The first of the DC movies to be delivered on the 2023 release schedule was Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which saw Billy Batson and the other members of the Shazamily clashing with Hespera, Kalypso and Anthea, the daughters of Atlas. Unlike its well-received predecessor, Shazam! 2 was met with mixed critical reception, and among the criticisms directed at the sequel was that Billy, played by as a teen by Asher Angel and in superhero form by Zachary Levi, behaved immaturely. Now Levi has responded to this complain by explaining why he played the character in this specific way.
While talking about his new movie Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which arrives to Netflix subscribers on December 15, Levi discussed with ScreenRant his reasoning behind Billy’s personality shift in Fury of the Gods, noting that there was a specific reason why the character wasn’t as serious as he was depicted in 2019’s Shazam!. In the actor’s words:
From the first movie to the second, I tried to age him as Billy ages, you know, in his actual younger teen form. Inside, he’s aging too. Obviously, in the first film, he was like 15, and in the second he’s 17ish, almost 18. So I tried to address that and bring that into the character, which ironically, in some ways, kind of made him feel almost a little more immature. But that’s because when he’s 15, he’s not trying to be cool guy, when he’s 17, he’s trying to be cool guy, he’s trying to be the leader, and he’s trying to kind of put on that bravado more.
There is an argument to be made that when achieves coolness when they’re not making an effort to be cool, so in that sense, I get what Zachary Levi is saying about Billy’s immaturity in Fury of the Gods stemming from trying too hard. However, let’s also not forget that in Shazam!, Billy was on his own before being adopted by the Vásquez family, and he was searching for his biological mother. So one couldn’t fault him for being in a serious state of mind during that period of his life, whereas just a few years later in Fury of the Gods, Billy now has different priorities and problems to grapple with both in his civilian and superhero life.
Whether or not that personality change worked is subject to opinion, but at least Zachary Levi put some thought into Billy Batson’s immaturity while working on Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Again though, Billy’s differing personality was just one aspect of the movie that drew polarizing responses from critics, as evidenced by its 49% Rotten Tomatoes score, though the Audience Score is a much kinder 86%. CinemaBlend’s Fury of the Gods review stamped it with 3.5 out of 5 stars, with our own Eric Eisenberg saying that it “primarily functions on its own individual wave length and succeeds because of its light energy and terrific ensemble of wonderful characters.”
Unfortunately, in addition to the mixed critical response, Shazam! Fury of the Gods failed to impress at the box office, making only $133.8 million worldwide. Between that and the DCEU continuity being swept aside to make way for the DC Universe Chapter One slate, it seems doubtful that Shazam! 3 will ever happen. Still, at least Levi was among the actors who got to play their DC characters more than once, and that lines up next to his time as Fandral in the MCU quite nicely.
Both Shazam! movies can be streamed with a Max subscription, and if another opportunity does pop up for Zachary Levi to reprise The World’s Mightiest Mortal, we’ll let you know. Until then, CinemaBlend will continue sharing the latest and greatest coverage on upcoming DC movies and upcoming DC TV shows.
