Shazam! Fury of the Gods

David F. Sandberg is back in the Directors seat with writer Henry Gayden joined by Chris Morgan to deliver a second installment of Shazam. Zachary Levi returns in the main role as the teenager given superhero powers. His teenage self Billie (Asher Angel) and his foster brothers and sisters are working hard to balance their double lives as teenagers and super heroes. All is going well, mainly, until a series of events changes things. First the mysterious theft of an ancient staff by the “daughters of Zeus” (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu). Then foster brother Freddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) bumps into the new girl at school,Anthea (Rachel Zegler), and they quickly hit it off. However these things are not unrelated and the daughters of Zeus have returned to take revenge on Earth and retake the powers that the wizard (Djimon Honour) had bestowed on Bille and his family.

The first Shazam! Was quite a refreshing change, with a light touch often missing from DCs normally overly earnest storytelling. While some of that light touch remains in this second installment, ultimately much of the freshness has gone and while not terrible, it is pretty standard super hero fair.

It’s bangy and crashy, with a silly and predictable storyline. There are things to enjoy, Zachary Levi continues to get the teenager in a superhero body schtick just right. Grazer’s Freddie is perhaps the heart of the film, spending most of the time without his alter ego, as he navigates the events around him and a new relationship with Zegler’s Antheas. Helen Mirren brings some gravitas and humour and Lucy Liu camps it up as a power crazed God.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods, is not a terrible film, but it is predictably average and that is a genre problem more than a Shazam specific one. How superhero films do something interesting in future is a question. It’s not one Shazam solves, it’s fun enough, but nothing you’ve not seen before.