Tina Kakadelis
2019’s Shazam! arrived at a sweet spot for the DC Extended Universe. The widely panned Justice League and the widely acclaimed Wonder Woman came out in 2017 with the (less) widely acclaimed Aquaman following in 2018. The DCEU was teetering back and forth, unable to find solid ground. Then Shazam! arrived on the big screen. It took a big swing on a character that had nowhere near the name recognition of Wonder Woman, Batman, or Superman, and that proved to be its biggest strength. The film leaned into showcasing the unknown superhero of the DCEU and became a surprise hit. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Set two years after the events of the first film, Fury of the Gods shows Billy Batson (Asher Angel) / Shazam (Zachary Levi) in the midst of an identity crisis. In his teenage form, Billy is concerned with aging out of the foster care system and losing the only home he’s ever known. As Shazam, he’s dealing with the fact that the city he’s trying to protect doesn’t like him all that much. At the end of the previous film, Billy was able to give his foster siblings (Jack Dylan Grazer, Grace Caroline Currey, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, and Faithe Herman) their own set of superpowers (Adam Brody, Ross Butler, D. J. Cotrona, and Meagan Good). Together, they’re the Philly Fiascos, known for doing more harm than good. Try as he might to keep the Shazamily together, some of Billy’s siblings see these superpowers as more burden than gift.
The Fiascos’ image quickly becomes an afterthought when the fate of their world is thrown into chaos by Anthea (Rachel Zegler), Hespera (Helen Mirren), and Kalypso (Lucy Liu), the Daughters of Atlas. In the first film, Billy broke a magical staff that was providing Earth’s only protection from the Daughters and their magical powers. Now, armed with the staff, the Daughters have left the Gods’ Realm for Earth to exact revenge on the humans who imprisoned them.
The goodwill of 2019’s Shazam! fades very quickly in Fury of the Gods. The first film was much smaller and more family-focused, but Fury of the Gods is one sprawling CGI set piece after another, with none of the heart. The most striking divergence from the first film is the fundamental difference in the ways Angel and Levi play the character of Billy. Angel’s Billy is the sort of moody, conflicted teen you’d expect from someone who’s lived through the amount of trauma he has. Levi’s Billy is, to put it bluntly, dumb. He’s written as an adult trying to act like a teenager based on what he’s seen on TikTok, and Levi’s performance is grating. How much of that can be attributed to the script and how much can be attributed to Levi’s overacting is up for debate.
Fury of the Gods also keeps Billy in his Shazam form for most of the movie. It’s a tricky situation when a film’s lead role is played by two actors. The challenge is to find a balance and give space to both sides of the character. Fury of the Gods seems wildly uninterested in Billy as a human, and only gives him about five minutes of screentime outside his super suit. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if Levi’s and Angel’s performances weren’t so at odds with each other. It’s as though neither had access to the other’s portrayal. Brody and Grazer share the role of Billy’s foster brother Freddy, with Brody as the superhero version. While Freddy is obviously the supporting character to Billy, he feels more well-rounded, thanks to the performances of Brody and Grazer. Sure, Freddy’s got a little more bravado as his superhero self, but his essence is still there. The changeoff between Brody and Grazer is far less noticeable because the two iterations of the character are easily seen as two sides of the same coin.
Aside from the troubles with the film’s lead, there’s not a lot in Fury of the Gods that inspires excitement. Instead of charmingly turning superhero film tropes on their head, Fury of the Gods feels like a very paint-by-numbers superhero flick. The motive of the Daughters of Atlas is flimsy at best, and even powerhouses like Liu and Mirren don’t look like they’re enjoying their time wreaking havoc on Philadelphia. Zegler, in her first on-screen follow-up to 2021’s West Side Story, wholeheartedly commits to her turn as the conflicted Anthea. It’s the scenes she shares with Grazer that are the most memorable. Their awkward high school flirting is charming and light, and captures the warmth of 2019’s Shazam!
It would be a mistake not to spend a moment on the film’s gay character. It’s not mentioned in any of the trailers and has not (as far as I can tell) been a major talking point on the press circuit. The film briefly mentions one of the foster kids’ sexuality in the first ten minutes, then forgets about it until a climactic scene toward the end. As the Shazamily finally admits to their parents (Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews) that they are the Philly Fiascos, they agree to no more secrets. While the other siblings say they’re superheroes, the gay sibling says, “I’m gay.” The family admits they had a sneaking suspicion just before a mythological Greek dragon bursts through the floor. Since this plot point hasn’t been the subject of a mind-numbing amount of press in which the studio prides itself on including the smallest crumb of LGBT representation, the audience can enjoy it for what it is: a queer kid choosing the most chaotic moment possible to come out (as many of us have done in real life).
Perhaps nothing sums up the letdown of Fury of the Gods as well as the blatant Skittles product placement that occurs during the final fight scene. One of the characters utters, “taste the rainbow” as she feeds Skittles to a unicorn. The moment is clunky and awkward, trying its damndest to be quirky and fun, but failing to realize why fans enjoyed Shazam! the first time around. It was a movie about family packaged as a superhero film, pulling the rug out from under the audience. Fury of the Gods does just the opposite. It tries to convince audiences that it’s a charming movie about chosen family, but it’s just a run-of-the-mill superhero flick.
