Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ Rotten Tomatoes score is lower than the DCEU average and significantly lower than the first Shazam!. The DCEU has always suffered from polarizing Rotten Tomatoes scores, and while the first Shazam! is one of the better-reviewed movies in the franchise, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is yet another critical stumble, arriving at a time when it’s not even clear if the future of the DC movie universe includes plans for Billy Batson or the rest of the “Shazamily.”
While Shazam! Fury of the Gods initially had a Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score in the 60s, it quickly dropped below the 60-percent threshold into Rotten territory, and currently sits at a Rotten 54 percent. Compared to the first Shazam! movie and the DCEU average Rotten Tomatoes scores (excluding recent non-DCEU DC movies like Joker, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and The Batman), Shazam! Fury of the Gods is both par for the course, but also one of the wildest combinations of Rotten Tomatoes scores in the DCEU. Here’s how it compares and what makes it unique.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ Rotten Tomatoes Scores are Way Lower Than the First Shazam!
The original Shazam!‘s positive reviews earned it a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the DCEU’s best scores below Wonder Woman at 93 percent and The Suicide Squad at 91 percent, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ 54 percent Rotten Tomatoes marks a 36-point drop from the first movie, even bigger than the 34-point drop-off from Wonder Woman to Wonder Woman 1984. According to Rotten Tomatoes’ Top Critics, the first Shazam! actually tied with Wonder Woman for the best Top Critic score in the DCEU at 90 percent, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods drops a huge 64 points down to 26 percent.
Despite the huge difference between the critic scores for Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, their audiences scores are far less divided. With an 80 percent from Rotten Tomatoes audiences, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is only two points lower than the original Shazam!‘s 82 percent. Ironically, while rate the first Shazam! higher than audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critic score beating the audience score by eight points, audiences rate Shazam! Fury of the Gods way higher than critics with its 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score coming in 26 points higher than its 54 percent critic score.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ Rotten Tomatoes is Way Below DCEU Average
The DCEU has always struggled with Rotten Tomatoes, so, while Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ 54 percent is way below the first Shazam!, it’s only six points below the 60 percent DCEU average. The Top Critic score is still a big drop compared to the DCEU average, though, since Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ 26 percent Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic score is way below the 54 percent DCEU Top Critic average. Its Top Critic score is one of the DCEU’s lowest, but it’s still barely higher than the Top Critic scores for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (24 percent), Joss Whedon’s Justice League (23 percent), and Suicide Squad (21 percent)
While Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ Rotten Tomatoes score (especially its Top Critic score) are under the DCEU average, the situation is reversed with its audience score, which comes in five points higher than the DCEU’s 75 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience average; however, if we include all DC movies since Man of Steel (adding Joker, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and The Batman to the mix), the average comes to 79 percent, still one point below Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ audience score. So, while critics are mostly panning the movie, it’s still a stronger hit with audiences than most of the DC movies Warner Bros. has released in the past decade.
Shazam! 2 Splits Critics and Top Critics More Than Any Other DCEU Movie
The split between critics and audiences on Shazam! Fury of the Gods continues a long “audience vs. critics” DCEU narrative. The 26-point split between the Tomatometer and audience score on Shazam! Fury of the Gods is seven points higher than the DCEU’s average 19-point split, ranking lower than Suicide Squad‘s 33-point split, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s 34-point split, and Black Adam‘s 47-point split. Despite the big split between critics and audience, Shazam: Fury of the Gods sets a new DCEU record for the biggest split between critics and Top Critics.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ 54 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is 28 points higher than its 26 percent Top Critics score. Top Critics tend to rate comic book movies lower than the all-critic Tomatometer, especially when it comes to the DCEU (Wonder Woman is the only DCEU movie with a Top Critic score higher than its all-critic Tomatometer), but Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ 28 point split is the highest split of any DCEU movie, coming in way higher than the eight-point average, with the next biggest split belonging to Whedon’s Justice League at 16 points. Interesting, Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Joker were also split by 19 points.
Top Critics reviews for Shazam! Fury of the Gods are so much more negative than the reviews from all other critics that if Top Critic reviews are removed from the all-critic Tomatometer calculation, Shazam! Fury of the Gods would have a Fresh 62 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. With only 28 Top Critic reviews counted, this means both the audience score and the 125 non-Top Critic reviews score the movie as Fresh, and the movie’s Rotten score is determined by the far more negative Top Critics.
Obviously, all reviews are subjective, but the fairly uniform split between the three score categories makes Shazam! Fury of the Gods one of the DCEU’s most interesting Rotten Tomatoes scores. The movie’s opening weekend box office will be significantly lower than the original Shazam! and with James Gunn’s new DCU slate looming in the near future, it’s not clear if this version of Shazam has a DC movie future, so Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ odd Rotten Tomatoes score split seems to be a cherry on top of the DCEU’s extremely messy history with Rotten Tomatoes.