Shazam! Fury of the Gods: A DCEU Retrospective (Part 13)

Rating – 5/10

**SPOILERS**

The year is 2023. The DC Extended Universe is officially slated for discontinuation. 

Following Warner Bros’ merger with Discovery and the subsequent appointment of David Zaslav as president of DC Films, it had been determined that the franchise was in serious need of new leadership and redirection. After searching for a new creative director, in November 2022 Zaslav’s picks would take control. The picks? Longtime Warner Bros producer Peter Safran, and director of The Suicide Squad, James Gunn. 

Safran and Gunn would become co-CEO’s of DC Studios, the successor to DC Films. The pair announced their intention to overhaul DC properties, and Gunn would confirm that the previous plans for the future of the DCEU were being abandoned, the production of several films was being halted (including Wonder Woman 3, a finally reignited Man of Steel sequel, and future plans with Black Adam. What a shame), and that Gunn would be writing a new Superman movie with a recast title character. In January of 2023, a new slate of films would be announced for the DC Universe (DCU), the spiritual successor to the DCEU, but apparently only a “broad” but not total reset. Either way, the DCEU was essentially finished. 

That being said, Warner Bros was sitting on four more movies. So what was supposed to happen to them? None of them offered much of a clear ending to the DCEU, and what was the purpose of adding to or caring about a franchise that was functionally dissolved? Would they transition into the new DCU? Was James Gunn planning on finding a way to make them canon? No one had any answers, and it left the remaining films in an extremely unusual position. But, Warner Bros had spent too much money to cancel them, and so they released what felt like an awkward funeral procession. 

The first of these was Shazam! Fury of the Gods, the sequel to the 2019 original, itself one of the DCEU’s most well received films. It features the return of Billy Batson, his foster family, and their ability to turn into older, super-powered versions of themselves by saying the word Shazam, this time facing off against the Daughters of Atlas from Greek Mythology. The vast majority of the cast returns, as well as director David F. Sandberg. Because of all this, one might assume that Fury of the Gods could feasibly match the quality of its predecessor. 

Reviews however, were nowhere near as favorable. 

I do want to start with some positives however, as Sandberg makes notable improvements on the first film that should be acknowledged. Firstly, it’s great that Billy’s family gets more to do, and some more defined character traits. Mary, Pedro, and Eugene in particular get moments to shine and bounce off the other characters, and it’s nice to see them get to make a bit more of an impression. Jack Dylan Grazer returns as Freddie Freeman, and steals most of the scenes he’s in (luckily for us, as he’s the member of the family to spend the least amount of time in his adult form). He still has an excellent wit, and pairs extremely well with the wider variety of characters he shares the screen with this time around. Most importantly, Sandberg has made a much more visually interesting film. While not as distinct as some other films in the franchise, it’s a lot less flat than the first Shazam!, and Sandberg and his crew achieve some genuinely eye popping shots. The visual effects are improved as well. While they aren’t perfect effects, they’re much better than most of the DCEU’s other attempts, and their quality doesn’t distract from the rest of the film (they could be getting a boost from the fact that I watched Black Adam right before this one). 

Unfortunately, the flaws are significant, and the biggest (and hardest to avoid) comes from Zachary Levi as the (adult) Billy Batson/Shazam. Whereas I didn’t feel there was a disconnect between his performance and that of his younger counterpart, Asher Angel, in the first film, Angel and the character have both gotten older, and Angel’s performance reflects that. Levi however feels as though he’s doing the same thing as he was last time, not adequately adapting his performance and sticking out like a bit of a sore thumb with his more goofy, jokey approach. It’s not just that I can’t see Billy acting like Levi does, however. It’s the fact that I can’t see anyone nearing the age of 18 acting like Levi, as he ruins the illusion with every over-the-top joke and cringeworthy slang term (Levi uses far too many variations of the term “fam”). Levi desperately needed to take some of his scenes more seriously, especially as he gets saddled with most of the performance, including the emotional beats. 

In fact, David F. Sandberg’s biggest mistake in making this film is that Asher Angel, the clear best actor in the first Shazam!, gets maybe 4 or 5 scenes in the entire film. And in those scenes, he still does a good job, which I feel could be great if he had a chance to make it great. Angel was much more adept at handling the emotional beats than Zachary Levi in the first film, never punctuating them with an unnecessary, vibe killing joke, and what’s more is that even when Levi is doing a decent job, he never has the natural feel that Angel brings to the role. I’m certain this film would have been better received if we had more time with Asher Angel’s more grounded side of the character, as Zachary Levi never really gives us the chance to take this seriously, and becomes a little grating in doing so. 

