Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review

*Nothing really to spoil here, but still…

IMDB Synopsis

Bestowed with the powers of the gods, Billy Batson and his fellow foster kids are still learning how to juggle teenage life with their adult superhero alter egos. When a vengeful trio of ancient gods arrives on Earth in search of the magic stolen from them long ago, Shazam and his allies get thrust into a battle for their superpowers, their lives, and the fate of the world.

“Your real superpower is you.”

Where do we even start here? The DC Universe has been well documented on this blog and pretty much everywhere across the internet for the chaos it has created in the last Decade. We also know James Gunn has taken over DC Studios and has a plan moving forward that may or may not include characters we have seen in this universe before. Shazam is one of those characters so seeing this movie was very weird because you have no clue what the future of these characters are in the universe. It is also weird because the movie just is not very good and does not give me hope that these characters will be involved moving forward.

That being said, we are still going to discuss this movie in a vacuum. As we saw with the first Shazam (which was a surprising delight) the use of the Billy Batson’s family was one of the reasons the movie worked so well. So of course, they double down on that here and the family basically is the main character of the movie, not Billy. We get to see multiple stories from the siblings and what becoming heroes has done to all of them. While this is going on we have a plot with three sisters form the God real (Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler) who are trying to find an apple that will regrow their world (yes you read that right). Of course, the two stories converge and we get to see Billy grow into himself by the end of the movie.

What is still there from the original for sure is the humor, and the continued juxtaposition of kids being adults. They never over do and it always feels like the jokes are in the right spots, which I cannot say for some recent Marvel movies. The shooting of the movie though is what hurts this badly for me, because the movie just does not look good at all. The color pallets are completely drab and nothing in this world seems inviting or interesting at all. It just feels like they knew this movie was the end of an era and they did not put the effort in they needed to, in order to make it look like a true blockbuster.

Stock Watch

Stock Down – Zachary Levi

Not a good spot for Mr. Levi to be in right now. The movie was basically a flop and he has not really been doing much else besides a Faith based Kurt Warner movie. After CHUCK, I felt like he could really do anything, but to me it has not turned out like I wanted it to.

*A couple other tidbits

No one will ever convince me that the three sisters wanted to be in this movie and that it was not just a paycheck for them.
The Billy-Freddy dynamic was classic sequel creating tension kind of stuff, and for me it was not fun to see them at odds.
Was happy to see my guy Djimon Hounsou get to be a lot more fun in this than in most of his past work.

This movie was a disappointment for me in a lot of ways. The humor is still there for sure, but everything around it was so middle of the road to me. I hope this is just a placeholder and that the DC universe can get back on track at some point, but man it feels like I have said that thousands of times over the years.

Juice Rating: