Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Starring: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Rachel Zegler, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Djimon Hounsou, Adam Brody, Meagan Good, Diedrich Bader, Gal Gadot, and Mark Strong, with a cameo from Wolf Blitzer
Grade: C-

Despite the amount of times Shazam does the “Made you look” trick on one of the gods, I totally see this working in a real scenario for some reason.

Summary

In the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, a tour guide talks about the mythical staff of the gods, the staff that Billy Batson/Shazam (Levi) broke in half in the first Shazam after taking it from Thaddeus Sivana (Strong) in the climax of the film. The tour guide is interrupted by the daughters of the Titan Atlas in Hespera (Mirren) and Kalypso (Liu). Dressed in full soldier outfits, they push off the glass holding the staff and both women hold one half of the staff to gain its power. A security guard tries to grab Kalypso, but she turns him against the crowd of people. Once this guy attacks a stranger, he transfers his power to them and they turn evil too, with this continuing until almost everyone there is causing chaos. As everyone else tries to freak out and escape, Hespera turns them all into statues. Kalypso talks about the destruction they can cause, but Hespera reminds her that they can’t do anything while the staff remains “sundered”. Champions of this realm outnumber them, though Kalypso says, “Human champions are still humans, and we are gods”. Even so, Hespera notes they can’t underestimate the decision-making of the Wizard (Hounsou) because he would only choose those who inherit his powers with meticulous precision.

Of course, this cuts to Billy Batson in his adult body as Shazam in therapy, talking about how he’s unsure if he’s deserving of his powers and comparing himself unfavorably to guys like The Flash, Aquaman, and Batman. He feels as if he’s fraud, but he can’t tell his family. The doctor in charge explains he’s actually a pediatrician and not a therapist. Thinking quickly, Shazam explains that he came highly recommended by his patient Billy Batson, since the doctor doesn’t know they’re the same people. With his best guess, the doctor suggests he’s suffering from imposter syndrome, which originates from trauma early in life. He asks how well Shazam remembers his childhood. Since he’s still sort of in the middle of it, he talks about how he never met his dad, how his mom abandoned him at a Christmas carnival, how he spent a lot of time in the foster system, ran away from 11 homes, got into a lot of fights, and he tells the doctor how he was abducted by the wizard who gave him superpowers and died in front of him. Then, he goes on about the whole villain arc of the first Shazam until the doctor stops him there. They try to unpack how he’s been rejected by family and the city (pointing out this headline on a newspaper when Billy questions the latter), but Billy cuts it short to go back home. He switches back into his normal form as a 17-year-old (Asher), and he plays war video games with his foster brother Eugene (Ian Chen) since Eugene argues that it’s good practice for their job as superheroes. As you may remember from the previous film, all of the foster kids have the power to switch into adult superheroes after Billy transferred the power to them with the staff.

As their foster dad Victor (Cooper Andrews) tells the landlord that the house keeps getting struck by lightning, foster sister Mary (Grace Caroline Currey) yells at Darla (Faithe Herman) for putting Skittles in her pocket as a prank. After waiving this off, Darla goes back to working on her diorama of Genghis Khan getting killed by unicorns, so Victor gives her props for it.

I can’t imagine what subject this project is for.

Afterwards, Eugene tells Darla that unicorns aren’t real, but she refers to “speculative history” and tells him to look it up. Meanwhile, foster mom Rosa (Marta Milans) is watching baseball with their other foster son Pedro (Jovan Armand). Billy notices his foster brother Freddy (Grazer) listening intently to his earphones. Apparently, there’s another crime in progress, so they’re both excited to go. However, Freddy wants to go with just Billy. Billy still has an all-or-none mentality, so he alerts the other kids with their code phrase of “Man, it sure is a beautiful day in Philadelphia”. The rest of the kids aren’t too excited to join them, though they relent. Victor and Rosa ask where they’re going, so Darla says they’re going to fight crime. The parents accept this response jokingly, as they aren’t aware of their superhero exploits. They all say bye, but Billy still calls Rosa by her first name instead of “mom” on the way out. Victor tells her to give it time. The kids transfer into their superhero bodies (Adam Brody, Meagan Goode, D. J. Cotrona, Ross Butler) and save many from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge breaking. They save the people, but the bridge still collapses. As a news reporter interviews Freddy in his superhero form of Captain Everypower and tells him how the city has dubbed their team the “Philadelphia Fiascoes” for their mixed results, Victor and Rosa watch the report on TV. Victor seems intrigued and is about to check on the kids, but they all show up back at the house just as he gets up from the couch.

