Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

[Eric Prime]

started from da bottom now we here

[Webslinger]

After a strong start with its refreshing and heartfelt predecessor, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a disappointing follow-up that misses numerous opportunities to capitalize on the first film’s strengths. For the first two-thirds of its running time, Fury of the Gods is a messy but at least intermittently entertaining film that has solid humor and fun character beats to counteract a mostly uninteresting plot about villains bent on essentially terraforming the planet. In its last 40 minutes, however, the film falls apart to such a degree that the goodwill from the preceding portions dissipates and the flaws become much more readily apparent. The final third of the film consists mostly of CGI-laden nonsense that will likely lead more than a few viewers’ eyes to glaze over and a few plot developments so silly that the most implausible part of their presence is that none of the film’s otherwise genre savvy characters make much of an effort to lampshade them. There are also character arcs so wildly underdeveloped that I can’t help but wonder how much material was either left on the cutting room floor or reworked hastily. And it’s a real shame since it feels like most of the major players’ hearts are in the right place. Zachary Levi is once again clearly having a blast in the lead role, and the adult performers capitalize on an opportunity to take the “kids as adults” conceit from the end of the first film to some fun places with more room to do so here (especially Meagan Good, who walks away with every scene she’s in). Though it was also true of the first film that it was noticeably better when it focused on the kids than on the villain, the problems with the villains and larger plot are significantly more pronounced here. The goddess sisters are weak villains as scripted, and the performances are a mixed bag. Helen Mirren occasionally wrings gravitas and a few ironic laughs out of her character (though she’s clearly not having nearly as much fun slumming here as she does in the Fast & Furious films), but Lucy Liu constantly looks and sounds bored with everything the script calls on her to do – which I get in light of how weak her material is, but it’s hard to take her seriously as a result. The film also commits the sin of wasting West Side Story breakout star Rachel Zegler in a boring, thankless role that shows some initial flashes of promise before providing her with precious little to do. Even with the increasingly negative nature of the buzz surrounding it, I still went into Shazam! Fury of the Gods having enjoyed the original enough that I still held out hope for this follow-up; alas, the final product stumbles surprisingly hard. 

 

C