Shazam! Fury of the Gods

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D+

               I quite liked the original Shazam!, which served as a nice departure from the overly self-serious tone of the DC films of the time. Feeling more like an Amblin production from the 80s than a modern superhero film, it was a fun, lighthearted, child-centric film that also had weight to it. This sequel is going for the same effect and has its heart in the right place, but the whole effort just feels off. Maybe it’s the overlong script or the generic villains or the unfortunate effects of passed time or a combination of all three, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods never manages to capture the fun of the original and most often just feels like an entirely unnecessary obligation.

               Set a couple of years after the first movie, Billy Batson is now in high school and must balance growing up with his role as the superhero Shazam. Joined by his super family of step siblings, Shazam must now contend with the arrival of the three daughters of Atlas, whose father was killed by the wizard Shazam and now they are seeking revenge. Through a whole lot of unnecessary subplots and characters, the film brutally stretches that concept to an unmanageable 2 hours and 10 minutes.

               The first Shazam!, released in 2019, was a superhero version of Big and time has not been kind to that concept. There is a simple reason why there isn’t (yet) a sequel to Big: the idea doesn’t work when the kid is no longer a kid. For an adult, four years isn’t that long. But for a kid, it’s a frigging eternity. It’s 2023 and Asher Angel, who plays Billy, is now 21 years old and yet still transforms into a different actor when he “transforms” into an adult. Even more distracting, Zachary Levi, who plays the adult Shazam, is still playing the character like a 14 year-old boy in a man’s body. Scientifically speaking, the result is fucking weird. The kid version now acts more adult than the adult version does and the charm of the character is gone.

               The rest of the Shazam family is a mixed bag. The oldest is Mary Marvel and she’s supposed to be 21 (I think, based on a couple of drinking jokes), but she’s played by the 27 year-old Grace Caroline Currey. Although she’s also too old now to maintain the spirit of the original, the film somewhat acknowledges this by no longer having her transform into a different actress when she becomes a superhero (the logic of this not extending to Shazam himself isn’t addressed). A downside of this (or upside, depending on how you look at it) is that she is now really hot. Like really, distractingly hot. As with the adult-child Billy, this gives the film a vibe that just always feels odd. There are two other male members of the Marvel family, though I’m not sure why we needed both of these guys. I often forgot that there were two of them until they stood next to each other and I’ll be damned if I remember a thing about them. The funniest new Marvel is Meagan Good as the grown-up version of 4 year-old Darla because she has, by far, the most material to work worth in terms of the age difference. Other than her, the film’s biggest laughs come from a sentient pen and that’s never a good sign.

               The incredibly generic villains don’t help matters and make this feel like a comic book movie from the genre’s darkest days in the early 2000s. Despite the best efforts of Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler, these are some of the lamest, paint-by-numbers villains that I’ve seen in some time and I’ve seen all of the Phase 4 Marvel movies. These actresses do their damndest to inject some personality into them, but their efforts are futile with a script that presents little more than stock take-over-the-world villains that never manage to capture a moment of menace or credibility. I wasn’t expecting brilliance here, but I wasn’t expecting to wonder if this script has been sitting on a shelf since the days of Elektra and Catwoman either. This film certainly isn’t as bad as those, but does capture that “we have no fucking idea what we’re doing” feeling of the early-mid 2000s comic book movies.

               Before wrapping up, I have to mention the hilarious Wonder Woman cameo. It’s not funny in terms of jokes or clever writing, but rather in the sense that I’m supposed to believe that Gal Gadot ever shared a moment on set with these other actors. Whenever you see Wonder Woman’s face, none of the other actors are in frame. When the other actors are in frame, you only see her from the back or from the waist down. It’s honestly really damn funny and I have never seen such blatant shenanigans in a movie with a budget this big. With a budget of $120 million you couldn’t get Gal Gadot on set for one frigging day? You’re not fooling anybody, you know. And, as bad as most of the DC movies have been, it’s mighty sad if this is the last time that we see Gadot suited up as Wonder Woman.

               I’m really trying to come up with something nice to say here. I really am. I liked the first movie and this movie seems to have its heart in the right place even if the screenwriters largely phoned it in. The actors are trying to recapture what worked about the first movie, but that’s the problem with kid actors: time changes things very, very quickly. I’ve seen worse superhero movies lately, but this was honestly kind of sad and awkward to watch.

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam!Fury_of_the_Gods#/media/File:Shazam!_Fury_of_the_Gods(2023)_Main_Poster.png