DC superhero star Zachary Levi took a swing at Hollywood by telling audiences to avoid “garbage” movies. As reported by Entertainment Weekly, the Shazam! star aired out some grievances during a recent appearance at Fan Expo Chicago. It sounds like he’s a bit upset about the state of the film industry and is calling upon fans to “actively not choose” to see lower-quality flicks.
“I personally feel like the amount of content that comes out of Hollywood that is garbage — they don’t care enough to actually make it great for you guys. They don’t,” the DC movie star said.
He continued: “How many times do you watch a trailer and go, ‘Oh my god, this looks so cool!’ Then you go to the movie and it’s like, ‘This was what I get?’ They know that once you’ve already bought the ticket and you’re in the seat, they’ve got your money. And the only way for us to change any of it is to not go to the garbage. We have to actively not choose the garbage. It’ll help. It’ll help a lot.”
These are harsh words to hear from any actor, but it’s especially interesting to hear them coming from Levi. Levi’s last major role saw him return as the title character in Shazam! Fury of the Gods in March. The sequel had a fair amount of hype behind it following the success of his character’s 2019 comic book origin story. However, its landing wasn’t so super, as the movie currently sits on Rotton Tomatoes with a 49% critic score. The audience score, meanwhile, is very positive at 86%, but that wasn’t enough to secure success, as according to Box Office Mojo, it only managed to pull in $133.8 million globally, just barely passing its estimated $125 million production cost.
“The audience score is still quite good, but the critics’ score was, I don’t know, very oddly and perplexingly low, and people were insanely unkind,” Levi said on a recent episode of The FilmUp Podcast. “Listen, I’ve been a part of things and as much as I wish that they were good, I know that they’re okay, I know they missed a lot. I’m not saying Shazam! Fury of the Gods is some perfect Orson Welles masterpiece, but it’s a good darn movie.”
Levi’s future in the DC movie universe is unclear, as Shazam hasn’t been announced to appear in any upcoming projects in that universe. He isn’t the only one with a questionable future in DC, however, with Gal Gadot’s time as Wonder Woman still up in the air as well. With DC’s comic book film endeavors undergoing a major reboot, it’s possible that Shazam! Fury of the Gods is the last time we see Levi suit up as the literal man-child superhero.
