Shazam! Fury of the Gods review – DC sequel makes an uncompelling case for its own existence

For a series of reasons mostly beyond its own control – the failure to launch of sibling franchise Black Adam, the upcoming DC films reboot set to wipe the current iteration of this shared universe off the map, and maybe, just maybe, some superhero fatigue from audiences – the Shazam sequel certainly has its work cut out trying to justify its own existence. For the most part, sadly, Fury of the Gods fails to come up with a convincing reason, returning director David F. Sandberg trading in a lot of the Christmas-y fun and genuine childish wonder of the surprisingly good original for a bloated and unimpactful story that doesn’t carve out its own identity.

We’re reunited with Billy Batson (Asher Angel as a kid, Zachary Levi in his adult, superpowered form) and his foster family a few years after the closing out of the original, as the mythologically-empowered kids balance their real lives with semi-successful hero-ing. Billy, about to age out of the foster system, is struggling with both separation anxiety and impostor syndrome as real, human adulthood approaches – a crisis compounded by the arrivals of some ultra-powerful new villains and their vaguely world-ending plan.

Perhaps Fury of the Gods’ core problem is in its underutilisation of its key gimmick. We really don’t spend much time with kid Billy in this instalment, Levi getting the vast majority of the screentime, so the wish-fulfilment appeal of the original is mostly vaporized, replaced by a generic superhero story where the stakes are too high and often barely make sense. The Daughters of Atlas (played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and West Side Story breakout Rachel Zegler) have escaped the realm of the gods and have come to seek revenge on humanity for imprisoning them – especially Billy and his siblings, whose possession of godly powers is an insult.

They just don’t make for interesting villains at all, and the time spent on their internecine squabbling is always getting in the way of anything fun happening to the core family. The opening set piece set, knowingly, to “I Need A Hero,” as the kids all fly around together to save civilians from a collapsing bridge, is an undeniable good time, but the demands of the Daughters means it’s really the only scene of its kind in the whole film. It all builds to the inevitable “big CGI beam fight” finale before a profoundly unsatisfying ending that basically renders the previous two hours pointless.

None of the cast are given enough to do – Mirren and Liu provide gravitas by default, but their characters are too thin for it to make much of a difference – with the biggest missed opportunity being the waste of Jack Dylan Grazer. Easily the best of the kid actors, there’s some early promise to his arc as Billy’s foster brother/best friend Freddy Freeman, whose disability and status as a bully target at school means that his access to superpowers means a lot more to him than the rest of the family. It’s something real and human amongst the ridiculousness for Grazer to play with but it isn't long before it’s scrapped and forgotten.

On the action side of things, Fury of the Gods does passable comic-book carnage and, though it’s far less pronounced than it was in the Ghostbusters-style monsters of the original, there are some enjoyable gross and bumpy creature designs. The Daughters of Atlas aren’t actually from the comics, instead hailing purely from Sandberg’s take on Greek myth, allowing him to bring in minotaurs, cyclopes, and harpies as their gnarly minions. Even this, though, is stopped dead in its tracks when a herd of unicorns are used for some of the most absurdly blatant, immersion-killing product placement I’ve ever seen (seriously, it’d make James Bond and his love of name brands blush). Like much of the rest of Fury of the Gods, these monster mashes make for a nice idea wrapped in the worst and dullest instincts of its genre.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is released in UK cinemas on 17 March.