Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Shazam! Wrath of the Gods is a thoroughly conventional comic book movie that won't impress anyone, but it won't offend them either. At least this time we have bad guys with human faces and not some computer-generated creature without a hint of facial expressions or a touch of charisma. In terms of the recently failed DC universe, it's one of the better (read "at least average") films, but I'm missing the main target audience by at least 15 years or so. (03/17/2023)

A classic case of a movie where the studio thinks it’s a good idea to shell out over $100 million for a second installment, but nobody really cares. And, naturally, it’s a well-deserved flop that will give Warner's accountants a severe headache. Granted, the second Shazam is much better and, above all, funnier than the utterly lame first movie. It has more one-liners, jokes, innuendos, and Rachel Zegler’s cute looks, but in the end, it's still an ugly B-movie that takes the superhero genre back to the prehistoric era. Some of the visual effects are truly awful and I can’t figure out where all that money went. Unfortunately, they’re not nearly as awful as Lucy Liu's acting "performance", which was literally screaming for a Golden Raspberry Award nomination. All the scenes with Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren are so cringe-worthy that it's a real accomplishment to make it to the end of the movie without skipping their scenes. (05/14/2023)

#12 DCEU. Fury of the Gods is the third film in the Shazam! and Black Adam cycle. As such, it is worth paying attention to only because of Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot (the future duo from the planned Snow White). But Wonder Woman's involvement in this late stage of the DCEU is so unfortunate and unfunny that not even the sight of villains Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu pleased me. What a shame. (07/29/2023)

I liked the first film better, either because it was the first, or because it didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. The Wrath of the Gods may still be basically the same boyish twaddle with its charming heroes and their equally disarming alter egos, but it could have avoided trying to be something more, because it doesn't really fit, and the good and well-delivered jokes and the flood of mythological creatures somewhat grind. Still, I'm sad that there probably won't be a third installment, and I attribute Shazam's failure more to the audience's oversaturation than to its alleged shortcomings. (03/22/2023)

A boring and cringe version of Avengers from Wish for elementary school kids. And what's worse than unconvincing, bland wannabe superhero action? 130 minutes of unconvincing, bland wannabe superhero action! Because Shazam! Fury of the Gods has everything it shouldn't have, and nothing it should. The humour has completely disappeared compared to the first one and there is not not a single wisecrack, the main gang is extremely uninteresting and the trio of villains is perhaps the most ridiculous in the history of the genre. Sorry, but three "evil sisters", one a 15 year-old Indian, one a 50 year-old Asian and the third a 150 year-old granny, I can't that seriously. Add to that the superb awkwardness of the script, the inability to think logically from all sides and a total shitfest resembling a B-movie parody and the result is in. An extreme flop on all counts and I'm actually not surprised anymore. Slowly but surely this genre is going down the shitter... (04/14/2023)