I hope Helen Mirren got paid a lot of money for this because Shazam! Fury of The Gods is a right mess.
There are bits that are great, but also a lot where director David F. Sandberg's inconsistent tone doesn't seem to know if this is a "DC dark" film or a slapstick comedy.
For instance reasonably early on a seemingly decent person is brutally murdered in front of one of the heroes (who, admittedly, is horrified), but this is never mentioned again, even though this was clearly someone that Billy Batson (Asher Angel) would have known.
It turns out that when Captain Marvel (yes, I'm calling him that because that's his name; why would a superhero have a name that he can't say without transforming back into a kid?) broke the staff at the end of the last movie he also rent the barrier between worlds (or something).
This allowed the Daughters of Atlas - Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu), and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) - through to retrieve the two halves of the staff, and stick it back together.
Their plan is then to retrieve a seed from the Tree of Life and restore their godly realm to its former glory.
There are bits that are great, but also a lot where director David F. Sandberg's inconsistent tone doesn't seem to know if this is a "DC dark" film or a slapstick comedy.
For instance reasonably early on a seemingly decent person is brutally murdered in front of one of the heroes (who, admittedly, is horrified), but this is never mentioned again, even though this was clearly someone that Billy Batson (Asher Angel) would have known.
It turns out that when Captain Marvel (yes, I'm calling him that because that's his name; why would a superhero have a name that he can't say without transforming back into a kid?) broke the staff at the end of the last movie he also rent the barrier between worlds (or something).
This allowed the Daughters of Atlas - Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu), and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) - through to retrieve the two halves of the staff, and stick it back together.
Their plan is then to retrieve a seed from the Tree of Life and restore their godly realm to its former glory.
However, human-hating Kalypso goes full Khaleesi, riding a massive CGI dragon, and plants the seed in the middle of Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia (home of the Philadelphia Phillies).
Because it's not in divine soil, the tree becomes corrupted and starts sprouting monsters from Greek mythology (manticore, cyclops, harpies etc).
Meanwhile, Captain Marvel's extended family of fellow superheroes keep getting stripped of their powers by Kalypso and the magic staff, and it's left to our main man (Zachary Levi) to face the Big Bad.
After the conflict is set-up in the first act the bulk of this overly long 130-minute movie is a massive superhero slugfest, which only comes into its own sporadically.
While Mary Marvel (Grace Caroline Currey) and Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) have a fair share of the plot and the action, the other member's of Billy's family are largely reduced to space-filling background characters, although young Darla Dudley (Faithe Herman) does step up at one point.
This sequence - which elicited the biggest laugh from me - must have been paid for by the Wrigley Company because the Skittles product placement was off the chart!
Because it's not in divine soil, the tree becomes corrupted and starts sprouting monsters from Greek mythology (manticore, cyclops, harpies etc).
Meanwhile, Captain Marvel's extended family of fellow superheroes keep getting stripped of their powers by Kalypso and the magic staff, and it's left to our main man (Zachary Levi) to face the Big Bad.
After the conflict is set-up in the first act the bulk of this overly long 130-minute movie is a massive superhero slugfest, which only comes into its own sporadically.
While Mary Marvel (Grace Caroline Currey) and Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) have a fair share of the plot and the action, the other member's of Billy's family are largely reduced to space-filling background characters, although young Darla Dudley (Faithe Herman) does step up at one point.
This sequence - which elicited the biggest laugh from me - must have been paid for by the Wrigley Company because the Skittles product placement was off the chart!
I'm not a fan of superheroes having their powers removed or nerfed, even if the reasoning here made more sense than the treatment the Hulk got in the later Avengers movies.
It just feels like a cop-out by the writers, having been given a scenario where there's a team of heroes, why not find a clever way to use them?
For me, one of the unique aspects of the Captain Marvel comics of my childhood was the fact that he had a family of similarly powered heroes, a ready-built team, to call upon.
If you introduce that then take it away, that's an unnecessarily cruel bait-and-switch in my book.
And I realise that Dame Helen Mirren has done big budget action movies before, but I can't help feeling that she turned up, delivered her lines impeccably, took the cheque and flew off of to wherever she likes to hang out and chill.
As awesome as she is in this role, there was no need for a global icon of her stature to play the part of Hespera.
That said there are standout moments of wit and humour in Shazam! Fury of The Gods, from the youngsters having turned the Rock of Eternity into a proper kids' hangout to the genuinely surprising cameo (see, it pays to avoid spoilers, even this long after a film has hit cinemas) during the film's denouement, and a couple of solid "mid/post-credits" scenes (any appearance by Mr Mind is worth the price of admission... and this was especially amusing).
And matters certainly improve in the protracted beat-'em-up once the Daughters of Atlas start feuding among themselves, and the climactic punch-up between Captain Marvel and the dragon is visually impressive.
Ultimately quite mediocre and not up the potential suggested by the original movie, Shazam! Fury of The Gods suffers from a paucity of story and surfeit of characters, meaning many of the protagonists don't really contribute that much.
- Shazam! Fury of The Gods is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD in the UK.
I haven't talked much about this one because I try to stay positive, but I agree. There were moments I enjoyed, but ultimately this flick was dull. I definitely had moments I was laughing and some of the action was cool, but it took me three times to get through it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the romance between Freddie and Anthea was creepy (which I'm glad the parents commented on) and I feel had the gender's been swapped it would have been a bigger sticking point for folks.
As you say, if it had been the other way round there would have been protests outside of movie theatres (of course, that is the EXACT scenario in the more 'romantic' modern Doctor Who, with young girls throwing themselves at an alien who is anywhere from 900 to 2,000 year old... and, for some reason, no one bats an eyelid. Probably because it's David Tennant).
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