New villains, surprising allies, and everything else worth knowing about Shazam! Fury Of The Gods
The original Shazam! was a rare win for the DCU. Then came the pandemic, some Zachary Levi tweets, and James Gunn. Here's what you should expect this time out.
Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, the long-awaited sequel to Shazam!, is right around the corner. But it’s been four years since the original film debuted, so you’d be forgiven if your memory of it is a little fuzzy. Here’s a quick breakdown of everything you need to remember from the original and what to expect from the sequel.
Okay, remind me, what’s going on with these movies?
Shazam! Fury Of The Gods has had a surprisingly difficult journey to the big screen, especially given that the first one was pretty well-received. It might sound like damning Shazam! with faint praise to say that it’s one of the best movies in the DCU, given the franchise’s shaky track record, but it’s a genuinely charming film that nicely captures the childhood joy of superheroes. Warner Bros. announced a sequel after a strong opening weekend in 2019, though fans became concerned when the studio scheduled the follow-up for 2022. Still, director David F. Sandberg did a good job addressing concerns about the children in the cast aging faster than their characters.
That should have been the biggest hurdle Shazam! Fury Of The Gods had to clear. But then the pandemic hit, Fury Of The Gods got pushed back several times, Zachary Levi decided it was a good idea to send some cryptic tweets that sure sounded a lot like anti-vaccine sentiment, and James Gunn announced a plan to blow up the current DCU and start over.
All of this means Shazam! Fury Of The Gods is facing a much stronger headwind than the original, which is a shame, because setting aside all the real-world difficulties, there are still plenty of reasons to be excited about it. Shazam! screenwriter Henry Gayden also scripted the sequel, so we can expect thematic and tonal consistency—a strength of the first film. And honestly, it’ll be nice to relax with a fun superhero movie without worrying about how it connects to 20 other films.
So what happened in Shazam!?
This is a bit convoluted, but the movie actually does a good job of explaining everything. Fourteen-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is growing up in foster care in Philadelphia. After defending one of his foster siblings, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), from bullies, Billy is transported to the Rock Of Eternity, a realm where the wizard Shazam (Djimon Hounsou) resides. Turns out Shazam is looking for a new champion. He’s been summoning candidates for millennia, since his last champion (that would be Black Adam) went rogue, released the Seven Deadly Sins, and killed a bunch of people. But he hasn’t been able to find someone with a pure enough heart, until Billy arrives and seems to be his golden ticket. The wizard Shazam gives Billy the power to transform into an adult superhero called Shazam (Zachary Levi). This is where it gets slightly confusing: Hounsou and Levi don’t play the same character. The wizard Shazam and the superhero Shazam just share the same name.