I have come to begrudgingly tolerate product placement as part of modern moviemaking. At least, it’s better than the ads all theatres seem to be showing before the trailers. Now, that I find unacceptable. Still, I wondered when placement in films would cross a line for me, and now it has in Shazam! Fury of the Gods. And it doesn’t just cross the line, it takes a running start and tries for an Olympic broad jump record.
The offending product is Skittles, though Gatorade is prominently displayed in a few scenes. My issue with Skittles is it actually factors into a plot point, as Faithe Herman feeds some to a battle unicorn. Now there’s a combination of words I never thought would exist in the English language. Herman actually tells this beast that looks like something out of Lord of the Rings to “taste the rainbow”. My repulsion was so strong, I could have puked rainbows.
This is even after a scene where the adult version of Herman’s character (Meagan Good) picks out only the yellow Skittles from a bowl of them before going to take them to feed their prisoner (Helen Mirren). I realize that sentence has a bit to parse, so let’s get into it…
I cannot recommend seeing this movie; however, if you do, you need to see the film that precedes it. Then you’ll already be familiar with this a ragtag bunch of orphans brought together under the same roof courtesy of a loving couple. Each of the kids also has an adult superhero alter-ego. Leading them is Billy/Shazam (Asher Angel/Zachary Levi), Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer/Adam Brody), Eugene (Ian Chen/Ross Butler) and Pedro (Jovan Armand/D.J. Cotrona). There’s also Grace Caroline Currey as the last of the bunch and who is, to my constant confusion, the only of the kids to be the same actor in both of her personas.
They had obtained their powers through a wizard (Djimon Hounsou) who died in the first film, but is somehow here again. Now he’s a prisoner of three angry goddesses who are somehow sisters, though they are played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler. The trio wants revenge on the world and…blah blah blah. They obtain the Hounsou’s magic staff from the first film, etc.
As you may have guessed, I wasn’t too engaged by the plot. It isn’t so much of a plot, even, as a series of events that only have the thinnest of threads connecting them. Often, it seems like it wants to be a different movie from what it is. I mentioned that bit which is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. Philadelphia ends up trapped under a giant dome (in a weird subplot that isn’t explored much), which made me think of nothing other than Under the Dome. Most annoying to me was an area of our heroes’ lair where the landscape is made entirely of books, including books that fly around like birds. I didn’t come here to watch some Harry Potter kind of shit. With how so much seems to be lifted from other productions, I started wondering if the “tree of knowledge” that destroys the Philles stadium was a tribute to the Peanuts Arbor Day special.
I found the previous movie charming, despite not being predisposed to watching superhero fare. There was a goofiness to the characters and many of the plot elements had an appeal which the climatic special-effects battle with a supervillain did not. This time, it’s like they decided to go all-in on the typical action movie garbage. I’m sure I am not the first to make this observation, but the title Fury of the Gods had me thinking of that Shakespeare line: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Fortunately, there are still some likeable, offbeat moments here. My favorite is probably an eternally burning violin in the lair, though nobody knows why it is there nor how it doesn’t burn up. At least it keeps the lair warm. I also liked a moment where Brody is straining and grunting as he tries to keep two cars from going off a bridge. Then he goes, “Just kidding–this is super easy” and quickly pulls the vehicles to safety.
The first Shazam film caught me off-guard with its quirky charm. Part of why I liked it as much as I did was because I saw it in a small theatre in Hinton, West Virginia, with many families in the auditorium. It was obvious this was a special treat for them, and it was beautiful watching how happy the film left them. So, while I was offended by its sequel’s crass product placement, I feel it is even more of an insult to those families for whom a night out at the movies is a rarity. I hope they opted to sit this one out.
Dir: David F. Samberg
Starring Zachary Levi, Jack Dylan Grazer, Rachel Zegler, Lucy Liu
Watched on blu-ray, which I then gave away