Later, the kids all go back to the lair, which is set up at the Rock of Eternity. Billy talks about how the news media trashing them is bullshit and then asks where Eugene is at. A disinterested Mary tells him he’s mapping out the Room of Doors. Billy goes and collects him for their meeting and finds each door with a note on it, as Eugene has explored every portal to deem if it’s safe or not. As Billy calls for him, Eugene flies out of a door and tells him not to go in that one. Back at the meeting Billy holds, he talks about what they should work on and such, but no one seems to give a shit other than him. Mary is looking at organic chemistry, so Billy jokingly comments that someone “with friends” wouldn’t say that. She counters with the fact that she would have friends if she went to college, but she couldn’t because of what happened to her. Billy tries to continue with his presentation, but it quickly falls apart. Freddy is busy, Eugene wants to test the goo that’s on him from the portal door adventure he had, Pedro wants to watch the Phillies game, and Darla decides she has to give the kitten that she stole from one of the citizens she saved at the bridge back. Seeing Billy’s frustration, Mary tries to explain that it’s okay for everyone to spread their wings a little bit. It doesn’t mean he’ll “lose them like he did his mom”. This was a low blow of a line from Mary, but it was well-intentioned. Billy turns 18 in five months, meaning he will age out of the foster system. Though they have still taken care of Mary despite her age, she does point out that Victor and Rosa have trouble paying the bills as it is, and they’re not getting the checks from the government like they did before to feed or house Mary since she aged out. Soon, they won’t have the money for Billy either.

She has to get a job and eventually leave home. At some point, Billy will have too as well.

Elsewhere, the imprisoned and original Shazam is visited by Hespera and Kalypso. They show that they possess magic now, which shocks him because this realm was sealed off from magic. Hespera agrees with the notion, though she blames the old wizard for ripping it from her father’s core, every god in this realm, and her. Apparently, the power he took from Hespera was the power of elements. The wizard disagrees, saying he cast a barrier to prevent her kind from entering the human realm. The only way the barrier could be removed is if someone broke the staff. He is shocked to find out it that it was broken, as Kalypso shows him. He flips out and asks where the “champion” is but is interrupted by Hespera. She talks about how it was his hands that forged this staff for their father, and he will be forced to mend it. He refuses, preferring death over helping them. However, their power forces him against the bars of his jail. Powerless, Kalypso forces him to say “Shazam” as his hands are forced by their magic to bring the staff together to give it life once again. They throw him against the wall, with Hespera telling Kalypso they are officially at war.

At school, Freddy bumps into the new kid Anne (Zegler) and immediately falls for her. The two bullies interrupt to talk to her, so Freddy makes fun of them and gets his ass kicked. They even break his crutch. Thankfully, a teacher named Mr. Geckle (Bader) stops them from going any further.

Not sure why he didn’t suspend them on the spot for beating up a physically disabled kid but whatever.

Afterwards, Anne praises Freddy’s courageousness and humor and calls him a “hero”. He walks her to class, and they discuss how he was the kid who is friends with all the superheroes, as shown in the first movie when he had lunch with Shazam and Superman in front of everyone. They finally tell each other their names after some awkwardness on Freddy’s part. Once she walks into her class, one of the bullies nails him with a football and he hits the ground. Even so, he can’t stop smiling. Back with the original Shazam, he sends out a spell to find out who is responsible for the disaster involving the staff. In Paris, Billy/Shazam sits with Wonder Woman at a restaurant. When he thinks he’s going in for a kiss, the original Shazam appears on Wonder Woman’s face and tells Billy he’s in danger and the daughters of Atlas are coming for him. They want to destroy the world and torture mankind for all eternity in the Pit of Endless Agony. Additionally, he tells Billy he regrets choosing him. Because of what he’s done, the barrier between the world has been brought down, and they will be hunted. He tries to tell Billy one very important thing to make sure the daughters of Atlas don’t do but before he can say it, he’s electrocuted. Just then, Billy wakes up from his dream. He looks over to see Freddy isn’t in his bed. Per usual, Freddy is out fighting crime by himself in his adult form of Captain Everypower.

