the nerve).
- This film is entirely a bottled film, as most of the film takes place in a secret base that's in the middle of a dessert, which is unexceptionable in a Super Hero Action Film.
- The editing is bizarre since the scenes don’t end naturally as they just stop and a whirling Team Zenith logo flies at the screen as a transition. It happens over and over again, often in the middle of substantive conversations. The technique makes scene changes jarring. It gives the impression that the film is unfinished and it's a rough cut.
- Another example of the poor editing is when the Zenith Team is playing baseball; it easily looks like it’s a scene taken from later in the movie:
- For one thing, Mr. Pibb is there, even though he's not introduced until the next scene.
- Second, they're in the room with the UFO, but it's also not seen until later.
- Third, two of the same shots of Dylan and Summer are used.
- Fourth and finally, Zoom's outfit is different than the last scene, but in the next scene, he's wearing the same outfit.
- Some of the montages are even poorly edited with random bits happening in between.
- Another example of the poor editing is when the Zenith Team is playing baseball; it easily looks like it’s a scene taken from later in the movie:
- Unnecessary product placement. For example, this movie has a scene that takes place at Wendy's which also has the Popeye's and 76 gasoline sign logos in the background in addition to one of the windows of the drive-thru having the Discover, Visa, and MasterCard logos, Summer uses telekinesis on M&Ms, Jack suggests Cindy get a juice box and a Rice Krispy treat, the kids have Firefly phones and a robot is named "Mr. Pibb".
- Misleading Box-Art:
- The front of the Box-Arts shows Jack with a shaved face, yet in the film he is shown with a beard.
- The film's title is also misleading since it doesn’t take place at an "academy" from the book, but rather a secret base called Area 52. Therefore, the title of the film should’ve been Zoom: Secret Base for Superheroes.
- On that note, the background of the film is a tad bit misleading as its implied that most of the film takes place outside, yet most of the film takes place underground as stated in the #23 segment.
Redeeming Qualities
- The concept of a former superhero rediscovering his powers and having to train 4 kids to help form a new superhero team is an interesting concept for a film if poorly executed.
- Some likeable characters such as Dr. Marsha Holloway, Summer Jones and Cindy Collins.
- There are some admittedly funny jokes here-and-there.
- Tim Allen's acting is decent enough when it's very generic.
- It has some good messages like "Work hard and you'll achieve".
- Despite the constant use of Smash Mouth's Soundtrack, the soundtrack is decent.
- There are a selection of heat-warming moments like Jack saving Cindy and Connor in the battle near the end.
Reception
Zoom: Academy for Superheroes received generally negative reviews from critics and audiences alike. The film currently holds a 4% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average of 3 out of 10 and a critic consensus that reads "Lacking the punch and good cheer of The Incredibles and Sky High, Zoom is a dull and laugh-free affair." Jane Boursaw of Common Sense Media awarded the film two out of five stars and described the film as "Dull comic-book fodder for kids." Frank Swietek of One Guy's Opinion awarded the film an F rating and stated in his review "In terms of the age level, Zoom stands somewhere between Baby Geniuses and The Adventures of Pluto Nash, but it's just as bad as both of them." Director Peter Hewitt's career was sent into nowhere after this film imploded at the box office.
Box Office
The film opened up at #9 on its opening weekend with a domestic gross of $4,510,408. The film later made a total domestic gross of $11,989,328. In foreign countries, it made $516,860. Overall, the film grossed $12,506,188 against its $75 million budget.
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for one Golden Raspberry Award for Tim Allen as Worst Actor for this film, The Santa Clause 3 and The Shaggy Dog, but was beaten by Marlon Wayans for Little Man. Instead, the film won four Stinker Bad Movie Awards for Tim Allen, Chevy Chase, Spencer Breslin, and for being a Foulest Family Movie.
Trivia
- The film's release was delayed due to a lawsuit filed by Fox and Marvel Comics. Zoom was initially intended to premiere two weeks before X-Men: The Last Stand, but it was alleged that the script for Zoom was too similar to the X-Men film franchise and would "confuse" viewers.
- Spencer Breslin revealed in an interview with Timothy Kandra (who did an analyzed review of the film) that he was disappointed with how the film turned out since it was different from what they filmed.