Shazam! Fury Of The Gods underlines all that went wrong with DC Extended Universe

The joke about DC Extended Universe after the globally underwhelming opening numbers of Shazam! 2 is, given its current state of things, the comicbook multi-verse won’t need a Thanos to annihilate its superheroes. Consecutive cold shows at the box office have emerged as villains for the studio, even as fans increasingly wonder if DC’s answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was ever a universe at all.

_Shazam! Fury Of The Gods_, second film of its franchise, managed a disappointing haul of just over $66 million from 77 markets at the international box office upon release on March 17. The Zachary Levi-starrer follows a line of biggies coming from DC Extended Universe (DCEU) that underscored theatrically, starting with Man Of Steel in 2013. With the exceptions of _Wonder Woman_ (2017), Aquaman (2018) and Shazam! (2019), almost all releases of DCEU have flattered to deceive — notably, Birds Of Prey (2020), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), The Suicide Squad (2021) and last year’s _Black Adam_. Shazam! 2 joins the dud bandwagon, with Variety reporting the film’s domestic collection in the US market stands at a paltry $30.5 million. This is significantly lower than Shazam!, which earned $53.5 million upon release and went on to rake in $366 million globally. The new film also marks one of the lowest opening grosses for DC, along with Wonder Woman 1984 ($16.7 million) and The Suicide Squad ($26 million). Notably, both these films released amidst the pandemic, opening simultaneously in streaming space.

For DCEU, things only got murkier when a report in The Wrap suggested that Levi endorsed social media accusation stating Hollywood superstar and Black Adam topliner Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was to blame for the debacle of Shazam! 2. “The Wrap confirms that in Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, the Justice Society from Black Adam were recruiting Shazam in the post-credits. The Rock denied access and (Shazam! series director) David F. Sandberg had to make a last minute decision to add Emilia and John. Dwayne “The Rock Johnson” Johnson attempted to restructure the DCEU centering him and Henry Cavill’s Superman,” said the post. Levi’s add-on comment, with an upside-down smiley, went: “The truth shall set you free.”

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The Universe of DC superheroes needs clean-up and fast, and the studio bosses are on a drastic reinvention spree. So, while DC Films became DC Studios a while back, DCEU is now being restructured as DC Universe, or DCU. The Flash, scheduled for a June 16 release this year, will kick off the grand reboot plans while DCEU signs off with Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom on Christmas 2023. For fans, the thrilling news in all this has been the announcement of filmmaker James Gunn and producer Peter Safran as co-chairmen and CEOs of DC Studios last year.

Gunn, who has scored two blockbuster Guardians Of The Galaxy films for Marvel in the past, is obviously being expected to do a Kevin Feige at DC Studios. Just as Marvel president Feige created the MCU legacy over the past decade, marking a cinematic high with the Avengers films, DC bosses hope Gunn, aided by Safran, can turn things around with the slate of 10 DCU projects the duo have announced, including two Batman films. Shazam! 2 marks a messy transition phase but on paper at least Gunn would seem the right man to give DCU the direction it urgently needs. He is also all set to direct Superman: Legacy, slated for a 2025 release. Weighing current box office realities, however, there are several problems to take note of.

For one, there is the scare of superhero fatigue and it is a malaise that seems to have struck MCU, too, lately. While DC’s roster of box office setbacks has been longer, MCU have had their share of disappointment, too. The studio scored with films such as Black Widow, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, Thor: Love And Thunder, and _Black Panther: Wakanda Forever_ besides the series She-Hulk in its Phase Four that followed the Avengers era, but the past two years have also drawn flak over Eternals. For MCU, the studio’s entry into Phase Five with _Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania_ in February this year wasn’t a smooth one either. Although it made profits through smart release and marketing, Feige and other Marvel bosses would be aware that fan response to the new Ant-Man film was mixed. Banking on the belief that the buffs will always return to root for their favourite superheroes, Feige’s line-up for MCU extends to Phase Six till 2026, and includes new adventures for Deadpool and Fantastic Four, an Armor Wars film, a Shang-Chi sequel, besides a couple of Avengers adventures that are in development stage.

Feige, though, is in a more confident space than Gunn and Safran, knowing well that the MCU tag on a film’s poster invariably makes it an event release. It is an aura DCEU never quite managed ever since it officially kicked off with Man Of Steel in 2013. The irony is DC’s releases are often individually excellent entertainers — think Wonder Woman or Aquaman. Hardcore fans would brook no criticism of Zack Snyder’s Justice League either. Gunn’s 2021 directorial The Suicide Squad may have crashed at the box office collecting $168.7 million globally against a budget of $185 million, but the film impressed with the filmmaker’s irreverent treatment, as he brought alive the original printed material’s mix of gore, anarchy and wit to present a very different definition of superhero cinema.

Yet, a sort of disconnect persisted every time DCEU tried to band together its superheroes in collaboration projects as the Justice League films. The lack of chemistry in drama and action have made DCEU’s collaborative efforts seem chaotic, revealing a dearth of focus and intent. The last bit is apparent in recent individual adventures as Shazam! 2 and Black Adam, too.

Most of public and critical reaction around the new Shazam! release has centred on discussing how the makers appear fixated with blindly rehashing all that worked in the first film. Like every DC release over the past couple of years including Black Adam, Shazam! 2 also comes across as a package of incoherent excesses. The problem perhaps lies in the studio’s struggle to put a finger on ideas that allow it to carve it sustain a cinematic universe that is unlike MCU and yet equally lucrative.

There is another significant factor that has saddled recent DCEU releases with the burden of expectations. The idea of a larger universe of DC superheroes followed Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. With those three Warner Bros.-produced Batman films, Nolan reinvented superhero cinema, taking the genre to levels never seen before, blending gritty realism with the spirit of humanity while focussing on the compelling origin story of a hero. To this day, The Dark Knight, released in 2008, remains the greatest superhero film ever made.

For Gunn and Safran, the challenge with DCU would be to avert the aimless drift that has marked the DCEU journey and take the reimagined Universe to a Batman high.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.

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