[SPOILER ALERT]…watch nothing before seeing Shazam! Fury of the Gods, it gives away some good stuff!
After years of DC dredgery, Shazam! was a lovely surprise. With a great pitch (Tom Hanks’s Big, but with superpowers), and more relaxed energy, Shazam! coasts on that Zachary Levi charisma and straightforward after school special messages inside a big superhero movie. Fury of the Gods is more of the same, a wonderful chill way to enter a spring break, complete with that Helen Mirren Shazam Fast & Furious crossover we all wanted.
Because Billy Batson (Asher Angel/Zachary Levi) is not exactly a forward thinking kid, the scepter he broke in Shazam! ends up in a museum, where the daughters of Greek God Atlas – Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu) – steal it and get their powers restored. Yet another problem on top of Billy’s busy plate. Besides superheroing, his brothers & sisters Pedro (Jovan Armand/DJ Cotrona), Eugene (Ian Chen/Ross Butler), Darla (Faithe Herman/Meagan Good), and Mary (Grace Fulton) are starting to branch off onto their own superhero adventures. Billy’s best friend/bro Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer/Adam Brody) found a girl Ann (Rachel Zegler) he’s interested in pursuing. But worst of all, Billy’s 18th birthday is coming up, meaning he ages out of the foster system, and he’ll be forced to leave the only family he knows and loves.
More isn’t necessarily bad. Zachary Levi et all found a formula that works, so we get more of teenagers trying to be superheroes in all their humorous simplicity. The writers (Chris Morgan/Henry Gayden) mine that endless well of silliness thinking about teenagers forced into interplanetary fights with millennia old villains. Watching the kids try to write a formal negotiation letter to send to Helen Mirren’s Hespera is funny enough…but when Helen Mirren has to read said letter with the severity of an Academy Award performance? Pure comedic perfection. And when Zachary Levi and Helen Mirren aren’t conferring over Philly cheesesteaks, Jack Dylan Grazer continues to prove why he might be the secret sauce of Shazam!’s success, motormouthing his way into everyone’s hearts. There’s also an incredible Skittles runner that makes for the best marketing money since the Power Rangers Krispy Kreme Donut spot. There are times the silly overpowers the plot, but those can be forgiven when more than enough goodwill is earned.
Storywise, these superhero movies figured out the easy way to make emotional stakes is to make their movies about family and putting that family in danger. Shazam! quadruples down on that concept, making all sorts of family dynamics between their characters, including the sneaky interesting Daughters of Atlas (once you try to figure out how Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren are related). The familial themes hit a little harder here because of how Billy and everyone found each other; they know how precious and precarious family life can be. Fury of the Gods also finds some interesting ideas I wish they mined more, like how Freddy’s ability to take punishment and keep going is maybe the most impressive superpower among the superheroes. But we don’t have time, because we have all manner of creatures showing up, including dragons, which Billy has to take on to protect the people he loves. And you know why superhero movies keep doing family stuff? It effing works! I was shocked how moved I was when Billy and his foster mom Rosa (Marta Milans) have a quiet moment before the big battle, because of how well the movie and actors sold Shazam’s family dynamics.
Of course there’s fun action and end credits sequences in Shazam! Fury of the Gods that many people will go to see. But, they are doubly excited to be there for the really fun “teenage superheroes” and the comedy that comes from that. And never forget, superhero movies stole the family idea from the OGs: the Fast & Furious familia. At least Shazam! had the guts to acknowledge it in this one…just in time for Fast 10 to bring in their West Side Story actress to talk about family.