Main cast: Zachery Levi (Adult Billy Batson/Shazam), Asher Angel (William Batson), Jack Dylan Grazer (Frederick Freeman), Rachel Zegler (Anthea), Adam Brody (Adult Freddy Freeman), Ross Butler (Adult Eugene Choi), DJ Cotrona (Adult Pedro), Grace Caroline Currey (Mary Bromfield), Meagan Good (Adult Darla Dudley), Faithe Herman (Daria Dudley), Ian Chen (Eugene Choi), Jovan Armand (Pedro Peña), Marta Milans (Rosa Vasquez), Cooper Andrews (Victor Vasquez), Rizwan Manji (Docent), PJ Byrne (Dr Dario Bava), Diedrich Bader (Mr Geckle), Lucy Liu (Kalypso), Djimon Hounsou (Wizard Shazam), and Helen Mirren (Hespera)
Director: David F Sandberg
Shazam! Fury of the Gods probably never had a chance to be more than a footnote in the history of superhero films, because the idiot Dwayne Johnson signed on to be Black Adam but then announced that he was too big a superstar to share screen time with peasant superheroes. Hence, he refuses to even put on a cameo appearance, much less play the primary antagonist to Shazam.
However, this doesn’t excuse the film from not delivering in other ways. Under other circumstances, considering how Black Adam is just a movie that slaps the main character’s name onto the Rock playing himself all over again, not having that Black Adam on any other DCEU movie is likely a blessing.
The main problem this one has, though, is that the novelty is gone. This movie however retreads much of the first film, utilizing tried and true and hence predictable tropes of teamwork, not giving up, et cetera that have been done many times before in any show that involves a bunch of people trying to work together to achieve a victory.
So once again, the “Shazamily”—oh god, please stop with that—are on the usual drifting apart, having differences phase, made worse by the fact that they are as often blamed for the problems caused by villains as they are in cleaning up these problems.
They will have to unite again, as the sisters Kalypso and Hespera plot to restore the Wizard’s wand so that they can use it to, depending on whom you ask, restore their father’s kingdom that was destroyed by the Wizard or obliterate all life on Earth.
Freddy falls for a new girl in school, Anne, but she turns out to be Anthea, the third sister, and this leads to his kidnapping by the sisters.
Wait… so Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler are sisters? They don’t even look alike! Their father had to be having unprotected sex pretty often in an, shall we say, international way when the dude was alive. Now that is one fellow who’s really into representing himself in as many different cultures as possible!
Oh, and Pedro Peña is now gay. How old is he? I’m not sure why Hollywood these days expect me to care so much about the sexuality of underage characters, but this movie isn’t the only one these days announcing that this and that underage character want to sleep with what and whom, and I can only wonder whether the people behind these things are projecting their own unholy desires onto their works in the name of “representation”.
Meanwhile, Diana Prince shows up as a deus ex machina and she also takes the underage Billy Batson out for a date. First she raped some guy, repeatedly, and now she dates an underage boy. Can we please stop this unwarranted character assassination of Wonder Woman? Maybe it’s a good thing that James Gunn is scrapping this whole mess of a DCEU, although who knows, maybe this would be a monkey’s paw situation and I’d end up with him casting his wife as the new Wonder Woman, shudder.
On the bright side, the comedy in this one works well. It’s integrated well into the plot, in the sense that this is clearly a movie aiming for a more family friendly tone, so the sitcom vibes fits perfectly. The comedy also doesn’t get in the way of the more poignant moments, thus in an odd but appropriate way, this one ends up being more of a MCU flick than the recent output from that other place. Billy has a nice line here about the Avengers, but given the current lineup of the next generation of Avengers… yeah, I’d probably stick with the Shazamily. Oh god, typing that word makes me die a little inside.
On the other hand. there are still too many members of that family that just take up space for the most part. This movie is actually more about Freddy, so I wonder if the original plan had been to push forward each member of the family in subsequent sequels. It’s not a bad idea, but here, I wish that there is actually more screen time dedicated to expanding Freddy’s character a bit more. In many ways, the other side characters are just clutter that don’t really add much to the story. In fact, they often get in the way of Freddy’s story arc.
Then there is one thing that increasingly annoys me: why are the adult versions of these characters far more juvenile than the actual-age teenagers? In the first movie, I can hand wave that as the giddy excitement of a teenage boy finally getting the opportunity to do adult things, but here, it perplexes me how far more mature these characters are when they are teens compared to their adult forms.
Still, this movie turns out to be pretty alright all things considered. It’s predictable due to the presence of so many familiar tropes played out completely straight without any effort to mix things up, but there are some nice action sequences, nifty special effects, and the cast members are fine. Zachary Levi really wants this movie to succeed, I can tell, because he’s really putting in a lot of effort to entertain me, and I appreciate that.
I just wish the story had been less cluttered and some of the extraneous characters removed. Sure, this may mean that the movie may be less humorous, but I’d take that if there had been more heart and soul showcased as a result of this.
Anyway, this movie is a bomb, which is a shame as it’s a perfectly watchable, if unremarkable, superhero flick. Then again, it’s another consecutive bomb under the brutally stupid Rachel Zegler’s name, so we may not see her around much anymore. This movie’s death on the box office line may not be in vain after all!