The next day at school, Anne joins Freddy in the cafeteria and they bond over their annoyance of their older siblings. Billy interrupts them, so he can talk to Freddy in private about the old wizard returning in his dreams even though he thought he was dead. Freddy suggests they are astral projection powers and he’s trying to contact him from beyond like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Billy says he’s going to hold another meeting for the family after school. Freddy is fine with this and says he has nowhere else to go, prompting Billy to show him the news report of Captain Everypower’s most recent mission. Later, they all have a meeting at the lair where Billy tries to stress the importance of the wizard’s message, but it gets off track because no one cares. He talks about how the daughters of Atlas are coming after them and he did some basic research to find that their mother was Nyx, the goddess of Night and Death. A hungover Mary reads the article Billy pulled up, and it says the daughters guard the mythic Tree of Life. It grows golden apples containing the seeds of life which gave birth to their realm, and it’s protected by a dragon. The group starts to become a little more interested, but they only really start to get involved because of Billy’s pleading for help to figure things out. Pedro takes them into a hidden part of the lair filled with magical floating books and an all-knowing (but silent) pen named Steve. Pedro encourages them to ask Steve anything, so Billy asks about the daughters of Atlas. Steve writes down a bunch of book titles to look up somewhere in the room, as Mary wonders where Freddy is since obscure mythology is his thing. Meanwhile, Freddy is hanging out with Anne on the roof of the school building, and she asks if he actually knows his superhero friends or if it’s all bullshit. To show her, he acts like he calls Captain Everypower, and he shows up in superhero form to talk to Anne.

Back at the lair, Mary reads aloud from one of the books that gods considered humans servants, toys to be played with, or even children to be punished. Eventually, there was a rebellion where the humans turned on the gods. Eugene reads how all of this revolves around a powerful weapon. Atlas crafted a quarterstaff from the Tree of Life, and he used this staff to give powers to certain deities but also to take away powers from others. So, the staff is where Atlas stored all of his supernatural power. It’s described as a “battery for magic” by Eugene. When things got bad, a council of human wizards got together, stole the staff from Atlas, and used it to take his powers away. Once they had his magic, they used it to go after other gods. The powers they stole were the one’s announced by the original Shazam when he gave his powers to Billy. After they make fun of Billy’s cluelessness and how he always asks Mary for help, Mary says that once the staff contained the powers of the gods, the wizards apparently encased the God Realm in a magical sphere, sealing it away forever and cutting it off from magic. As we know, the barrier is broken now, and Eugene shows them the news report of Hespera and Kalypso breaking into the museum and stealing the staff. They wonder how it ended up in Greece, so Billy admits that after he broke the staff in the first movie, he just left it there.

Everyone unfairly flips out on him since they all want to be the kings and queens of hindsight, but none of them knew the significance of what Billy did at the time, so I can’t really blame him.

Regardless, breaking the staff broke the barrier between worlds. They also find out that Atlas has a third daughter named Anthea, but they don’t know what she looks like. Billy makes the connection right away. Anthea is Anne.

Back on the rooftop, Freddy, still in his form of Captain Everypower, is talking to Anne but he’s attacked by Hespera and Kalypso. Then, Hespera uses the staff on him and takes away his power, revealing his regular teenage self to Anne’s shock. This was a setup for the superhero but not for Freddy, so she seems genuinely apologetic for this. Mr. Geckle shows up on the roof to ask what’s going on, but Kalypso infiltrates his mind and convinces him to kill himself by jumping off the roof. Anthea then messes with the construction of the building with her power, and Hespera kicks away Freddy’s crutch and demands to know where the rest of the group is. Right after she says this, Billy starts flying in in. Anthea takes out Billy by moving around the city’s buildings. The rest of the family flies together and heads towards them. Kalypso is ready to take them all out, but Anthea tells her to yield because they’re here for the Seed of Life. Hespera agrees and tells Kalypso to know her place and to stick to the plan. They threaten to kill Freddy if the heroes make another move, and they fly away on a makeshift platform from the roof of the building. Billy flies after them. As this happens, Hespera makes an impenetrable shield over the city. The shield closes over Billy mid-flight and the villains escape with Freddy. The news media puts the blame on the Philadelphia Fiascoes for what has happened.

