‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘ is the follow-up to the 2019 DC movie ‘Shazam!’, where Zachary Levi plays the eponymous superhero. The upcoming film’s trailer – where Shazam and his superhero family face disgruntled gods – shows an encounter between Shazam and Helen Mirren’s Hespera.  

Levi’s character, who’s actually a kid – Billy Batson – with superpowers, sits across the table from the daughter of Atlas, played by the 76-year-old Academy Award winner. 

He tells her “Look, I might not have as much experience as you, because I’m not super-old like you, but I’ve seen all of the ‘Fast and Furious’ movies, lady. It’s all about family.” 

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Mirren is part of the ‘Fast and Furious‘ franchise, having first appeared in ‘The Fate of the Furious’, the eighth film in the franchise. She plays Magdalene Shaw, a general troublemaker with an impressive skillset. Magdalene is the mother of Deckard and Owen Shaw, played by Jason Statham and Luke Evans, respectively. 

The British actor has also appeared in the ninth film and the ‘Hobbs and Shaw spinoff’ where Statham teamed up with Dwayne Johnson’s character. She’ll also appear in the tenth instalment. 

Some, on Twitter, were quick to catch the reference. 

The scene ends in an anticlimax for Shazam, since his utterance of the word “family” was supposed to be a cue for the rest of the magically-powered children to appear, but they fail to do so. 

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Shazam’s line about “family” is also a nod to Vin Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto in the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise. The racer with a heart of gold often emphasizes family as the cornerstone of existence in the movies, and it serves as a motivating factor in several films’ plots.

The ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ trailer was released at the San Diego Comic-Con 2022. The movie is slated to release on December 21, 2022.