One of the
inarguable bright spots in the much-maligned DC Extended Universe was 2019’s
“Shazam!”, directed by David F. Sandberg (“Lights Out,” “Anabelle: Creation”).
After a few years to grow (pun intended) and try to find a place within the
rest of the DC world, Sandberg is back in the director’s chair, with this
sequel being written by Chris Morgan (“Furious 7,” “Wanted (2008)”) and
returning writer Henry Gayden (“Earth to Echo,” “There's Someone Inside Your
House”). Can a bigger and more dangerous sequel to a film praised for its small
scale truly succeed in this market, or is this just kid stuff?
Set a few years after the events of the first film, “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” sees Billy Batson, played by Asher Angel (“Andi Mack,” “Darby and the Dead”), still trying to protect Philadelphia as the titular Shazam, played by Zachary Levi (“Tangled,” “Chuck”). He’s now joined by his foster family who’ve now been imbued with superpowers following the events of the first movie, and they must now face off against the Daughters of Atlas: Hespera, played by Helen Mirren (“Gosford Park,” “Trumbo”), Kalypso, played by Lucy Liu (“Charlie’s Angels (2000),” “Elementary”), and Anthea, played by Rachel Zegler (“West Side Story (2021)”).
It makes sense to return to Shazam as a character, not just in terms of creating a sequel, but also as a breath of fresh air. The character and the 2019 film felt like a reprieve from the grand scale of other superhero films, as well as a movie about kids that didn’t feel dumbed down or sanitized. So, with a modest box office success and a rare critical hit for DC, its easy to see the path forward: bring in other villains, keep the simplistic kid sensibilities, and keep with what worked before.
But that’s simply not what happens here. Instead, the story is bigger, the villains are meaner, and the film itself is far more complicated. There’s way more CGI centric fight sequences and way more time spent in a weird dimensional realm that feels out of place with the mythology set up in the first film. At times, despite featuring characters and plot elements ripped straight from his own comics, it feels like Shazam was plopped into a story not originally written for him. It’s not bad, but it fails to capitalize on what made the character fun in the first film and ends up feeling painfully routine as a result.
Levi is still fun as the titular hero, with a big goofy grin on his face for most of the adventure. Asher is also fun when he’s allowed to step out of the grown hero shell, because he’s definitely underutilized by the film. The rest of his foster family all get their little individual moments, but none of it feels natural. It instead ends up being a movie where the third act is full of “this is where this member of the group gets their five minutes to shine” moments. Even Freddy, played by Jack Dylan Grazer (“IT (2017),” “Luca”), gets a fraction of his screentime compared to the first film, despite being involved in a love story subplot with Anthea.
Everything here just feels far blander than in the first film. The antagonists, despite the best efforts of Liu, Mirren, and Zegler, are less interesting than even the already somewhat bland Dr. Sivana. Shazam’s arc feels cheap and not nearly as effective as it could’ve been thanks to some weird decisions; whoever decided that the emotional mother/son talk should occur while Billy is in Shazam form needs to be fired.
It all makes for a movie that, while it resembles the first on the surface and retains plenty of its elements, ends up feeling far blander than before. It says a lot that this film ends up feeling much longer than the first despite technically being two minutes shorter. Even without the comparisons to the first movie though, this is a totally serviceable but unremarkable movie. In a day and age with so many superhero films and shows around every corner, you can find a lot worse than “Fury of the Gods” but you can also find ones far better and far more memorable. 3/5
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