All it takes is a disastrous sequel for everyone to turn on one of DC’s best-reviewed movies ever

When Shazam! hit theaters back in 2019, it provided a sigh of relief for DC and its fans. As it turns out, DC can make good movies, so it was safe to say Shazam! was DC’s golden child, at least for a little bit, but now the film seems to have lost the good will of fans after a disappointing sequel.

It doesn’t take much for fans to turn against a good film as demonstrated by the recent negative attention given to the first Shazam! movie. The second movie was decidedly weak, but now the first one is also a bad movie by association. One fan took to the DC Cinematic subreddit to ask why the film is getting so much hate as of late.

The movie has an impressive score on Rotten Tomatoes with critics’ reviews aggregating at 90%, making it one of the highest-rated DC films of all time. Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, on the other hand, sits at a ‘rotten’ 51%. Could it be that the lackluster sequel has caused fans to go back and re-evaluate a movie they previously enjoyed? Other Redditors replied with theories as to why public opinion on the movie has changed so drastically and they have some pretty good explanations.

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by u/ProjectDarkInfinity from discussion Why does it kind of feel like public opinion turned on this movie overnight?
in DC_Cinematic

The simplest explanation is that the film just got lucky with when it came out. After all, there wasn’t really much to compete with in the DC roster, it looks like the film got a lot more praise simply for not sucking than it did for actually being a good movie. Since DC are starting to get themselves together, with James Gunn taking the reigns and cutting the whole universe down to the bare bones, the standards have been raised and therefore fans have become more critical.

Other fans blamed people for hopping on the bandwagon to hate just because it’s not cool to like the film anymore, pointing to other examples like Thor: Love and Thunder and Thor: Ragnarok, that prove no matter how good a film is, a bad sequel can really sour the experience.

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by u/5213 from discussion Why does it kind of feel like public opinion turned on this movie overnight?
in DC_Cinematic

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by u/YoloIsNotDead from discussion Why does it kind of feel like public opinion turned on this movie overnight?
in DC_Cinematic

It seems that Shazam! was a little too highly praised back in 2019, and now that the sequel has reminded fans that it exists, they have gone back only to be disappointed by a film that’s good, but not exactly the flawless masterpiece many remembered it as in 2019. The disproportionate amount of hate it’s currently getting only seems to be rebalancing the scales for a film that just got off a little too easy when it was released.