2019 was the year that DC brought to the table two interesting surprises from Hollywood’s bag of goodies, one of them was “Joker”, one of the best movies of that year, and “Shazam!” Now did the original have its fair share of missteps particularly in the story and in other areas such as visual effects and its villain’s scheme, but was it also something that offered entertainment value and additional objective aspects that were good on their own, for sure. All in all, it was a pleasant surprise from the DCEU after being exhausted by the Snyder-verse that has plagued Hollywood for over half a decade.
Now at last we have arrived in the 2020s, and the majority of content released for the genre have been poor to say the least. But perhaps after reaching financial and critical achievements, maybe a sequel of the much acclaimed “Shazam” will not only improve from its progenitor, but reject the notion of superhero franchise fatigue emerging after the middling dud from MCU’s “Quantumania” with the release of “Shazam: Fury of the Gods”. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case as this movie is such a staggering disappointment.
The biggest takeaway concerning the movie’s flaws, is that Billy Watson doesn’t even grow as a character or learn anything from his experiences. He doesn’t mature, takes little to nothing seriously (it also doesn’t help that Zachary Levi’s adult version of Billy is more over-the-top and ridiculous than his teenage counterpart than it was in the first film), his whole subplot about him trying to get the team together and being a leader while trying to adapt to change goes completely nowhere. The movie also falls short of a subplot about the parental conflict between him and his adopted mom, Rosa. There could’ve been some interesting dynamic between the two and having Billy experience what it’s like to have a mother for the first time, and the film tries so hard to pull on the heartstrings and you would have feelings for a plot line like this, but it doesn’t tell you where to put them because of how rushed and hollow the execution comes off.
The story itself is a disorganized, cobbled mess that crowbars so many ideas into the narrative just as an excuse for characters to have something to do but doesn’t do it well containing contrivances that have some of the most shameless product placement in a film since 2017’s “Power Rangers”. The spectacle is an uninspired affair of dodgy special effects and characters smashing into each other, the jokes are tired failed attempts of the movie’s humor, and the ending leaves a bitter taste in your mouth as it goes for something gutsy, online to cheat at the end and go for the laziest writing cop-out imaginable.
Hopefully studios will finally start caring about storytelling, character writing, polished visual effects and grand production in the comic book genre in the modern era. There’s still hope for future releases such as “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”, “Across The Spider-verse”, and “The Batman Part II”, and one could only wish that James Gunn’s first lineup of DC films works wonders, but after such dismal films “Quantumania”, and now “Fury of the Gods”, the decline of audience interest in the superhero genre may be coming closer than we thought.
Edited by Sushmita Regmi
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