Shazam! is a fun and funny movie that will appeal to both young kids and the young at heart — but that isn’t a mold that every DC film should follow.

If you took even just the quickest glance at the headlines for all the glowing, overwhelmingly positive reviews of Shazam!, you’d see one word come up over and over again: fun.

That word, very quickly followed by the words ‘funny,’ ‘entertaining’ and ‘joyful.’

Make no mistake — I had the opportunity to watch Shazam! last week during the Fandango early screenings, and it is indeed as fun, funny and joyful as all the reviews (my own included) have said it is. (Read my Shazam review.)

And that’s exactly as it should be.

Shazam! is about a normal 14-year-old who is suddenly granted the strength of Hercules, the speed of Mercury, the powers of Zeus — and that’s just three out of his six total powers. Of course it’s going to be a fun and funny adventure. It’s a movie that centers around the literal wish fulfillment of a teenage boy — for it to not be imbued with an upbeat sense of joy and enthusiasm would be a terrible misstep.

But just because this DC superhero movie is characterized by its lighter tone and funny scenes doesn’t mean that every DC movie going forward now and forever ought to be the same.

In fact, it would be a step in the wrong direction for the DCEU if Warner Bros. took the positive reaction to this particular movie and decided to mandate that same kind of tone for all their films moving forward.

Luckily, producer Peter Safran feels likewise, and while he likely doesn’t represent all of Warner Bros. decision-making team, I’m guessing he has a pretty good read on the pulse among the powers that be.

In a brief interview on the red carpet of the Shazam! premiere (embedded below), Safran was asked how Shazam! was going to impact how DC movies are going to be made going forward.

His response, in short, was basically — it won’t.

In length, what he said was:

Every movie that we make should have the right tone for that particular character. Shazam is such a fun character — he’s all about wish fulfillment, he’s fun and funny and that’s the tone that you should have for the film… each tone has got to be specific for each movie.

As I’ve mentioned before, Warner Bros. has described itself as being a director-driven universe. And while that hasn’t always been true — what with how reactive they’ve been with past films and how much they’ve interfered with directors’ visions in the past — it seems as though, moving forward, they’re trying to stick with that descriptor more faithfully.

Which means trusting each director to bring the appropriate tone, storyline and style to each of the characters they’ve been given, so that James Wan is allowed to give Aquaman a sprawling plotline and fantastic feel, Patty Jenkins is given space to make Wonder Woman a more traditional narrative with an optimistic tone, and David Sandberg is given free reign to make a fun and funny Shazam! movie.

Director David Sandberg echoed this sentiment in his own red carpet interview.

Our only mandate was to make the best ‘Shazam!’ movie you can, which was great that we didn’t have to set up these things for the future, or you have to include these things or you can’t include these things.

Going even further, Safran shut down any fears (or hopes) that the lighthearted, sunny tone of Shazam! would be an enduring feature of all DCEU films going forward, firmly stating that there was still room for dark superhero movies because “there are certain characters — like Batman, like the Joker — that tone is perfect for them, that’s what you really want to see.”

Which is a statement that should make one go — yeah, no duh! — but really fills me with relief more than anything.

I’ve written about my love for darker superhero movies enough on here and elsewhere to make it obvious that I see both the appeal and necessity of exploring the darker side of superheroes, but it’s a relief to see that those in charge of making and — equally as important — financing superhero movies feel the same.

There’s an unfortunate conflation with modern superheroes that a good superhero movie has to be a fun or funny superhero movie. As if the inherent silliness of a bunch of grown men and women running around in tights, wanting to and succeeding in saving the world is the only aspect of superheroes on which we ought to focus.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t focus on how fun it would be to be a superhero, how funny it can be, how cool it honestly is — those are all things that are part of the superhero experience, and I enjoy watching movies about them.

I’m simply saying that those facets of the superhero experience aren’t the only ones on which we should focus, and to ignore all other sides or stories of superheroes does a disservice to the genre as a whole.

There’s room enough in both the superhero genre and within specific cinematic universes for all sorts of superheroes and superhero stories — funny ones, hopeful ones, tragic ones and fantastical ones. There’s a place for darker comic book movies right alongside uplifting ones, thoughtful superheroes alongside more traditional bruisers.

The wide variety of powers, story arcs, characters and tones in comic books themselves is one of the best things about the medium. It gives you the ability to find a story and a character that appeals to your particular wants and wishes, even if it doesn’t appeal to someone else’s.

Superhero movies should mirror that kind of variety rather than trying to shy away from it. They should give us a wide spectrum of character types, tones and storylines rather than smoothing away all distinctive features of their films and characters in an effort to fit a particular mold or mandate.

So here’s to a weird and wondrous Aquaman, a fun and funny Shazam!, and a dark and gritty Birds of Prey — and most of all, here’s to the cinematic universe that lets them exist all at once.