Freddy is imprisoned with the original Shazam and realizes it almost immediately. He asks about his supposed death, but the wizard explains that once he gave away his power, he could no longer remain in his realm. He now sits in his cell and thinks about his regret of giving his powers to children and having them squander it. Freddy tries to get him to help escape, but the wizard has come to accept their situation and is of no help. Now, Shazam and his family of heroes have to figure out how to defeat the daughters of Atlas and save Freddy, despite being stuck in a sphere.

My Thoughts:

With all the discourse revolving around the hit-or-miss quality of the DCEU and the crumbling of the universe they were trying to make pre-James Gunn, a sequel to the successful Shazam! was exactly what we needed to ignore the noise. Had Shazam! Fury of the Gods built on what the previous film did right and upped the ante with as much depth as the first film had regarding the relationships of the family members and the storyline involving the villain, we could have had Zachary Levi stake his claim as the untouchable cinematic version of Billy Batson/Shazam. Sadly because of the failure of this sequel, his status in the rebranded version of Gunn’s DC universe is questionable at best, which is totally unfair to him. As I’ve said previously, the Shazam! franchise has created a fan in me of the talents of Levi and what he brings to the table as a lead. For all intents and purposes, what happened in this sequel was not his fault. He was still the right choice to be the main actor of this series. Even so, Fury of the Gods was a major step backward and a potential nail in the coffin.

It starts with the villains. Star power for lesser-known characters is important, and DC has gotten better about this in some of their films. On paper, Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu being attached to the project in general does help out. Along with a burgeoning young star like Rachel Zegler being a nice 6000-year-old love interest for Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy, I don’t hate the idea of three daughters of Atlas taking on Shazam and his family, but it just never clicked. Liu’s performance was wooden and one-dimensional, Mirren was underutilized, and the obvious difference in age and looks only added more distracting questions as to what was going on. Their Greek mythology backstory was excessively convoluted, and you don’t truly catch every detail unless you rewatch the film, which becomes increasingly difficult because of the exorbitant length of the movie and less amusing antics of everyone involved this time around compared to the first film. There’s no shock factor and never enough depth or emotion in the screenplay to truly make us care about this trio of gods. Anthea/Anne being helpful to the heroes is almost confirmed as soon as Freddy is captured, and Kalypso being the vengeful sister that may be more of a problem is obvious as soon as all three sisters share the same scene together. The problem is that Kalypso isn’t written strong enough for us to give a fuck, and Liu doesn’t give us anything we haven’t seen before from a god/villain standpoint. If anything, it would make more sense for Helen Mirren’s Hespera to be the “bad sister”, but this was probably avoided because an evil British monarch/god is something we’ve seen even more of. However, the only reason I say this is because if this trio of sisters was the scenario we had to go with, we at least know that Mirren would have given her all in making this one-note villain worth the amount of screentime she gets.

Get mad all you want, but Lucy Liu didn’t have it in her. You could argue that Greek mythology/mythical monster stuff is just overdone at this point and that’s why all of their sequences are a bit of a bore, but with a good enough combination of writing and performance, you can make ANYTHING work. Sure, timing can play a factor, but careful writing and performance can overcome this. In Fury of the Gods, it was just lazily slapped together, with the hope being that the star names would elevate whatever was written. Sadly, the combined efforts of all three daughters of Atlas didn’t come close to what Mark Strong did as Thaddeus Sivana, who impressed me more in his post-credits cameo than Liu did in the entire second half of the film.

