What an absolute bore this turned out to be.
And that pains me to say. I love, respect, and absolutely admire David F Sandberg. From his horror roots to the surprising warmth he brought to the first Shazam, he has always felt like a filmmaker with genuine affection for genre storytelling. So I am going to restrain myself from speculating about what went wrong behind the scenes. But this was just sad, man.
The creators of Shazam! Fury of the Gods faced a conceptual dilemma they never quite solved. The pleasure of the first film came from watching a dumb teenager figure out how to be a superhero. Testing his powers. Failing publicly. Learning responsibility through embarrassment and found family. By the end of that film, Billy had saved the day, reconciled emotional wounds, and shared his powers with his foster siblings. So what is left for a sequel?
Not much, it seems.
Instead of deepening the coming of age arc, Fury of the Gods coasts on residual goodwill and a talented cast, without giving them anything meaningful to do. The charm of the first film is largely vacated and replaced with louder mythology, bigger spectacle, and yes, a dragon. Some bland villains. Uninspired action. The answer is all of the above. The film makes no attempt at being exciting and happily settles into safe and dull.
Zachary Levi once again plays the adult superhero version of Billy Batson, but the disconnect between him and Asher Angel feels wider than ever. Angel plays Billy with growing anxiety and teenage vulnerability. Levi, meanwhile, leans into a hyperactive man child routine that feels less like a seventeen year old and more like a ten year old who drank three energy drinks. If the character is maturing, the performance does not reflect it. The tonal mismatch becomes distracting.
The writing does not help. The humor is relentless and rarely lands. Wall to wall jokes that strain for a laugh but often produce awkward silence. A running gag about Billy’s superhero name only works if you are deeply aware of comic book history. Without that context, it falls flat. There is a smugness to the humor that recalls the worst excesses of modern superhero cinema, except without the charismatic anchors that once made that tone feel effortless.
Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu play the central antagonists, and I found myself wondering what we are doing here, ladies. Two veteran actresses saddled with material that feels conjured from a sugar fueled brainstorming session. Ancient gods with powers that seem to shift based on convenience. A magical staff that can apparently do whatever the plot requires. Whispered mind control. City wide chaos. A giant dragon breathing blue fire. It is mythic excess without mythic weight.
Rachel Zegler, on the other hand, is the one bright spark. She was genuinely the only reason I kept my eyes open during certain stretches. There is sincerity and vulnerability in her performance that hints at a far more interesting movie. Whenever the film slows down enough to let her and Freddy connect, there is a glimpse of emotional texture. Those scenes feel human. They feel grounded. They feel like they belong to a different, better sequel.
Freddy’s insecurities, his reliance on his alter ego, and his longing to feel special could have anchored the narrative. Instead, the film spends too much time with the superhero versions of the family, muddying the emotional stakes. When everyone has the same power set, individuality dissolves. What was once a charming ensemble becomes a blur of capes and lightning bolts.
The action sequences are serviceable at best. There are occasional flashes of Sandberg’s horror instincts in the opening and a few darker images that suggest he has not forgotten where he came from. But most of the spectacle feels weightless. Computer generated creatures swarm across the screen. Buildings crumble. Energy beams collide. It is all noise. The visual effects often resemble a cartoon rather than a tactile world. Fight scenes rely heavily on actors suspended on visible wires, punches that do not connect, and chaos that lacks rhythm.
There is also the larger context hovering over the film. Ah yes, the increasingly confused twilight of this shared universe. The movie feels like it exists out of obligation rather than inspiration. A sequel because there had to be a sequel. An entry that neither meaningfully expands the mythology nor confidently stands alone. The sense of fatigue is palpable.
It is not entirely joyless. There are small moments of warmth between the foster siblings. A few exchanges that recall the Amblin energy of the first film. But those moments are fleeting. What remains is a bloated, generic superhero outing that never justifies its own scale.
I was a big fan of the first Shazam. I liked both Levi and Angel in the role. I loved the foster family dynamic. The humor had charm and never felt overwhelming. This time, that charm is diluted beyond recognition.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is not the worst superhero film ever made. It is something more frustrating. It is forgettable. A film about a hero in crisis that itself seems unsure of its identity. For a story built around the power of saying one magic word, it is astonishing how little magic remains.
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