‘Shazam!’ Star Zachary Levi Reflects On The Effect Of Superhero Fatigue On ‘Fury Of The Gods’ – “There’s Nothing New Under The Sun”
It’s March and this month/year marks the two-year anniversary of Shazam: Fury of the Gods’ release in theaters, which means 2025 is also the two-year anniversary of the film’s utter failure. Though it had years to build excitement, the sequel flopped after grossing only $134 million on a budget upwards of $125M.
Fury clearly didn’t break even with such a small difference between the worldwide gross and the budget. Everybody has a theory of why. Some blame the rebranding of DC Films into the DC Studios run by James Gunn and the film series’ producer Peter Safran. That came with the announcement of a new slate, making the horror-fantasy look like an extra afterthought.
The release date moving around constantly for two years, pandemic or not, didn’t help the film’s position in that regard either. Moreover, it was finally placed in a mid-March slot that isn’t typically prized real estate for big tent poles. Granted, it was either that or getting trounced over Christmas by the juggernaut that was Avatar: The Way of Water.
Superhero fatigue is a consideration as well, and it’s one that the star of the two Shazams, Zachary Levi, doesn’t rule out. In an interview with The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, Levi factored in how negatively said fatigue affected his sophomore outing as The Big Red Cheese. “Where do I start? Man, the internet’s just going to come after me again,” he laughed.
“Listen, superhero fatigue. That’s one. We’re just inundated with so many superhero movies and I think that after a while people are kind of like, ‘Okay, I’ve seen this,’” he continued (H/T to Fandom Pulse). “And we had moments in our movie that were repetitive or had been in other movies. There’s nothing new under the sun.”
Levi feels social media played a part too. “People wanted to tear me apart for it anyway because there’s a lot of people on the internet and that’s all they do. That’s their whole MO. That’s where they find their identity. That’s where they find their power,” he said.
“It’s so sad that online, specifically social media has empowered people in that way because it’s so toxic and destructive for everyone involved, particularly them because they could be doing something much more productive with their time,” he added.
And social media augments the perceived tribalism between Marvel and DC. “There’s a lot of DC itself as a comic book studio. There’s all this weird fandom, war between Marvel and DC, and then even within each fandom there’s like fractions and factions of those fandoms. And all that stuff got really crazy,” Levi recalled.
“I don’t know. At the end of the day, all of the pieces just came together in order for it to be the best film, the very, very best film that it could have been or that we got the word out the best we could to everybody. I don’t know,” he explained.
Ultimately, everything was out of his hands and the actor tried to lean on God when the chips were down. “But at the end of the day, I have just to lean back and be like, ‘All right, God, if that’s what you saw fit for that film and how it ultimately hit the world then I have to receive that. I have to radically accept that that’s what that was,” he said.
What it was – or what Shazam: Fury of the Gods became – is the beginning of the end of a DCEU still finding itself after a decade. The Flash was the last nail in the coffin, but other than James Gunn and DC Studios’ part in hammering, the decline began when Dwayne Johnson miscalculated his power to right the ship and turn Black Adam into the next big thing.
The so-called Final Boss of today’s WWE tried to position himself and Henry Cavill at the center of the troubled universe. This led to accusations of politicking and undercutting with a goal in mind to keep Johnson and The Man In Black separate from Levi and the Marvel Family (at least for a prudent length of time).
Levi lent credibility to the difficulties behind the scenes in cryptic social media posts, but the full truth of Johnson’s alleged plan and the wedge it drove might never be grasped totally.
READ NEXT: ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ Review – An Unfortunate Flop That Deserves Better
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