WIth that being said, they really stretched out the Mister Mind stuff over the course of two films. When is that fucking caterpillar going to do something?

If DC hadn’t gotten strong-armed by Dwayne Johnson, they could have dropped his below-average standalone Black Adam film and made him the main antagonist of this upsetting Shazam! sequel to replace the daughters of Atlas. Going in this direction, Shazam! gets a sequel worthy of the first one’s caliber, we don’t have to sit through a solo Black Adam film (because he never needed one anyway), and it would have done big enough numbers for both Levi and Johnson to easily save their statuses in the DCEU. As I’ve said before, Levi was the right choice for the role of Billy Batson and should stay as the live-action Shazam. Johnson is a big enough star to make the character of Black Adam something special and should continue playing the antihero in that regard, but the character isn’t interesting enough for its own film, and it’s been proven by what they put out. Making Johnson’s Black Adam the villain of Shazam! Fury of the Gods would’ve solved everyone’s problems. Unfortunately, Johnson is too much of an insufferable cunt to let Levi star in a movie centered around the hero if Johnson’s involved because “The Rock” has the audacity to think Black Adam is on the level of Superman when Shazam is supposed to be the guy. Because of Johnson’s ego, they both took massive “L’s” and now both franchises are dead in the water.

Good job asshole.

I’m not surprised. Even if they did a movie with both stars in it, I bet Johnson would still refuse to lose despite being the villain, so maybe it’s for the best.

Compared to the first film, the only one who continued to shine in the kid role was Jack Dylan Grazer. He was just as funny as he was before, there was serious thought brought into writing the progression of his character, and Grazer responded in kind by outacting everyone in the film, churning out the most well-rounded performance of everyone involved in the production. His scenes with Djimon Hounsou’s Shazam were gold and the highlighting of their contrasting personalities was really funny in the heat of the moment. His chemistry with Rachel Zegler was good enough for us to want them to pull it off despite Anthea being part of the problem, and his defiance in the face of villainy was not only supremely entertaining but admirable. Even without his superpowers, he’s able to show true heroism because of his strong mind and these moments resonate with us. This is why when Anthea delivers the basic line of “No, the most powerful thing about you, is you”, it hits much harder because of the way she says it, how it lines up with everyone’s actions, and the reactions of everyone involved. There is power in the line, despite its simplicity. It’s something that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness didn’t get when they threw out the classic ‘You had the power in you the whole time” line. If you go with a line as expected as that, you have to construct everything around it carefully for it to still mean something in this day and age, which is what Fury of the Gods is able to pull off. This only further proves my point that Xochitl Gomez wasn’t up for the challenge as America Chavez in that film. Rachel Zegler and a future star like Jack Dylan Grazer are, and this is why they were able to get so much out of a simple line delivery like that.

At times, you don’t even miss Shazam because Grazer’s Freddy carries his scenes with professionalism, a full understanding of his character, his limitations and motivations, his struggle in trying to escape while being disabled, and also trying to not give in to the daughters who want to kill his family. No offense to Adam Brody in the role of Captain Everypower, but Grazer’s Freddy was so good that I didn’t care if I saw the adult side of him. The strength of the character purely relied on the kid version of him. This was never the case with the Angel/Levi dynamic, but it goes to show you how committed Grazer was in his role as the amusing and lovable foster brother who finally fell for one girl and almost caused the destruction of humanity because of it. Besides Zachary Levi, the funniest moments of the film stem from Grazer arguing with Hounsou or trying to mess with the bad guys to stall for time (“Destiny’s Child did it better!”). With this and the It series under his belt, he’s sure to have a bright future.

Admittedly, I thought the segments with Steve the Pen were stupid at first, but they won me over with the characters not proofreading the all-important letters they sent out.

