Can I Please Be Done With the DCEU? Watch: Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Watched:  06/22/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Some guy

Selection:  Jamie

I had no notion of ever watching Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023).    I really thought my journey through the DCEU was done, but for some reason, Jamie wanted to watch this unseen, unloved unwanted sequel, and reminded me the film features Helen Mirren (always a delight) and I folded like a camping chair.

I know people love the first Shazam! movie.  I liked it okay the first time, but I was pretty lukewarm on it with a rewatch.  When the trailer hit for a second installment, I just couldn't get excited.  The DCU was a mess by this point, and the trailer just looked like...  I dunno.  Nothing about it grabbed me.  

One of the things that really stuck with me from the first movie was that they'd deviated from the traditional depiction of Shazam/ Captain Marvel in the comics, letting the movie do it's own thing, and that thing wasn't as much fun as the comics.  And, I think on my re-view of the movie I was really turned off by the decision to insert Billy's rejection by his mom as unnecessary to the story (and a new feature, afaik), and the scene with monsters annihilating a roomful of people for no real reason.  It felt out of place for a character I think of working for very young kids.

This movie was a *family* movie, in theory, which I tend to think of these days as something akin to Despicable Me or most of Marvel's output I think is pretty safe for pre-teens.  Shazam, as a concept, seems like it should skew closer to Despicable Me. It's a fantasy of kids getting to be adults with super powers and fighting goofy villains like an angry, talking worm and the Sivana Family.

Instead, Shazam! Fury of the Gods bravely chose to start by murdering a room full of innocent people in a couple of fairly horrific ways, so all I could do was buckle in.  

For the two-hour runtime (entirely too long for the wafer thin story) this movie is wildly erratic, jumping from tone to tone.  But I don't think it's tonally confused - I think it has no idea what story it's telling and why, except that a profitable movie could make more profit with a sequel.

Back in the day, whomever decided what was missing from Shazam! was more Shazams (Geoff Johns.  It was Geoff Johns.) created an issue that now you have, I dunno - are there seven of them?  I can't tell you, because only Freddie and Billy get any lines or screentime.  Even Mary Marvel, who was more key last go-round, and features the only actor to play both versions of the character,* is sidelined (with a whole bunch of story set-up that goes absolutely nowhere).  A coming out story for Pedro happens.  Sort of.  If you count three beats across two hours a storyline.  

And that's the thing.  You keep waiting for everyone's stories to kick in, but - despite what I think were probably story elements in some 4-hour director's cut - it doesn't happen because the new villains need to do their thing (which changes and morphs and has it's own major plot holes) and you need for Billy to keep grabbing camera time to do "jokes".

Billy is saddled with a story arc about trying to hold everyone together, and it's given a reason why early on in the film, but the story doesn't really help resolve the issue.  Some tagged on circumstances and late reveals do.  Freddie has about three storylines that rise and fall across the movie.

Based on a 2019 DC Comics story I never read (and a confusingly not-in-line with any actual mythology), three daughters of Atlas the Titan seek to reclaim the power stolen from him by the Council of Wizards  - the same power that now flows to Billy and Fam when they say "SHAZAM!".  It's Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler. 

They plan to use the wizard's staff to retrieve the power to restore their home (Olympus, maybe?) to its prior glory. 

You know, Jamie said it out loud during the movie, and I don't disagree... I complained *loudly* not about the plot of Ember Days, but how what it was doing was delivered in the movie.  And if this movie does anything right - I only had 30 seconds of this movie where I was marginally confused, so I guess this is how you do utter nonsense.  

Anyway - the plot doesn't make sense, really, and there's no "why" it requires the mass murder of a museum full of people.  Or why Lucy Liu hates humans.  Or why Rachel Zegler is 6000 years old and wants to go to high school.  The very same high school where Freddie and Billy attend.  

I know the director has done some dark comedy and horror stuff, but for a movie that wants to be a family movie, I have no idea why you'd include a scene where you have our kindly teacher be forced to walk off a school roof to his death and then turn it into a joke.  Even by a villain.  I'll be honest - the movie basically lost me with that bit, just wondering "who is this for?"  

I could elaborate, but I don't think this movie deserves that much thought.  There are probably pages of things I could go on about, but... meh. 

While this movie is a sequel and continues with the same characters, it feels disjointed from the first, mostly in that it doesn't want to pick up the plot threads from before and counts on you remembering some things that I did not (like Freddie having bullies).  Marvel understood very well - for a long time, anyway - that the story has to bleed from one movie to the next - much as monthly comics work best when it feels like parts of a whole.  But now we have new villains in play with a new challenge, and we have new problems at home for our heroes - sort of.  It's no wonder it feels disposable from the first minutes.

Most frustrating is that the movie has two or three laugh-out-loud really good jokes.  But it's way too little.  Not even Gal Gadot showing up could cheer me.

But, at the end of the day, my real problem with this movie is Zachary Levi.  

Here in the sequel, he's now tripling down on Billy as an ADHD mess, and it absolutely fills the room while also sucking all the air out of the room.  No one else can do anything when he's on screen.  To be honest, it feels weird - and in no way does it match the energy of his human, kid counterpart.  And it just kind of sucks.  I don't like Shazam in this movie, and that's kind of hard to do.  Any sweetness I thought he had in the first movie is gone, and now it's The Manic Levi Show in a movie that keeps screaming that it's about family and togetherness - so long as they play second or third fiddle to our star. 

It has not helped that Levi has done press and addressed social media directly, mad about the failure of the movie.  Levi seems upset about the movie not being marketed to kids, but kids go see Minions movies, where there's way less forced teacher murder.

It does seem he got out flanked by Dwayne Johnson at WB, who BIZARRELY did not want Shazam and Black Adam to have any connection.  And we all know how Black Adam wound up. 

Audiences not turning up for Shazam 2 simply tells you that the first movie didn't leave people with enough desire to want to spend more time with these characters.   And whether that's because it was new villains, or no one cared all that much about Shazam despite going out to see it, or it's super hero fatigue or whatever...  I feel bad it's not the franchise that would have kept people employed, but I mean... I didn't want to see it, and it had Helen Mirren camping it up as a deity.

*her adult-version apparently was pretty excited about the January 6th insurrection and expressed so publicly.  Also - I'd say 1/2 the people I talked to didn't notice there were two different actresses for Mary.