Everyone Hates Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, And This One Joke Makes Everything Worse
Many viewers particularly hate the Shazam! Fury of the Gods joke in which Zachary Levi's character asks out Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman.
Is there anything worse than misreading the room, cracking a joke, and getting silence as a response because the joke didn’t land quite how you expected? Well, we’re here to answer “yes,” because there is something way worse than silence, and it comes in the form of not meeting expectations at the box office (according to Deadline), as well as Twitter ripping you to shreds, which is exactly what happened in response to Zachary Levi’s failure to land a joke in Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The joke in question comes in the form of Billy Batson/Shazam asking Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) out on a date during her long-awaited cameo, and fans are upset by not only the joke itself, but by the chemistry, or lack thereof, in the questionable scene as well.
It’s not necessarily the joke that has Twitter in a rage, however, but rather the delivery of the joke which has been deemed uncomfortable by Twitter user @Croc_Block, who Tweeted, “Not only did this joke make what should have been an iconic moment incredibly lame, but it’s just uncomfortable.” What could have been considered a funny and cute exchange between Batson and Wonder Woman fell flat, and that’s where most of the criticism of the scene is stemming from.
Twitter user @dapper_human elaborates on this sentiment by stating, “I blame it on them having to shoot it separately.” Great on-screen chemistry is almost always the result of proximity and familiarity, and in the case of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, it was rumored and since confirmed that Gal Gadot had to perform her part remotely due to scheduling conflicts and that Taylor Cahill was her stand-in during principal photography. This goes to show you that technology could be your best friend and worst enemy at the same time; on the one hand, viewers got to witness the Gal Gadot cameo they’ve been waiting for, on the other hand, it felt awkward to many because Gadot and Levi were actually nowhere near each other when the scene was originally filmed.
But at the end of the day, sometimes jokes just fall flat, and we’re supposed to move on with our lives. It’s safe to say that some of the animosity toward Shazam! Fury of the Gods stems from the fact that the film failed to meet expectations, both critically and at the box office. However, we live in the internet age, and we’d be lying to say it wasn’t fun to occasionally kick a film when it’s down- but how hard are we going to keep kicking?
Twitter user @IrfanH_1 was a little more forgiving to the Shazam sequel when he Tweeted, “It was fine we get it u don’t like this movie stop talking about it.”
And he’s not alone in feeling this way; Twitter user @hippiespiderman also weighed in, and stated, “y’all really complain about anything damn.”
At the end of the day, humor is subjective, and when a film is produced with mass appeal in mind, it’s sometimes hard to please everyone with every joke. Despite the fact that Shazam! Fury of the Gods opened to No. 1 in North America on March 17, 2023, it certainly fell short at the box office, bringing in only $30.5 million for Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics compared to its predecessor, which took in $53.5 million on its opening weekend. While these numbers are certainly nothing to scoff at, the scene in question is not without criticism, and the Tweets are proof.
