Shazam! Fury of the Gods

A classic case of a movie where the studio thinks it’s a good idea to shell out over $100 million for a second installment, but nobody really cares. And, naturally, it’s a well-deserved flop that will give Warner's accountants a severe headache. Granted, the second Shazam is much better and, above all, funnier than the utterly lame first movie. It has more one-liners, jokes, innuendos, and Rachel Zegler’s cute looks, but in the end, it's still an ugly B-movie that takes the superhero genre back to the prehistoric era. Some of the visual effects are truly awful and I can’t figure out where all that money went. Unfortunately, they’re not nearly as awful as Lucy Liu's acting "performance", which was literally screaming for a Golden Raspberry Award nomination. All the scenes with Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren are so cringe-worthy that it's a real accomplishment to make it to the end of the movie without skipping their scenes. (14/05/2023)

This time, Shazam and his family are up against a trio of ancient female villains with godlike powers and an angry dragon. More action and more visual effects doesn’t mean more quality. Unfortunately, Shazam! Fury of the Gods looks like a discount-bin comic book flick. The visual effects are downright bad, and the action and humour are both lame. The result is a bland superhero flick that never really gets going in a way that can truly engage. And then it's over, leaving nothing in your mind. (16/03/2023)

#12 DCEU. Fury of the Gods is the third film in the Shazam! and Black Adam cycle. As such, it is worth paying attention to only because of Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot (the future duo from the planned Snow White). But Wonder Woman's involvement in this late stage of the DCEU is so unfortunate and unfunny that not even the sight of villains Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu pleased me. What a shame. (29/07/2023)

The point of the first episode “my family will help me when I'm up to my ears in shit”, in the second episode becomes “if my family needs help, I'll try to help them myself and die”. Shazam is a recreation with a big drawback and that is the unlikeable Levi as the main hero and the even less likeable main sidekick. Otherwise, it's a pretty harmless flick about three sisters who want their due and one goes crazy and wants to destroy the world with a wooden dragon. There are lot of absurd things, including a pointless cameo; it’s good to fall asleep. I finished watching it on a third screening. (28/04/2023)

The cursed sequel, which was doomed to fail from the moment it was filmed. Personally, I prefer comics that take a more serious direction and don't break every situation with prehistoric jokes. I had already made up my mind about this in the first part, which ended up being a good comedy. On the other hand, the sequel of Shazam is an unfunny digital mess (I know, complaints like this are common in almost every other blockbuster, but this time it didn't entertain me either) and a cringefest with Helen Mirren and especially Lucy Liu (who frankly should give up acting), which just hurts. If at least they had connected it with Black Adam, but Dwayne Johnson's ego wouldn't allow it, so now neither of them will have anything, and soon Zachary Levi will be out of the picture. I'm not sad about this movie, David F. Sandberg has already stated that he will return to horror; however, considering the potential that the DC Extended Universe had shown. PS: Rachel Zegler is even more beautiful here than I have ever seen her elsewhere. Hopefully, this debacle won't damage her career too much. (18/04/2023)

I liked the first film better, either because it was the first, or because it didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. The Wrath of the Gods may still be basically the same boyish twaddle with its charming heroes and their equally disarming alter egos, but it could have avoided trying to be something more, because it doesn't really fit, and the good and well-delivered jokes and the flood of mythological creatures somewhat grind. Still, I'm sad that there probably won't be a third installment, and I attribute Shazam's failure more to the audience's oversaturation than to its alleged shortcomings. (22/03/2023)

Shazam! Wrath of the Gods is a thoroughly conventional comic book movie that won't impress anyone, but it won't offend them either. At least this time we have bad guys with human faces and not some computer-generated creature without a hint of facial expressions or a touch of charisma. In terms of the recently failed DC universe, it's one of the better (read "at least average") films, but I'm missing the main target audience by at least 15 years or so. (17/03/2023)

A boring and cringe version of Avengers from Wish for elementary school kids. And what's worse than unconvincing, bland wannabe superhero action? 130 minutes of unconvincing, bland wannabe superhero action! Because Shazam! Fury of the Gods has everything it shouldn't have, and nothing it should. The humour has completely disappeared compared to the first one and there is not not a single wisecrack, the main gang is extremely uninteresting and the trio of villains is perhaps the most ridiculous in the history of the genre. Sorry, but three "evil sisters", one a 15 year-old Indian, one a 50 year-old Asian and the third a 150 year-old granny, I can't that seriously. Add to that the superb awkwardness of the script, the inability to think logically from all sides and a total shitfest resembling a B-movie parody and the result is in. An extreme flop on all counts and I'm actually not surprised anymore. Slowly but surely this genre is going down the shitter... (14/04/2023)

The first Shazam! was a pretty nice and unpretentious flick, but Fury of the Gods, unfortunately, flirts with moments of awkwardness for a noticeable part of its running time, offering a predictable and overly instructive story about the importance of family (and no, it's not another Fast and Furious). It also has reprehensibly overlong running time and, at times, rather poor CGI. Fury of the Gods wants to be fun and brisk, but it fails badly. In this case, I'm not so sorry that I didn't catch the film in the cinema and watched it in the end thanks to Netflix. (05/06/2024)