Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review

Theatrical review

In the battle between Marvel and DC, I fall pretty firmly in the Marvel camp, or at least in the MCU camp. But admittedly, things have been rocky in the MCU for the last little bit. Not bad, but faltering after an amazing wrap up to the first decade. And while the DCEU has been uneven in quality, there have been some bright spots. One of my favorites in the past few years was the first “Shazam!” As such, I have been looking forward to David Sandberg’s sequel, “Shazam! Fury of the Gods.” 

Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is an 18 year old kid trying to figure out how to be the superhero Shazam (Zachary Levi) along with all of his siblings, unaffectionately named by their city as “The Philly Fiascos.” As the leader of their group, he wants their outings to be “all or none.” But Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) wants to ditch the group and go fight crime on his own. When new-girl-at-school Ann (Rachel Zegler) starts to show interest in him, he tries to impress her by showing his connection to superheroes. But when Ann turns out to be Anthea, the Greek goddess, she calls in her sisters Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu) to help retrieve the powers that believe this young group of superheroes stole from them.

This is a really fun movie. The pacing is absolutely great. At just over two hours, I felt like it really flew by. The fight scenes are interesting and while it is full of CGI monsters and lightning bolts and opposing beams being shot at each other, for the most part that looks good. Plus it has a dragon, and we don’t get those often enough. 

The performances are also generally good, and it seems like everyone had a good time. It is super entertaining to watch Mirren get smashed into the ground and then turn around and give as good as she gets. It felt like Levi played Shazam as younger than an 18 year old kid who probably had to grow up faster than a lot of his peers because of his past, but it’s a pretty silly movie and it seems to be aware of that. 

But despite all of this, I still enjoyed the first movie more, and it’s largely because of the story beyond the superhero story. It hit on the themes of abandonment and found family really well and it gave us more than just a guy in a cape fighting bad guys. This movie seems to want to have some deeper themes, but whether they ended up cut for time or pacing or just never fully written in the first place, they never felt fleshed out to me. I found myself wishing for something a little deeper to happen and it never did.

Regardless, if you’re looking for a fun afternoon at the movies and want to see an ancient, magical ChatGPT, you probably won’t be disappointed in this one.

This review first appeared in The Dominion Post on March 19, 2023.