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Shazam! Fury of the Gods Movie Review

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a 2023 superhero film directed by David F. Sandberg and starring Zachary Levi. It is such a mediocre sequel that was a huge disappointment for me.

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“Stick to saving the world, kid“

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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. When the first ‘Shazam!’ movie was released, it was a breath of fresh air. A children’s comedy in essence, it benefited from fun humor, a big heart and refreshingly low stakes.

This sequel, however, changes all of that to very bad results. It obviously suffered from a terrible case of sequelitis. Everything is bigger, louder and dumber in this movie. The stakes are higher, and yet I still did not feel that anybody was ever in real danger. The action was more spectacular, yet it was never entertaining whatsoever. And it employs many more jokes this time around, but very few landed. The original was much funnier.

Even the characters fared worse. Zachary Levi is still very fun in the main role, but unfortunately he got less cool and/or funny stuff to do in this sequel, which suffered from having too many characters to juggle constantly. Jack Dylan Grazer is still a wonderful sidekick character and their sibling relationship was dynamic and fun. Of the other siblings, the smallest sister was just as adorable as before and Pedro now being openly gay did lead to some highly amusing moments.

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Of the new characters, the daughters of Atlas get to have the biggest roles, but none are particularly memorable. Rachel Zegler, Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren are great talent to bring to this table, but they all needed much meatier roles. I was missing the villain from the previous movie as he was much more menacing and memorable.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods has a much bigger focus on Greek Mythology and fantastical elements, even going so far as to include unicorns, a dragon and various other cool creatures. I actually really liked these elements as the unicorns and the dragon looked different than others of its type in similar media. However, the action scenes remained uninspired, too loud and dull with the third act being particularly chaotic and tiresome.

The first half is, on the other hand, too slow and uneventful, and the whole movie had a plot that was so inconsequential and uninteresting. The lack of strong humor was problematic, though the Wonder Woman cameo was slightly amusing. The film added way too many superheroes and villains into the mix, thus losing the special sauce of the first film, which was a sense of magic and awe.

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