“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” (2023)
When the first “Shazam!” movie came out, I was one of the very few that did not understand all the positive buzz around it; yes, the concept was great. Zachary Levi was born for that role, but I felt the movie never fully used any of that in its favour, and let’s not even talk about how they wasted Mark Strong’s talent.
The biggest problem I had with the first movie is now fixed, but honestly, I think “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” just fixed it in a way that does not make it any better.
What I felt in the first movie was it had exciting horror aspects to it that David F. Sandberg feels very comfortable addressing, but it never gels well with the comedy side of it; this one is more one tone, but that tone is a family comedy movie, and probably that is not a movie for David F. Sandberg to really show his talent.
The cast still pretty much kills it, apart from Adam Brody that I don’t know why it just feels very wrong for that role, but Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer and Rachel Zegler do a great job and is the reason this movie still works.
Again for me, the villains are a miss, Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu are great actresses, but their characters are never fleshed out and never really felt like a menace. I am probably not the only one who felt that because they brought in this dragon, he should have his name on the poster as a main character because he is in this movie a lot.
The special effects for most of the movie are significant, yes, there are many scenes that are like blurs going against each other, but for the most part, this is not a movie that looks like it cost 100 million less than Black Adam, and it did.
By the end, the movie was starting to grab my attention, mainly because of the cameos and how it positioned itself for the future of Dc. That credit scene really blew my expectations through the roof, and now I just want to see where it is all going with this character.
Have you seen this movie? What did you think?
Do you think Shazam can be important for the Dcu future?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.