by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
I am very disappointed. I wanted way more for Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Superhero movies are a dime a dozen these days, but what I feel has been lost a lot recently is a sense of joy and fun at the theater, in favor of a sense of “required viewing.” You miss one Ant-Man movie, and suddenly you don’t know what’s happening in the new Avengers flick. But the first Shazam! did not feel that way. It was easy going and was well crafted with good jokes, fun action, and characters that worked well off each other. Welp, that sense of whimsy is gone, friends.
Taking place a couple of years after its predecessor, Fury of the Gods picks up with Billy Batson/Shazam (Asher Angel and Zachary Levi) just trying to keep his makeshift superhero family together. They do their best to fight crime, but they are still learning, and their efforts aren’t always welcomed by the people in their home of Philadelphia. But their powers are needed when the daughters of Atlas, Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Hespera (Hellen Mirren), come to Earth to take back the godly powers that Billy and his family have now. With the help of his best friend Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), and Freddy’s new friend Ann (Rachel Zegler), Billy takes on the Kalypso and Hespera, knowing he must do everything to protect his family. But the sisters will stop at nothing, and will unleash monsters, terror, and terrifying power onto Billy’s home to get what they want.
Does that sound too bad? No. Honestly, it sounds like standard superhero schlock. Bad guys show up. They want revenge. Our hero defends his home/family/love. Throw in a few jokes and some CGI fights, and you’ve got yourself a good time at the local cineplex. But everything is done so half-assed that the good will bought by the first Shazam! is gone now. These new villains do not have a compelling reason to take down Billy and his family. All of the jokes that get spouted off by Billy, Freddy, or their family seem like softballs the writers stole from Twitter. The story is nothing new at all, and is frankly no more interesting than any of the other seven major superhero movies we got last year. It’s all mediocre work that frankly seems like the actors just showed up for a paycheck.
Speaking of the acting crew, Levi has done much better work in the past, and this zany, yappy performance seems like he’s the cool youth pastor who’s showing up in a skit for Wednesday night church. I know Levi has talent — he was hilarious in the first Shazam! and heartwarming in American Underdoga year ago. The man can do better than this, but no one told him to tone it back here and it shows. Honestly, there’s more emotional nuance when his younger counterpart is on screen. Asher bears most of the ethos of this movie and does it in about 20% of the screen time that Levi has. The rest of the cast is inoffensive and boring. Grazer is doing the witty sidekick thing we have seen a million times. Ziegler just came off an incredible showing in 2021’s West Side Story, but for being the most talented young person in the cast, she has less opportunity to show off that skill than Asher or Grazer. Why cast someone that talented if you won’t let them cook? The same could be said of both Liu and Mirren. I don’t know if the two had to demonstrate a single emotion outside of anger/vengefulness when they were on camera. It’s not their fault their characters are poorly written, but it would have been nice for them to act in more than one dimension.
Another halfway aspect of this movie is the actual fists and fury we see flying on screen. Most of the action seems incredibly fake, and what we do get is not inventive or exciting in the slightest. The film does its best to make the super-powered beings appear very strong, with them throwing each other through buildings or putting sizable dents into concrete and asphalt. But the whole of the action feels like a couple of toys just being bounced around in your bedroom, as opposed to an immersive combat scene.
Not everything is bad here. Djimon Hounsou is still the same ancient wizard with wisdom and cunning, but he is given more opportunities to joke and jest at his fellow cast members. The commentary he has about the oddity of their situation juxtaposes well when he gets to impart brief bits of wisdom to the young heroes. Of the cast, he is the obvious standout. And conversely to the bad acting, there are quite a lot of unique VFX shots here. One of the foes that Shazam faces has incredible control over the environment they are in and can alter the landscape they find themselves in. Seeing a world flip and rotate around them feels akin to films like Inception, and it adds an extra layer of fun to the visual aspect of the experience. One of the final foes for Shazam is a large CGI dragon that strikes fear into its enemies’ hearts. Wow, that dragon had an incredible design with its blue color and rocky detail.
The last thing I’ll say is how incredibly makeshift it all feels. There are so many subplots and random additions to the movie that feel incredibly tacked on. At the beginning, Billy has a ridiculous obsession with Wonder Woman that does not bear fruit until the literal last minute of the movie. Eugene (one of Billy’s family members, played by Ross Butler and Ian Chen) was shown mapping out a series of magic doors in their lair, and the plot point does not come back around ever. The monsters who rampage across the city know nothing, and have one of the most bizarre weaknesses that gets discovered by Billy’s little sister Darla (Faithe Herman and Meagan Good). While none of these items on their own are bad, they are examples of how unfocused this movie is. On the heels of a strong first movie, this franchise seems to have taken a fall from the sky.
Score: 4/10
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is currently playing in theaters
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