THE PLOT
Billy Batson and his foster siblings, who transform into superheroes by saying “Shazam!”, are forced to get back into action and fight the Daughters of Atlas - who they must stop from using a weapon that could destroy the world.
QUICK REVIEW
As you’d know by now from my Black Adam review I am not the biggest DCEU guy. I admit to always coming into these films with a bias that I never look forward to them with only 2021’s The Suicide Squad standing out to me. That said I generally liked 2019’s Shazam! even though barely at that, and I admit to never bothering to re-watch it since. And frankly based off the badly put-together trailers I wasn’t looking forward to the sequel, Shazam!: Fury Of The Gods.
One thing that bothered me about the previous Shazam film was that for a film about a kid turned Superhero accepting his family we never really saw much of a dynamic between him and his foster family past one foster brother. So at the end of that movie when they come together it didn’t feel earned. To the credit of this film it has that teamwork relationship in spades with each of the kids having very clear defined roles and personalities. This felt more like a movie about family and it provided for some nice character moments for the audience to respond to.
Unlike the last film we also get a little more personality and lore with our new villains though the dialogue written for them had me cringing at times. The final battle is much more interesting with a pretty big climatic sequence of events set up to make you really feel the stakes involved. And this movie was really funny in certain scenes, the audience I saw it with really responded well to most of the jokes and I can see this being a big hit with families who take their kids to go see this.
That said its still got that aesthetic and pacing of the DCEU that I don’t care much for, and some gripes from the last movie remain. I still think the personalities of our protagonist when he’s a teenager is too dramatically different when he becomes the superhero. For as much as they gave us more depth with the foster siblings, the foster parents are still pretty shallowly written. There’s also a really bizarre and needless cameo at the end that may make some DCEU super fans mark out, but I just rolled my eyes especially given the cop-out story beat it was a part of. And finally, its a little too long. This could have use some editing down.
Overall I would say I actually liked this a tad more than the previous one, but its still in that borderline for me. I think audiences are gonna’ have a blast going to the theatres this weekend and enjoying this, but for me it didn’t stand out as anything special and I have no plans to re-watch it any time soon - but I don’t think this is anywhere near the stinkers I found other DCEU movies to be.
INTIAL GRADING