Shazam: Fury of the Gods

 

This movie doesn’t work, and there’s a bunch of reasons for that.  A complete lack of any real character development along the way, the idea that a thousands-year old goddess is cool being coupled with a high school boy (eww) , a formulaic superhero plot, and so on. but let’s focus on two things:

 

One, and I’ll try not to spoil things here, but if Hollywood learned anything from the Star Wars sequels, I had hoped it was that death means your dead; if you can die and just come back it robs a character's actions of any weight and significance.

 

AND

 

It was fun watching Zachary Levi play a 14-year-old Billy Batson in the first film, and I bought into his childhood wonder. But this isn’t a comic book. Time passes in the real-world, and because of that Levi is now playing a near 18-year-old on the brink of adulthood, not to mention an adult who has spent four years as a superhero. Putting the same immaturity and naivety in Billy’s words and actions paints Billy as an idiot this time around.

 

I loved the first Shazam, and I’m sad that this flub will probably end the series. But if this was the direction it was going, that’s probably a good thing.