Did anyone see this? Hard to say. The first Aquaman inexplicably made a billion dollars, so even though logically that doesn’t make sense and that movie should have sunk, (Heh) this new one could make money. I think it’ll fail though. Anyway, no spoilers and then spoilers.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom stars Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Temuera Morrison, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Dolph Lundgren, and Randall Park. It also features Amber Heard more than I expected it would. It was directed by James Wan (Aquaman, The Conjuring, Fast 7) and the screenplay was written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and based on a story conceptualized by him as well as James Wan, Jason Momoa, and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett.

Quick Plot Rundown –
Do you remember Aquaman (2018)? No? It made over a billion dollars, you didn’t see it? Okay. So Arthur Curry is an alcoholic surfer dude-bro that can talk to fish and swim really good because his lighthouse keeper father from New Zealand fell in love with underwater Nicole Kidman from the underwater city of Atlantis, and Arthur became their Aqua Baby. Then Nicole Kidman had to go back into the water for a long time and Arthur grew up into big burly Jason Momoa and he used his muscley body to swim around and stop pirates. But one day he stopped the wrong pirate, David Kane. David Kane got really mad at Arthur because Arthur could’ve saved David’s criminal father from a crashing submarine but decided not to because he hadn’t progressed as a character yet. After that, Arthur swam to Atlantis, fought and defeated his half-brother, found his mom and a cool trident, stole his half-brother’s girlfriend, became king of Atlantis, and defeated Kane again.
Instead of getting sad or discouraged or focusing on living a positive life or even just proving to the world that Aquaman exists and is a threat, David Kane falls further and, while looking for this stuff called Oricalcum that’ll increase global warming, becomes possessed by a black trident. So for months he heats up the ozone and destroys the world to prepare for the return of a scary CGI villain from Atlantis’s past. In order to stop David from destroying the Earth and bringing back Old Evil Atlantis Man, Arthur Curry has to break his half-brother Orm out of a secluded desert prison. Will Aquaman and his brother be able to team up and defeat a possessed and driven deep-sea explorer? Or will David Kane get his very generic wish to “Destroy Aquaman and everyone he loves”? Oh, and also Aquaman doesn’t like being the king of Atlantis because nobody listens to him or thinks he’s doing a good job and he’s also busy raising his own Aqua Baby because him and his wife that everyone hates in real life and he clearly never had any chemistry with had a child offscreen in between movies.

General Non-Spoilery Thoughts –
I didn’t hate this. It’s interesting. There were four DC movies released this year, and they can easily be sorted into distinct categories. The Flash gets its own category for being a crime against moviemaking and subsequently will be ignored. Blue Beetle gets five stars simply for being inoffensive and not lasting forever. And then there’s a weird middle area where Shazam!: Fury of the Gods has been sitting for months. It’s not terrible, but it’s a sequel I don’t think needed to be made. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the execution and some of the monsters and fantasy elements, but it’s clear they had no story in mind to tell beyond making a sequel and you can feel that the movie is just biding time. That’s exactly where this sits. I just liked this ever so slightly more than Shazam! because I really liked Shazam! and I thought there was still a drop in quality, whereas here the drop is more adjacent. I don’t know. It’s not bad? I liked a lot of the designs of the ships and monsters and environments in this, and that made me enjoy this quite a bit more. It’s really hard to review this one because I’m mostly just surprised I didn’t hate it, but the acting and the dialogue are laughably bad considering the cast involved. And the casting for all of these characters, I think, was absolutely wrong from the start. Except for one. So because this movie is hampered by the terrible decision making of studio heads and Zach Snyder and all that bullshit, I was more able to enjoy the elements that shone through. We’ll get more into all of that below though.

Characters –
Arthur Curry AKA Aquaman – Jason Momoa
Okay, I love Jason Momoa, I think he’s really fun to watch in things, but he’s not Aquaman. Why did they cast him as this character? Whoever was letting Zack Snyder personally cast his Justice League way back when really should have been paying attention when he picked the Flash and Aquaman. Because, boy… I mean, I still don’t get it. In the comics, pretty much since their introduction, it never changed. Barry Allen was a CSI guy in his thirties and Arthur Curry was a stern, hardened king. Snyder turned them into a creepy knockoff of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and a drunk, irritating surfer guy. And at no point in time did they build on this new personality for Aquaman or explain why it is that this guy would continue ruling Atlantis. I’m still confused as to how he’s the king that they need. So I guess what I’m saying is, I like this guy and he does a perfectly good job doing what he’s supposed to do for this movie, but I don’t know what that is. I don’t know who his character is. I know he’s frustrated that Atlantis won’t embrace him as their ruler or see what he does for them and that he wants his infant son to stop crying all the time and pissing in his face. I’m really glad that James Gunn is restarting the universe and I really do hope he clean-slates the Justice League. Obviously I’ve wanted a new Flash for a while, but I’ve gradually gotten to the point where I’d kind of love anyone else to play Wonder Woman too. And just make Jason Momoa the new Lobo for this DC universe. That’s what he wants, that’s what he thought was going to happen. Why did they have him play Aquaman?

