Current Events > Why did Shazam 2 flop?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The first was a hit on a modest budget. What happened with the sequel?

Mostly because of Black Adam, and the direction (or lack thereof) of the DCU.

It didn't help that the lead was an anti vaxxer.

Because it was a bad movie

They tried too hard to be funny. And leaned on the "family power!" angle too much.

I didnt hate it, but its nothing i would watch again.

Because DC has been pumping out shit for ages now and Shazam is one of the less popular heroes to begin with.

I'm going with the announcing you're ending the universe when there's still several movies yet to be released.

Waning interest in the DCEU and the uncertainty of the shared universe.

On top of all that, the bad guys sucked. Even if Black Adam could not be done, ditching what your last movie hinted at, only to bring in old ladies made for very lame enemies as it was a CGI fest.

On top of that there is hardly any Billy in the movie, mostly leading to Shazam just being a man child most of the movie.

Some very, VERY baffling decisions that sunk the movie.

DC somehow has really has just struck out with the bad guys for the majority of there movies as of late, most of them have been even more pathetic then the MCU bad guys, a shame they can only get the Joker right, most of the time.

When a movie depends on its shared universe, it generally isn't a good idea to tell people that universe no longer exists right before you release it

3 year gap between Shazam 1 and 2 meant it was hard to keep its own momentum.

black adam basically imploded dc by bringing in a lot of things from other movies and sucking. But it leaned really heavily on Shazam. The poorly handled common items between the two movies and the poor quality of black Adam suffocated Shazam.

Arent the bad guys some random old ladies?

Honestly i think super hero Fatigue and just over all the DC cinamatic universe just never really took off.. Which sucks because i love the Jaime Reyes blue beetle and unfortunatly dont see it doing well no matter how good the movie could end up being

It really does just need a full reboot headed by someone who actually likes and understands comics

The Rock not being in it as black Adam really hurt its box office numbers.

Shazam 1 was one of my favorite DC movies and Shazam 2 was just boring as hell.

It did?

I meant to see it cuz I like Zachary Levi but the trailer did look kinda eh

Necronmon posted...

On top of that there is hardly any Billy in the movie, mostly leading to Shazam just being a man child most of the movie.

Yeah. This isn't the reason it flopped but it is a large part of why it's a sucky movie. Freddy is basically the main character of the movie and probably has more screentime than Shazam himself. Billy has almost 0 screentime and what little inclusion he has feels kinda contradictory. The first movie could really play with the classic dynamic of "young immature boy can transform into an adult superhero. but shenanigans ensue due to his maturity level". But now Billy is a reasonably mature older teenager and Shazam still acts like a child.

Also, the first movie was able to smoothly integrate personal drama centered around kid Billy himself, and the sequel movie struggled to think of anything really compelling to do like that. I guess that's why Freddy became the de-facto main character. And I've seen some opinions that Freddy's scenes were the best part of the movie but I thought it was all exhausting, especially the Disney Channel original movie-esque sideplot where he fell in love with a girl at school who would obviously end up being one of the three evil bad guy ladies.

Because the Rock wasn't their to carry a horrible movie.

Billy carried the entire movie but he could only do so much.