Even Shazam 2’s Other Stars Are Now Attacking Zachary Levi
Shazam! Fury of the Gods star Asher Angel liked a fan Tweet criticizing Zachary Levi's performance.
After waiting four years for a sequel, to say that fans are wildly underwhelmed with Shazam 2 (and its misguided attempt at a very weird joke), which saw Zachary Levi return to the titular DC hero, would be an understatement. Audiences have been ripping the title a new one since it debuted in theaters and now, one of the film’s leading stars seems to be jumping on board the hate-fueled bandwagon. After a fan tossed some side-eye at the way Levi was playing his character, in a tweet that you can see below, Shazam! Fury of the Gods star Asher Angel weighed in on the conversation, liking the Twitter user’s criticism.
Sharing and commenting on another tweet that referred to a touching scene in which Asher Angel’s Billy Batson was the focus, the critiquer wrote that in Shazam 2, Zachary Levi was portraying Billy “like a 12-year-old” noting that by this point in the story, Billy’s 18. This is where the Shazam-based drama could be up for debate. Although he “liked” the shady comment, it’s unclear as to whether Angel meant to commiserate with the disgruntled fan or was sharing appreciation for the original poster’s comments about the heartfelt scene.
While the rest of the world may be spewing hate toward DC’s latest box office bomb, the cast and crew behind Shazam 2 have seemingly stuck together which would make it all the more strange for Asher Angel to come for Zachary Levi via a Twitter “like”. Although the original film, according to Rotten Tomatoes, is viewed as one of DC’s most beloved titles, up there with the likes of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, the return of the superhero was a major flop for the studio which was still recovering from the bomb of Black Adam.
While Shazam 2 star Zachary Levi believes that Black Adam himself, Dwayne Johnson, is to blame for the film being a massive flop, there’s more to it than that with fans like this one pointing out that the follow-up title’s performances were just off. With the film facing a crushing defeat, it’s likely that audiences won’t see the story bookended neatly with a trilogy. And, even if the studio were to push forward with Shazam 3, Zachary Levi is ready to move on to bigger and better things, which include the possibility of a big-screen adaptation of the star’s spy role in the long-gone series Chuck.
While Shazam 2 may go down as a disaster, it shouldn’t have been this way with major names including Lucy Liu, Helen Mirren, Adam Brody, Zachary Levi, Rachel Zegler, and Djimon Hounsou either reprising their roles or joining the story for the first time. Even though audiences once loved the child-turned-adult hero, it seems that Levi’s performance was completely wearing on them during the follow-up as they were expecting him to have given more to the character and followed his arc of growing up.
As James Gunn and Peter Safran do their overhaul of DC Studios, axing projects left and right, we’re presuming that Shazam 2 will be the last time we hear from Zachary Levi and his co-stars at least in their own solo story. Lucky for DC, it looks like a savior is just on the horizon as the Ezra Miller-led The Flash arrives in theaters in June and is expected to rescue the franchise from itself.
