Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review: A Warm, Worthy Farewell

🦸 This review is part of the The Old DCEU – Every Film Reviewed – watch every DCEU film from Man of Steel to the finale (2013–2023).

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is the unluckiest film in the DCEU. It is a genuinely good sequel — warm, funny, emotionally generous — that arrived in March 2023 in the worst possible commercial context. The DC Studios transition had been announced, James Gunn’s DCU reset was public knowledge, and audiences were processing whether investing emotionally in the old franchise made sense when it was already ending. The film earned $133 million worldwide against a $125 million production budget. It is significantly better than those numbers suggest.

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Director David F. Sandberg returns with the same understanding of what makes Billy Batson’s story work. This is not a franchise film. It is a film about a specific found family — six foster kids who share a magical power and are working out together what it means to be superheroes while still being teenagers who argue about chores and eat cereal at midnight. The domestic scenes at the Vasquez house, which the sequel has more of than the original because it no longer needs to spend time establishing the premise, are the film’s best material: specific, funny, and rooted in the kind of family chaos that dads will recognise at a cellular level.

Zachary Levi is still perfect. The specific performance challenge of the Shazam films — playing a 14-year-old’s instincts in an adult body — is one that most actors would handle as a running joke. Levi handles it as a real person. Billy is now more experienced but not more mature: he’s still anxious about being seen as inadequate, still convinced his family will leave him if he doesn’t hold everything together, and still inclined to make the wrong choice under pressure. The film is, at its core, about his willingness to trust that the people who love him will stay — and that theme, which was present in the original, is developed here with genuine emotional intelligence.

Narrative Architecture: The Daughters of Atlas

The film’s three villains are one of its genuine upgrades on the original. Helen Mirren’s Hespera, Lucy Liu’s Kalypso, and Rachel Zegler’s Anthea are the daughters of the Titan Atlas, and their motivation — recovering magical power that was stolen from their world when the wizard created his champions — is one of the more sympathetically constructed villain premises in the DCEU. They’re not wrong. The power that Billy and his family carry was, in the mythological framework of these films, taken from their world. The question is whether the cost of taking it back justifies the casualties.

Mirren is magnificent in a role that could have been a paycheck performance. Hespera is proud, damaged, and operating from a specific grief that the film eventually makes explicit — she’s not the film’s most threatening villain, but she is its most fully realised one. Liu’s Kalypso is pure menace without the nuance, and the film deploys her correctly: the one whose conviction in the mission cannot be reasoned with. The dynamic between the two sisters — one who might be talked to, one who cannot be — creates useful dramatic tension that sustains the film’s second act.

Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy Freeman gets the film’s best comedic subplot — pressed into service as an unwitting liaison between the Daughters of Atlas and the Shazam family, desperately trying to maintain a cover while developing feelings for Anthea (Zegler) — and handles both the comedy and the emotional beats that come from it with the same assurance he brought to the original. His scenes with Zegler are the film’s lightest touch and its most consistently entertaining.

The Emotional Finale

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Without going into significant spoilers: the film’s climax asks something substantial of the central character and delivers it with genuine emotional force. Billy Batson’s arc in both films is about belonging — about a kid who spent his whole life waiting to be discarded learning that he was wanted and that people would fight for him. The Fury of the Gods conclusion tests that arc with a specific action and a specific aftermath that the film earns completely.

The post-credits sequences — one played for laughs, one played for bittersweet franchise melancholy — are the film’s most specifically DCEU-transitional moments. One introduces a character who will presumably continue in the DCU. The other acknowledges, with a gentleness that is the film’s character completely, that this particular version of Shazam is ending. It is as graceful a farewell as a franchise reset allows.

David F. Sandberg’s horror background surfaces briefly and purposefully in the dragon sequences and the mythological creature design — there’s a unicorn scene that plays as pure comedy but has the visual language of a horror film beneath it, and it works perfectly. Christophe Beck’s score improves on the original’s by giving each family member a thematic identity that pays off in the ensemble sequences.

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Is Shazam! Fury of the Gods as good as the original?

Not quite — the surprise and freshness of the first film can’t be replicated. But it is a genuinely good sequel that honours the original and gives the family a proper emotional conclusion. Better than its box office performance suggested.

Who are the Daughters of Atlas in Shazam! Fury of the Gods?

Three mythological sisters — Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu), and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) — daughters of the Titan Atlas. They seek to reclaim the power taken from their realm when the wizard created his champions. Mirren is magnificent; Liu is pure menace.

Do I need to see Shazam! (2019) first?

Yes. Fury of the Gods directly continues the story of Billy and his foster family and assumes knowledge of the relationships and dynamics established in the original.

Is Shazam! Fury of the Gods suitable for kids?

PG-13, and one of the DCEU’s most family-accessible films. Some briefly intense creature sequences. Good for 8+ with parents; the warmth and humor are aimed at families throughout.

Why did Shazam! Fury of the Gods underperform?

Commercial context: the DC Studios transition and DCU reset announcement reduced audience investment in the old franchise. It competed poorly for superhero audience attention in a crowded February/March 2023 release window. The film is significantly better than its returns suggested.