Shazam: Fury of the Gods is the follow up sequel to the DCEU’s Shazam, which came out in 2019. Scheduled to drop last year, but with the year that was 2022 at Warner Bros. Studio we’re lucky this whole thing didn’t wind up in a trash can. Low and behold, it finally made it to the big screen over the weekend. But truth be told, it could’ve used some more time in the incubator. Or less time. More or less, but the filmmakers really need to choose.
The film opens up with a pretty intense opening scene where we meet our gods, the Daughters of Atlas. If you’re wondering where they came from-no worries, there’s an extended scene full of exposition coming soon. But that will come after the extended scene where we watch our Shazam-family save people from a collapsing bridge. Side-note, how awful are the engineers behind bridges in comic book movies anyway? It seems as if they’re always collapsing. Both of these scenes in movie run a bit too long for me.
And yet, in the film’s defense, it isn’t boring. And at 2 hours and 10 minutes, that’s a good sign. What isn’t a good sign is that it should have been longer or shorter.
The film has emotional beats that it definitely hits. But, and this seems like a drum I’ve been beating a lot lately, I need more of this. I want to spend more time with these characters as people, not so much as heroes. The filmmakers could have delivered on this by adding another 10 minutes into the film, giving me more quality time spent. Or they could’ve cut some of these over long action scenes, and achieved the same thing.
Another critique with the film, and one I tend to agree with, is Zackery Levi’s performance. He’s definitely delivering on the kid trapped in the body of a man trope, but he’s got that dial turned up to 11. It’s fun in the first film, it’s overdone in the second. I would assume that Billy would have gotten a little used to being a superhero by now, and he would have lost some of that, “Lookit what I can do!” playfulness. But he didn’t. Except when he actually is a teenager. When Billy Batson’s on screen, he seems pretty mature. When Shazam’s on screen, he acts like a 12 year old.
The rest of the film is a lot of special FX and big bad monsters. And half way through I found myself enjoying the villains so much more. Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu are fun to watch. There’s a surprise cameo at the end of the film which I was happy to see. Followed by some end credits that may or may not mean anything-depending on James Gunn. When the final credits scene ended I felt everything was pretty meh. Which seems to be the going rate for superhero movies.