Shazam! The fury of the gods: no surprises, but with variations

Superhero movies have long since lost the power of surprise.

At this point in the game, when

is going through phase five of its film empire and

already has a dozen films released, the format seems exhausted.

The greatest virtue of

appears in the superhuman attempt to find some variants to the conventions of the genre that have already been reviewed over and over again.

David F. Sandberg had tried to set himself apart in the first

with a success relative to the strength of adolescent comedy, another formula already worn out today.

Shazam!

The fury of the gods

is witty from the start, when the superhero runs through the entire plot of the first film in less than 30 seconds, while speaking from the couch to a doctor, who barely manages to explain to the beleaguered superhero that he is not a psychiatrist and his specialty is pediatrics.

And right there the film makes explicit the two ideas that fly over the entire plot: identity and family.

The film focuses on the struggle of the daughters of Atlas to recover the superpowers that they took from the titan.

WB Photos

The film constantly resorts to this pair of concepts as it focuses on the struggle of the daughters of Atlas to recover the superpowers that were taken from the titan.

Those same attributes are possessed by the teenager Billy Batson and his siblings, who at the mention of the word Shazam transform into adult superheroes.

superheroic alter ego

The protagonist, while defending the planet from this pair of nymphs willing to do anything, must also invent a name for his superheroic alter ego and resolve childhood traumas to find his place in the world.

Hespera, the evil one played by Helen Mirren.

Zachary Levi puts on again, with a candor that fits his character, the superhero suit and Jack Dylan Grazer is once again very comfortable in the double role of brother and best friend.

The great additions to the cast appear with the Greek deities, in the ruthless Kalypso by Lucy Liu and the sovereign Hespera played by Helen Mirren.

The English actress is perhaps the great differential of the film based on the supernatural commitment that she shows in each battle, far from willing to give up her prestige in a small, undemanding role (another common practice in this type of cinema).

The film starts very high, with a great action sequence.

The opening action sequence of

sets the bar too high: the nymph played by Lucy Liu whispers in a man's ear to "unleash chaos" in a museum and all the tourists in the place are transformed into a kind of wild zombies who suddenly end up petrified like the sculpture of Atlas that exalts the place.

Sandberg tries to continue throwing all the meat on the spit in each confrontation of the young superheroes and, among enemies and sidekicks, more nymphs, minotaurs, trolls, manticores, harpies, a wizard, a "wooden" dragon and dark unicorns fanatics appear. the sweets.

The filmmaker tries to turn up the intensity for the climax, but the final fight on a baseball field between the overbearing Kalypso and Shazam doesn't quite live up to the foreshadowing.

The internal dilemma that, when facing his destiny, torments the superhero in search of his identity becomes a more attractive fight than that last battle that takes place in the dome.

Shazam!

The fury of the gods

Good

Action/Adventure.

USA, 2023.

.

130', ATP L.

David F. Sandberg.

Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Jack Dylan Grazer.

IMAX, Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Showcase Belgrano.

POS

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