Jonah Naplan   March 17, 2023

There’s a scene, midway through “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” that is hilariously notable. The “Philly Fiascos,” as they’re called in this film, have sent a letter to the ruthless Daughters of Atlas in order to retrieve one of their kidnapped team members. But as Hespera (Helen Mirren) reads this letter aloud, in her shrouded, rocky lair, we begin to take notice of some random interjections in the writing, and other things that seem out of place. We then remember, with a chuckle, that this letter was written by a magic pen that writes whatever you say. As Billy Batson (Zachary Levi) was trying to talk to the writing tool, his foster siblings standing all around him obviously butted in with suggestions of what to say. A voice-controlled magic pen can’t go back and edit those things out, so the commentary is all still there.

How you react to this scene—whether you laugh or even slightly grin, or instead sulk and glare at the screen, nauseated by this kind of humor—is incredibly indicative of whether or not this is the type of movie for you. I laughed during this scene, which evidently lead me to the quite shocking conclusion, that I realized with a smile: I actually like this a lot.

Yes, really. Three and a half out of four stars for “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” the thirteenth DCEU movie, that is, within the franchise, a direct sequel to an already existing property—the 2019 crowd-pleaser that was the first “Shazam!,” a charming movie about a fourteen-year-old boy who gains the ability to turn into a full-grown superhero whenever he shouts the film’s title.

That boy is Billy Batson (played in teenager form by Asher Angel), and in “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” he’s now seventeen going on eighteen, only five months away from what will inevitably be his departure from his beloved foster family in which he’s found himself a home. That’s one of the more serious topics the film covers that I found myself to be a little bit caught off guard by. I had forgotten that the first “Shazam!” did this too, and it’s one of the many reasons why that film worked as well as it did. “Fury of the Gods” feels exactly like what I would expect from a sequel to that movie, but is unexpectedly profound at times, heartfelt, funny, and extremely entertaining.

The movie picks up a couple years after where we last left off. Billy’s foster family is living very happily together in Philadelphia, yet the matriarch and patriarch still haven’t figured out yet that Billy, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), Darla (Faithe Herman), Pedro (Jovan Armand), Eugene (Ian Chen), and Mary (Grace Caroline Currey) are all superheroes, who frequently appear in the news, popping in to save their city whenever it’s in a pinch. There’s a scene in the beginning where a major bridge is collapsing. Shazam and Friends quickly suit up, fly to the area of crisis, and jump into action, saving citizens, and their cars along with them. But unfortunately, they don’t end up preserving the bridge itself.

However, the team has much bigger things on each of their minds. Both Billy and Freddy, for one, are swept up into their love lives. Billy has developed an intense affinity for Wonder Woman, while Freddy finds love at first sight with a new girl named Anthea (Rachel Zegler). I heard some critics complaining about these this morning, but I found both plot points to be earnest, and henceforth, charming.

The plot is struck into motion when the Daughters of Atlas—Mirren’s Hespera who I mentioned earlier, and Kalypso (Lucy Liu)—emerge into the mortal world, seeking to avenge their father. The Daughters of Atlas are actually an infamous trio, but the identity of the third sister is meant to be kept a secret until the second act, so I won’t spoil it here. What’s the MacGuffin? A staff previously belonging to the Wizard (Djimon Hounsou), who granted Billy his powers in the first movie. In the coda of “Shazam!,” the title character snapped the magic staff, and threw the two pieces on the ground. But although that did something to defeat Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, the staff’s pieces can be easily restored, and brought back to retain the same power.

Most of “Fury of the Gods” is an exciting cat-and-mouse game, as our heroes incessantly gain and lose their powers, via the MacGuffin, while the Daughters chase them around, landmark to landmark, never seeming to run out of steam. Mirren and Liu may not be the most obvious choices to play comic book villains on a cinematic bingo card, but both are perfect here. Mirren holds well with her wicked smirk, and severe cunningness in each scene she’s in. Liu is intimidating, powerful, and seducing. Both are the real deal, but neither are played with an entirely straight face. Zachary Levi continues to surprise me as a character I expected to find annoying this time around, but instead ends up coming off as an eager manchild who is more charming than you’d expect.

I think that’s what I admire the most about “Shazam! Fury of the Gods.” It’s a movie so unabashedly silly, that it becomes sincere. Most comic book movies from the post-Covid era feel so unnaturally manufactured by big studios, that they end up becoming inaccessible and hard to enjoy if you disregard franchise expectations. What I love so much about this film is, and it may also be because the new DCEU is already messing with the timeline, while “Fury of the Gods” comes nowhere close to reinventing the comic book genre and does not at all stand out in terms of storytelling beats in the vast, confusing world of superhero cinema, the movie is more concerned with providing the audience a hilarious, action-packed, and tremendously beguiling joyride that looks to engage not look ahead, than it is a movie battered by contingencies and possible events that won’t even see the light of day until several years from now.

I need only think back to “Quantumania” from last month, a movie riddled with severe consequence, but one I’ve seen twice and don’t feel as if I need to ever see again. “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” is a film I aspire to watch again many times—not to catch important details to service the obligation of paying attention to the franchise algorithm, but because it’s a damn entertaining movie. Sure, it’s a film that doesn’t do much in the grand scheme of things, but that’s exactly the point. It’s so, so, deliciously good at sticking to accomplishing just that.

“Fury of the Gods” concludes with an utterly absurd ending, but it all made me so giddy that I wanted to stand up and cheer. I really didn’t expect much from the “Shazam!” sequel, and actually expected to file a negative review. That may be a big reason why I’m so emphatic about the movie, but I also feel that I’d be equally as satisfied had I predicted the film to be great, and then turned out to be correct.

If none of this sounds good; if fire-breathing dragons, flying superheroes, occasional fart jokes, awkward romance, objectively cheap gags, and Zachary Levi-pretending-to-be-a-child humor galore doesn’t sound appealing to you, I’m not sure that this review can convey the experience of watching “Fury of the Gods” any more in detail. But at least please don’t make the same mistake that I did, in believing that “Fury of the Gods” would be another forgettable superhero movie I’d watch, write a review of, and then let drift from my mind. It is so much better, and so much more fun than that—a supreme time at the cinema. Or, what’s the word? A blast.

Now playing in theaters.