Rachel Zegler blasts 'senselessly mean' critics of Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Rachel Zegler has come out in defence of her new film Shazam! Fury of the Gods after ‘senselessly mean’ backlash.

The 21-year-old star, who portrays Anthea, the youngest daughter of the Greek God Atlas in the film, took to Twitter to defend the blockbuster after a wave of mixed reviews from critics.

Zegler tweeted four behind the scenes snaps from the film and cited the overwhelmingly positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the 187 reviews from critics.

“Hey our film is actually really good! but mostly I just absolutely loved making it and the people I met whilst doing so :) go see it! give it a chance. We have an 85% audience score for a reason,” she tweeted on Sunday (19 March).

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The West Side Story star then added in a follow-up tweet that it’s ‘cool to hate on fun’.

She wrote: “Some people out there and just being… senselessly mean. and it’s unnecessary. and I know, I know, ‘if you can’t handle the heat…’ and all that nonsense, and you’re right. but our film is actually very good. It’s just cool to hate on fun nowadays. that’s okay. we’re good.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is the sequel to the 2019 superhero flick Shazam!, which has an incredible 90 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a similarly high audience score of 82 percent.

The audience score for the sequel has since grown to 87 percent while the approval rating from critics is at a rather disappointing 53 percent.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods continues the story of Billy Batson, who has been bestowed the powers of the gods.

The film stars Zachary Levi and Asher Angel return as Billy Batson/ Shazam, while Ross Butler, Adam Brody, Meagan Good, and DJ Cotrona play superhero versions of Billy's foster family.

The cast also includes Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu.

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Clearly the sequel hasn’t connected with critics the same way the first film did and while audiences have seemingly enjoyed the follow-up, the box office returns have been disappointing.

Going into its opening weekend, the sequel was expected to gross $35 to $40 million, according to Variety. It opened at number one in the US, but ended up making $30.5 million on its opening weekend.

The sequel’s director, David F Sandberg revealed he ‘wasn’t surprised’ about the film’s underperformance and said that he plans to step away from the superhero genre to return to horror.

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He wrote: "On Rotten Tomatoes I just got my lowest critic score and my highest audience score on the same film.

"I wasn’t expecting a repeat of the first movie critically but I was still a little surprised because I think it’s a good film. Oh well.

"As I’ve been saying for a while now I’m very eager to go back to horror (as well as trying some new things). After six years of Shazam I’m definitely done with superheroes for now."