Fury of the Gods doesn’t hold up to the first Shazam! because of its lack of substance. It’s just nowhere near what the predecessor pulled off. The bulk of the movie is almost entirely superhero/supervillain action. The only way this could work is if we never saw a superhero movie before. Since we know this isn’t the case, we need something else for us to latch onto in terms of personal relationships and developments to fill out the story as a whole, or the action has to be AMAZING. We don’t really get that on either front. All they do is tease Billy potentially having to leave home when he turns 18, but you know damn well they aren’t going to kick him out of the house. Additionally, we know the family members aren’t going to split up because this would cause too much emotional trauma for a family friendly movie based around an orphan. Plus, there’s just not enough time to even get into those types of struggles with so much Greek mythology we’re trying to navigate through to understand the severity of the situation. Because of this, the action supersedes everything in importance, and we jump into the climax halfway through the movie, making the rest of the movie consist of predictable action sequences and we’ve-seen-it-before fight scenes. It goes on forever, dragging to the point where you’re not into the world-ending scenario nearly as much as you should be and despite the whole movie being about it. Even with all of the demons coming out of these sacks and attacking people, the kids combatting them with the humanity-loathing unicorns, and a giant dragon attacking the city, it still doesn’t carry the startling excitement it should. It just gets kind of boring and repetitive.

I would love to know how much Skittles paid to be promoted so heavily as ambrosia (or “nectar of the gods”) in this film. It must have been a fortune.

Also, right before the final showdown, there’s this stupid pause everyone in the film takes that doesn’t make any logical sense whatsoever other than trying to give us a last-ditch effort at trying to create an emotional moment for the good guys. It also further adds to the pacing problems of the action, which was already stretched out more than it needed to be. When a dying Hespera shrinks the dome over the city to contain the potential blast Billy intends on making, Kalypso fires her staff directly at the same spot of the sphere as she tries to get to her. Obviously, it doesn’t work because it’s impenetrable, but Kalypso knows that. Why does she spend ten minutes firing the staff at it then, knowing nothing will happen? It’s because we have to have the moment where Billy says goodbye to his family before he goes to attack her and there was no other way to write it in with the way they structured the screenplay. That’s it. However, this is incredibly fucking stupid on Billy’s part because if he went at her while she was distracted, he could take her out when she was unprepared. Going at things in the manner he did, he basically gave her time to get settled, so she can come at Billy with full strength. Again, from a narrative perspective, it makes no logical sense for everyone involved to take their sweet ass time, especially with Kalypso since she knows she can’t break the shield. This was purely a writing device to include an extra scene and it made everyone involved looked dumb from a story and technical aspect.

As much as I praise Levi for his take on Billy Batson, there seems to be a serious disconnect between his take as the adult Billy and Asher Angel’s take on the almost eighteen Billy in this sequel. Angel now being this excitable older child never feels right based off what we knew him for in the first film, but it’s like he’s trying to match Levi’s comedic energy. At the same time, Angel gets more serious when it comes down to it and it never lines up correctly with what Levi is doing, who never quite cracks the emotional parts of his scenes either. As opposed to the first film, they don’t feel like they’re playing the same person anymore, and it ruins the film’s ability to draw us into the more emotional moments that we should be invested in. For instance, think about the big finale where adult Billy decides to get the family out of the sphere and fight Kalypso and the dragon by himself. On paper, this is a moment that should border on tears because he implies that he’s going to sacrifice himself for his family, everyone in Philadelphia, and the people of the world. Jack Dylan Grazer comes to play and acts his heart out because Freddy is coming to the realization that his brother may not make it through this, but Levi doesn’t meet Grazer at this emotional level and plays it too strong in the face of danger. I understand he’s technically a superhero but since we know this is still a young adult inside of Billy, this feels like the wrong move, and we never feel the emotional connection we should in that very moment. It makes the ending too predictable as well. Also, Angel does a better job with the emotional scenes than Levi does, though in Levi’s defense he only got one opportunity to show this range and blew it.

Right before the elongated third act, he turns back into the child form of Billy to talk to Rosa where she explains how he’ll never age out of his home. This “calm before the storm” scene was handled much better than the world-ending scenario Billy finds himself in thirty minutes later in his adult form, which shouldn’t be the case because the stakes have only been raised in this moment of time. This should tell you all you need to know. Levi and Angel were never on the same page, and it was obvious. Levi’s Billy is kind of a dumbass, but Angel’s Billy is an optimist who works hard. How they could be so noticeably far apart without someone in production saying something seems odd. Even so, Levi at least saves his moments by being genuinely funny in a lot of scenes. The summit with Hespera (“I knew you were going to say that!”), annoying the villains in general, and arguing with the original Shazam was great.