This problem becomes compounded when you get an idea of the dramatic storylines and ideas Sandberg and the screenwriters are playing with this time. We have Billy dealing with imposter syndrome and the idea that he was never really worthy of his powers, as well as fears of aging out of the foster care system and having to leave his home and family, we have a bit of him not fully accepting his family (he calls his foster mom by her first name and not mom). These are good ideas that can make for an emotional story, but they aren’t given the attention necessary. For example, that bit with Billy and his foster mom has exactly one scene establishing it as an issue and one scene resolving it at the end. It isn’t given time to develop, and therefore the audience doesn’t have a chance to get invested in the conflict and want to see a resolution (to be fair, it is the most extreme example, but the point stands for each conflict listed above). There are solid ideas here, but they’re drowned out by a script more focused on a chase for a mcguffin and Zachary Levi saying “fam”. As a result, the ideas just don’t get the buildup needed for an emotionally satisfying payoff, and the scenes meant to provide that just don’t feel earned and fall flat. 

Fury of the Gods does up the stakes from the 2019 film, with more threatening villains in the form of, well, gods. Sandberg was fortunate to stack this cast with Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler. However, all three appear to be phoning it in a bit. Liu and Mirren in particular seem uninvested, with line readings more wooden than the dragon Liu rides in the third act (what I mean is it’s a dragon made of wood. I actually thought it was kinda cool). Zegler does better, and is genuinely charming when she is pretending to be a normal teenager and bouncing off of Jack Dylan Grazer. But when she goes into “god mode” and changes her line delivery to reflect an ancient higher being, it just doesn’t work. All that being said, the gods do provide an interesting theme that proves to be one of the stronger aspects of the script: the idea that humans and mortals, while not as powerful as gods, have their own strengths and abilities that can prove to be powerful in their own way. It’s an inspiring idea, especially with how it plays out in relation to Grazer’s Freddie Freeman, a disabled teen. Again, it’s another part of the script that could use a little more focus to really land, but it does prove my point that Sandberg and the screenwriters had some very strong ideas that, with a more refined script and perhaps a bit less going on, could have made for a much stronger film. 

The gods’ callous disregard for human life does make for an, at times, surprisingly mean spirited film, in which a lot of innocent people get some pretty brutal deaths. It’s minor but a weird choice none the less. 

I expected to dislike Shazam! Fury of the Gods much more than I did, so much so that I didn’t actually see it in theaters, and this was my first viewing. In fact, it’s actually the second lowest grossing film in the DCEU, and obviously therefore was a huge bomb. There are several reasons as to why this happened. For one, superhero films in general have started to do worse financially since the pandemic, with even the mighty Marvel Cinematic Universe suffering some bombs. There has been a ton of superhero content in the past 15 years. A literal ungodly amount. Naturely by 2023, fatigue was really setting in, and Fury of the Gods was a casualty of that. However, its marketing didn’t help, as theaters were flooded with the same trailer for months prior to its release, which really seemed to highlight most of the least popular aspects of the film (Zachary Levi’s cringey jokes). Believe me that trailer got so annoying. But most importantly, this movie was pretty much sent out to die. Everyone who would be interested in a new Shazam! film was aware that the DCEU was essentially over, and these last films did just feel like leftover table scraps without a future. No one was really sure if this would have any connection to the new DCU, and therefore if it was worth paying attention to. This is a concept that will plague the remaining films covered in this series. 

I do feel a bit bad for David F. Sandberg, who stepped away from superhero films after this. He and Fury of the Gods had some pretty bad luck here. James Gunn has suggested that the Shazam! movies don’t contradict anything in his and Peter Safran’s plans, and could be carried over. However, the box office failure of Fury of the Gods and the general vibe that the DCU will ultimately reset pretty much everything has made that seem doubtful. 

Side note: Fury of the Gods was at one point meant to feature a post credits cameo from the Justice Society seen in Black Adam, that would have given Shazam a chance to crossover with these characters in the future (whatever future they were thinking it would be). In his efforts to control the future of the DCEU however (and make it about him), Dwayne Johnson would reportedly veto this idea, wanting to focus on fighting characters to make himself look cool crossing over with different characters, despite Black Adam being the archnemesis of Shazam in the source material. This, reportedly factored with his chance of being a major star drifting away, would later give Zachary Levi a mental breakdown that he broadcasted on Instagram Live.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods was the beginning of the DCEU’s ending: a lost film apparently without a future, forced to go out and act like it had one anyway. It was dealt a bad hand that crippled it from the start, and has been left with a poor reputation I don’t think it fully deserves, in spite of some substantial mistakes. There are worse films out there, and I do think a good amount of people will find some enjoyment in it. Bad luck from behind-the-scenes drama dragged this one down, and that’s going to keep coming up for the rest of this series. Shockingly however, this wasn’t the DCEU film with the worst luck. The next one had it so much worse.