Shazam! Fury of the Gods continues the story of teenage Billy Batson (Asher Angel) who, upon reciting the magic word “Shazam!”, is transformed into his adult Superhero alter ego, Shazam (Zachary Levi).

This, which I believe is the official synopsis of the movie, tells little — if anything — of the movie. However, when one looks at the trailers — a slew of them that give away everything, including the surprise reveal of what is the last appearance of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman — one wonders about the level of malfunction and indecision at DC film production’s PR machine.

This is a dramatically tumultuous time for the DC superhero catalogue at Warner Bros. So much is changing so fast — from casting, to origins, to culminations. If today’s narrative at the studio could be summed in words, it would sound like unpronounceable garbles of an alphabet soup.

It is then truly a pity that the gargantuan weight of a crumbling and rebooting comic-movie universe is taking its toll on Shazam! Fury of the Gods — a better sequel to the mediocre hit first part that functioned more or less independently in the Zack Snyder-borne Justice League continuity.

Director David F. Sandberg’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods is an okay continuation that kids might like more than the adults

With the final straws being pulled this year — Aquaman’s sequel, due out in the last quarter, might also suffer Fury of the Gods’ fate — and the one big final heave, The Flash, set to be the biggest film of the year, the audience could not be faulted to give Fury of Gods, whose future seemed doomed from the studio’s point of view, a miss (also: the Ramazan season worldwide is bad timing generally for blockbusters).

To be honest, I was one of the sceptics who thought the film just wouldn’t measure up, given the bad press…until I actually saw the film.

Fury of the Gods is an okay continuation that kids might like more than the adults. Billy Batson (Angel), and his once-orphan family — Jack Dylan Grazer, Jovan Armand, Ian Chen, Faithe Herman, Grace Caroline Currey — that’s now adopted by a nice, cool couple, are in a better place than the last film.

For the most part, we see them functioning as any crowded family does: bickering, staying together, yet happily enjoying their secret superhero lives while saving crumbling bridges (their alter egos are played by Adam Brody, Ross Butler, D.J. Cortana, Meagan Good, with Grace Caroline Currey playing both the main character and the alter ego.

While Billy, in his superhero form (Levi), chews the noggin off a psychiatrist (the man is actually a paediatrician), his brother Freddie (Grazer) falls for the cute new girl in school, Anne (Rachel Zegler from West Side Story) who — surprise, surprise — is one of the three villain-daughters of Atlas, who are hell-bent on revenge.

Kidnapping the Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) who gave the Shazam family (aka Shazamily) their powers, the three women — Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthena (that’s Anne’s real name) — siphon off the powers of the young heroes as they total the city like any bad gals.

Now I’ll admit: there is not much in the story department but I wouldn’t count that as a deterrent. Tentpole films usually have miniscule plots. What mostly makes them work is the treatment.

There is guileless appeal in David F. Sandberg’s direction. The feel he evokes, for a lack of a better explanation, is warm and welcoming — like a Sunday morning cartoon, or a wholesome family comedy show.

The actors do their parts well, the colour palette is lively, the edits are on-point, and the production quality — including the CGI — are fine (for a budget of 125 million dollars, they better be).

I believe Fury of the Gods will be a nice, if bitter-sweet, reminder of the end times of the superhero films for DC movies. It comes at the precipice of both an end and a new beginning — a reminder to those of us in the future of a time when going to the movies became expensive, the genre lost most of its appeal, and the factory-like mindset of churning out pedestrian fodder was at its all-time high.

Yet, despite the bleakness, in some small nook, hope — however fragile and dim — remained. What could be a better superhero story than that!

Released by Warner Bros. and HKC Entertainment (in Pakistan), Shazam! Fury of the Gods is rated PG-13 and playing worldwide in cinemas

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 2nd, 2023