Why You Should Watch Shazam! Fury of the Gods

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After gaining godly powers in the last movie, Shazam! Fury of the Gods sees Billy Batson and his foster siblings learning how to balance teenage life with being a superhero. But when the vengeful daughters of Atlas arrive in search of their stolen magic, the Shazam family is thrown into a high-stakes battle for their powers, and the fate of the world.

Despite the poor reviews, I really enjoyed Shazam 2. As expected of a family superhero movie, Fury of the Gods had a lot of hilarious moments and good action scenes. However, what was unexpected was how dark Shazam 2 gets at various points, and I shudder to think what the superhero flick could have been if David F. Sandberg (the film’s director) made it as a horror movie.

But I digress  

In all honesty, the Shazam family was one major reason I enjoyed Fury of the Gods. The cast was great, and I enjoyed their hilarious family dynamic. But even superpowers can’t erase the many issues of being a teenager, and to its credit, Shazam 2 takes its time to highlight some problems of each family member.

While Mary looks forward to the next phase of her life, Freddy tries to escape Billy’s shadow and become his own person and superhero. But the biggest issues come from Mr. Shazam himself. 

As the de facto leader of the group, Billy feels responsible for keeping the team together. However, the movie soon reveals that all his anxieties are really from his fear of abandonment. Still traumatized from learning that his birth mother didn’t want him (I mean who wouldn’t), Billy spends most of Shazam 2 terrified that his new family is going to leave him just like his first and he spends most of the movie trying to keep everything the same.

But change is inevitable, and when the daughters of Atlas arrive, Billy’s life turns upside down. 

Shazam 2 really kicks off when the daughters of Atlas come to Earth to regain their powers. I love how the movie explains where Shazam gets his powers from. The comics often show Billy drawing his powers from seven Greek gods who willingly give him their powers. However, the movie’s explanation of the wizard stealing the powers from the Greek gods was far more interesting. This explanation also made the daughters of Atlas more sympathetic, as they are only trying to recover what belongs to their family. 

Helen Mirren was great as eldest the sister, Hespera. She does a fantastic job of commanding every scene and intimidating the Shazam family. Her three-way fight with Billy, Mary, and Darla was amazing, and I loved her metaphor for why she and her sisters attacked the Shazam family.

That being said, some of the darkest and most chaotic moments of Shazam Fury of Gods, come with Lucy Liu’s Kalypso. 

Though I was disappointed with where the movie takes her character, the first two-thirds of Shazam 2, sees Kalypso getting creative with her powers of compulsion. She does everything from forcing a man to commit suicide to mentally torturing a sixteen-year-old. And who can forget the massacre at the museum.

But of the three Atlas daughters, the most impressive powers came from the youngest sister, Anthea (Racheal Zegler). Her powers of space manipulation through the axis of the earth were both fantastic and visually satisfying. But as powerful as she is, Anthea is really a kind soul and only wants to do the right thing, and at various points of the film she goes against her sisters to help the Shazam family.

My most disappointing aspect of Shazam 2 has to be the third section of the movie. After a decent setup in the first two halves, the film takes its funny nature to the extreme and becomes cartoonish. The first causality is Lucy Liu’s Kalypso, as she becomes a stereotypical comic book villain who wants to destroy the world for vague reasons. And though I liked her final clash with Shazam, the movie cancels out all the consequences of the epic fight, when Wonder Woman arrives at the end. 

Verdict