Shazam! Fury of the Gods

This time, Shazam and his family are up against a trio of ancient female villains with godlike powers and an angry dragon. More action and more visual effects doesn’t mean more quality. Unfortunately, Shazam! Fury of the Gods looks like a discount-bin comic book flick. The visual effects are downright bad, and the action and humour are both lame. The result is a bland superhero flick that never really gets going in a way that can truly engage. And then it's over, leaving nothing in your mind. (16/03/2023)

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. (14/05/2023)

The cursed sequel, which was doomed to fail from the moment it was filmed. Personally, I prefer comics that take a more serious direction and don't break every situation with prehistoric jokes. I had already made up my mind about this in the first part, which ended up being a good comedy. On the other hand, the sequel of Shazam is an unfunny digital mess (I know, complaints like this are common in almost every other blockbuster, but this time it didn't entertain me either) and a cringefest with Helen Mirren and especially Lucy Liu (who frankly should give up acting), which just hurts. If at least they had connected it with Black Adam, but Dwayne Johnson's ego wouldn't allow it, so now neither of them will have anything, and soon Zachary Levi will be out of the picture. I'm not sad about this movie, David F. Sandberg has already stated that he will return to horror; however, considering the potential that the DC Extended Universe had shown. PS: Rachel Zegler is even more beautiful here than I have ever seen her elsewhere. Hopefully, this debacle won't damage her career too much. (18/04/2023)

The point of the first episode “my family will help me when I'm up to my ears in shit”, in the second episode becomes “if my family needs help, I'll try to help them myself and die”. Shazam is a recreation with a big drawback and that is the unlikeable Levi as the main hero and the even less likeable main sidekick. Otherwise, it's a pretty harmless flick about three sisters who want their due and one goes crazy and wants to destroy the world with a wooden dragon. There are lot of absurd things, including a pointless cameo; it’s good to fall asleep. I finished watching it on a third screening. (29/04/2023)

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. (17/03/2023)