Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is the sequel, and probably the last Shazam! movie for a while. With the reboot coming later this year, any setup this has for an end to a trilogy is up in the air.

Directed by David F. Sandberg, who I loved for Lights Out. It's interesting that James Wan, known for horror took David F Sandberg under his wing and now they both direct major DC super hero movies. They should really stick to horror. Maybe I'm just biased because I love horror.

Henry Gayden is back in the writing room, even though it wasn't the writing that brought people to see the first Shazam! This time I think the writing is actually worse. There are subplots that land and some that feel overly forced and politicized. Some actors didn't get enough dialogue or scenes to do much in. Some characters felt throwaway and to check a box.

Grace Caroline Currey was top-billed or at least is at the top of the list for IMDB. She really carries the film for Shazam, she makes all the smart choices since Billy is still too stupid to string a sentence together. He still acts like he's thirteen even though he's supposed to be turning eighteen.

Zachary Levi plays Shazam again and this time he's lacking even more intelligence. I wish the ending would have landed the way they were going with. They just had to mess it up and it makes Levi's send off even more distasteful since we'll probably never see him as Shazam again.

The visual effects were pretty bad. I look forward to Corridor making fun of them later this year. The only saving grace of the film was Rachel Zegler's charismatic performance regardless of bad writing. It almost made me forget how disappointing West Side Story was.

All in all the movie felt longer than it needed to be, not enough money was spent on visual effects, or the team wasn't proficient enough. I would never want to watch this again, but it has some saving grace. Result: C-

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