Shazam: Fury of the Gods Review
A nonsensical and deeply flawed sequel, that’s overstuffed, overlong and completely infuriating.
Billy AKA Shazam (Zachary Levi) and his super powered family are tackling crime in their city as best they can. But Billy’s fear of being kicked out of his foster home when he turns 18 is manifesting as overbearing. He won’t let his family do superhero stuff without him. His brother Freddy particularly chafes at this, but when he goes off by himself, he is captured by the Daughters of Atlas (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), who are looking for revenge after the wizard stripped their realm of magic - the same magic that Billy and his family have. Billy and the rest of his family must find a way to rescue Freddy, save the city of Philadelphia, and come to grips with their age and superpowers.
Directed by David F. Sandberg, this sequel opens strong. Zachary Levi is, as always, completely magnetic as Billy / Shazam. He’s charming, gives it his all, and frequently elicits laughs. Despite continuing to be completely at odds with the performance of the younger actor playing the child version of the character, Levi’s infantile and juvenile performance is nevertheless the highlight of the movie; a complete joy to watch.
To their credit, the rest of the actors and actresses in this piece know exactly the kind of film they are in. Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu ham it up wonderfully, and in particular it is nice to see Mirren continue her late domination of this genre from her work in the Fast and Furious franchise - revelling in the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
Ultimately, Shazam: Fury of the Gods fails where it matters most; in the plot department. The first Shazam was a rollicking fun time that had an admittedly tenuous grasp on the plot elements - the Wizard relatively calmly lost his powers to a mortal, the rest of his family immediately knew how to use their powers when gifted them in the final fight despite Billy needing the full movie to learn them. However, it rooted everything in a level of worldliness and ground level understanding that meant the fun of it all smoothed over those bumps. Who didn’t love Billy trying out his new powers for Freddy’s YouTube, or the jokes Billy dropped into his mid-air fight with Mark Strong’s villain.
Here, the plot is just too fantastical to be engaging. Most frustrating is the Wizards’ staff, which the Daughters of Atlas use to strip the family’s powers at will by blasting them with a lightning bolt. Seemingly intent only on stripping every last family member of that power, when they are given that opportunity in the very first fight they decide, completely bafflingly, to not. Instead, they strip Freddy’s powers, and then retreat to work out how to remove the powers of the remaining family - despite the fact that THEY WERE JUST THERE!
But it’s not just the Daughters of Atlas who mess about with this macguffin. Billy himself gets the staff twice, and both times is perfectly able to use it to strip the Daughters of Atlas themselves of their power, but instead decides to toss it to Freddy, or fly around Philadelphia keeping it from the evil doers.
There’s still fun to be had here. But the levelling up of the villainy outside of something that makes sense for this hero, the overstuffed family aspect of the piece, and the completely creatively bereft plot, make this a harder to stomach outing than the original.
