Ty Watches “Shazam: Fury of the Gods”

Over the weekend my wife and I watched "Shazam: Fury of the Gods". Our son even joined us for a bit.

As I have stated in the past, my wife is a big fan of comic books and superhero movies, so she was excited about this movie. I was too. I did not think I was going to like the first "Shazam", but after RD kept talking it up, and other people did the same, I decided I wanted to watch it. And it is great. That first "Shazam" movie is fun, funny and has some cool fight scenes. It went well over my expectations. I thought DC did an excellent job telling a very different, more kid centric, superhero movie. So for the viewing of the sequel, my expectations were high. But then I read some stuff about Zachary Levi that bummed me out. I guess he is very anti-vax. My wife said he is almost fanatical in his stance. That soured me a bit before watching, but I went into the movie on Friday night telling myself to separate the art from the artist.

Unfortunately this movie is a real dud. And I am not just saying that because of Levi's politics. All of the fun, the silliness, the charm from the first movie was gone. This one couldn't decide if it wanted to be serious or funny. There would be lines of dialogue within one scene that would straddle the line of both genres. I couldn't keep up with what I should be laughing at and what I should be taking seriously. The villains were made for this movie. They are not from any comic books according to the trivia I read. They got some great actors, namely Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, but they were given horrible lines to read, and their readings were rough. Lucy Liu is an amazing actor, but there were times during this movie where her acting was downright dreadful. I turned to my wife at one point and she asked me why did Helen Mirren agree to be in this movie. I didn't know how to respond. They got the kids from the first movie back, and their grown up superhero versions, but none of them were anymore fleshed out. They really focused on the Adam Brody character, and just kind of gave the other heroes a line here and there or a very minor story arc. The CG was rough. The fight scenes weren't nearly as fun. The jokes were cliched and poorly delivered. The movie just didn't work for me at all. We haven't even finished the whole thing yet either. We still have about 25 minutes left, but I kept saying that this movie felt like it had three or four endings even before the post credits scene. They did a rough job with the Shazam and Wonder Woman dating plot line they tried to start. Djimon Honsou is very poorly used. It is a bad movie.

When we turned it off and stopped to talk about the movie for a bit, we do this pretty much after every movie we watch, my wife said she couldn't figure out why it was so bad. The only thing we could come up with was that they didn't expect the first to be great and make money, and when it did they realized they were going to have to do a sequel too late. This felt very poorly put together. It was slapdash and felt incredibly rushed. No one seemed in on the joke. It lacked all of the charm the first movie had. This is an example of the superhero genre being oversaturated and studios not wanting to miss a paycheck.

Skip this movie and just watch the first one. It is much, much better. 

Ty