On the other hand, there is a chance that the main character’s stupidity may start to frustrate you. In the first film, he seemed to have a way better handle on things despite being the novice he was to the superhero game. Here however, you’ll question more often than not, “What the fuck were you thinking?”. For instance, when he threw the staff towards Freddy and Kalypso just caught it instead, I almost turned off the movie. It’s just the beginning of his boneheaded decisions too like when he steals back the staff from Kalypso and instead of circling back to give Freddy and Anthea their powers back to help him (since Kalypso was slow in flying Ladon), he just flies away to escape. I have to keep reminding myself that the character is just a kid, and this is still a comedy. It only brings truth to the statement of the wizard when he tells Billy he doesn’t have a shred of wisdom, but his heart is wise. Nevertheless, how he didn’t see Hespera’s plan of getting captured purposely, so she could steal the golden apple from the Tree of Life in the Room of Doors, a room that can only be reached through the Rock of Eternity, is beyond me.

I am aware of how ridiculous that sounds out of context, but you’ll see what I mean once you watch the movie. She just spent like ten minutes beating their asses 3-on-1. You really thought a regular, unguarded locked cage was going to stop a god? Obviously, she set this whole thing up!

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My biggest issue is the same problem I had with Black Adam. There’s not a single solitary second where I thought Shazam was going to lose. Losing to a dragon would be as anticlimactic as it gets, but losing to a villain as boring as Kalypso? There’s no chance. Once again, Jack Dylan Grazer’s committed acting saves the immediate aftermath with him crying over Billy’s potential death, but we still don’t fall for it. Lie all you want. You know the main superhero of a franchise with his name in the fucking title isn’t going to die in the second part of a potential trilogy. It’s just not going to happen. What was even more ridiculous was the old wizard saying that Billy was a hero and a god, so he should be laid to rest like one. Why did they put him in an unmarked grave then? Then, to really try to make us believe Billy is dead, they have a small memorial service where everyone is dressed in their normal clothes, and no one is really that emotional (at least tease us!). If you didn’t see Billy coming back alive, you’re a fucking moron. There’s no way around it. I did like the idea of bringing in Wonder Woman to restore the power of the staff to bring him back from the dead though. That was a cool moment. Levi and Gal Gadot’s chemistry in this one-off scene was enough for me to want Shazam to meet the rest of the Justice League, which bothers me even more that we’ll never see it come to fruition because of the DCEU being dismantled.

Seeing the wizard come into the family house dressed like Serge Ibaka was amusing, but ending the film on him telling the group that Shazam’s name is Shazam couldn’t be a dumber way to end the movie.

Though some themes touched on are still good ones and there’s a heart buried in the depths of the narrative somewhere, it’s surface-level at best. This is why it shouldn’t be a shocking statement in saying Shazam! Fury of the Gods was a major disappointment on all levels after such a great start with the first film. They needed to build on the character development and depth they did so well before, along with the fighting and superhero stuff. Instead, they chose to go the Transformers route by becoming a predictable, action-focused superhero movie. It’s weird that they would preach family and even reference the Fast and Furious movies when writing this script but forget about the importance of the familial characters when it came down to it. With all of this being said, I still want a third film and I want Zachary Levi to stay as Shazam at the very least. Is this possible? You already have enough of a basis for a third movie when the wizard admitted to Billy, “For you, everyone can be worthy if given a chance”. This could be exactly the fuel needed for Thaddeus Sivana’s return since he wasn’t given that chance by the wizard, and Billy can use this as an opportunity to try and turn Thaddeus back into someone good. What direction they take the characters after this initial setup is entirely up to them, but if Mark Strong returns, Mister Mind is given a larger role of importance, and we get back to the basics of what made the first movie so good, you can save this franchise and make it last even longer.

Mr. Gunn, can you please not give up on Shazam!? You already said Blue Beetle is locked in long-term and that failed too…