Orm AKA Ocean Master – Patrick Wilson
Speaking of how all of these characters are miscast, hello! Okay, so I think Patrick Wilson is a terrific actor and he’s probably the character I liked in this the most. He plays this character well because he’s Patrick Wilson and he’s very versatile, but they should have made him a comic-accurate Aquaman instead. He’s got the blonde, chiseled, generic handsome look, and the charisma and gravitas to pull off a fairly one-note nothing character and make him interesting. If they had actually made a movie about Aquaman as he’s presented in the comics, he would have been an excellent choice. Ugh. You can all hate on the Marvel movies as much as you want and say they aren’t interesting anymore, but nine times out of ten they nail the casting and get someone who embodies that character and makes it great, and you absolutely can not say that about the majority of these DC movies. Even when they do get it right, they misuse the actor over and over again until they leave willingly or are recast (Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck) or they get a great first movie and a bad sequel where they’re also hard to watch (Zachary Levi, Gal Gadot). I mean, it just frustrates me even though it shouldn’t that this studio is incapable of correctly casting the characters I like. But that’s changing, James Gunn is making some great casting decisions over at DC. Anyway, Patrick Wilson is a good actor and he’s good in this, is my point.

David Kane AKA Black Manta – Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
This is the one piece of casting I don’t think they screwed up, but also it’s pretty impossible to screw up. David Kane is not a very complicated character, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a really really good actor that can make literally anything better. He’s really good in this. He’s so menacing and intense and creepy and engaging and likeable. You want him to get catharsis and avenge his dad and help that weird Atlantean CGI ghost destroy the world with global warming and possessed tridents. Or at least I do. I was very pulled in by his performance. He was meant to be playing Wonder Man over at Marvel, I’m not sure if that’s still happening. That’s a very odd piece of casting. Hmmm.

Tom Curry – Temuera Morrison
I like this guy and I like this character, so scratch what I said about there being only one piece of casting that I like, I lied. There’s not much else to say, I just like that Aquaman has a nice dad with a charming accent. And I like that his dad is Boba Fett. I think it’s weird that you don’t see him and Nicole Kidman together until over halfway through the movie, and I think it’s weird that even though Mera is alive and in this more than I expected, Aquaman and his dad have a lot of conversations about single parenting. I mean, I could feel the Warner Brothers executives and James Wan and the DC marketing team in that moment, trying to will the script to magically change and make Aquaman a single parent, free of controversy. So that was weird. But yeah.

Atlanna – Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman is without a doubt one of the greatest actresses working today. She’s cool and talented and everybody loves her and that’s awesome and inspiring. That being said. I would not say that this movie necessarily makes her look like a bad actress because they haven’t asked her to act in this, she’s only there to give exposition to Aquaman and stand next to Dolph Lundgren. Now, there’s an art to giving exposition in a comic book movie. If the dialogue is already bad, and the actor is prestigious enough, it can sometimes feel like you’re watching them disconnect from the material mid-scene. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone’s eyes glazing over. Nicole Kidman stopped paying attention to her dialogue and so did I. But also, she’s Nicole Kidman. This is a nothing role, and it’s an absolute waste of her as an actress. She shouldn’t be in this because it’s beneath her, just as much as Michelle Pfeiffer shouldn’t have been in Quantumania because that was beneath her, but Pfeiffer was given way more to work with. So that’s my long and roundabout way of saying “While watching this I wondered if Nicole Kidman was actually a good actress or not and then felt bad”.

Mera – Amber Heard
You may or may not know that Amber Heard has had a series of very public trials with her ex-husband Johnny Depp, and a lot has come out about both of them that has made her in particular someone that studios don’t want to work with. You would think that she would no longer be in this or at the very least have a very reduced role in this film. But this is Warner Brothers, the studio where you can strangle a woman on camera, get arrested multiple times, start a cult, still get to play two different versions of the same character in the biggest box office flop of the year and continue to live your life without consequences. They don’t care if it’s common knowledge that a person has multiple sexual assault charges against them, they’ll still cast that person as the Joker. All of this is to say that I’m surprised I was surprised by how much she’s actually in this movie, because she’s in about half of it. Though early on she gets lasered by Black Manta and sidelined for a while, and surely that was purposeful. I don’t know. Based on these movies alone, she’s not a very good actress, so it’s weird that Warner Brothers didn’t recast the character or do anything at all in response. Someone should sit the Warner Brothers executives down and ask them why they keep making such weird, bad decisions.

King Nereus – Dolph Lundgren
Every once in a while when doing these reviews I like to reiterate that I’m a 21 year old college student that doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. Just so the people reading this know I don’t think all that highly of my own opinion and I’m well aware I’m just rambling and these are successful professional talented actors and screenwriters and directors that I’m critiquing. Believe me, I know all of that, I remind myself all the time, I’m just doing these while I work on my own ideas for movies and stories. Anyway, if you’re reading this, Dolph Lundgren, know that I admire you and your work and I think it’s super cool that you’re an incredibly intelligent guy with a PHD and that makes me feel a little bit better about saying that you’re not good in this movie. It’s his voice, he’s got a very weird voice. He just sounds like Dolph Lundgren. It’s weird, it goes up and down all in the same sentence and I can’t tell if he’s trying to act or what. But he’s also accomplished so much more than I have, and who cares if he’s good in this or not, it’s a fucking Aquaman movie. He seems like a nice guy, too.

Dr. Stephen Shin – Randall Park
I’m a big Randall Park fan, and I have been for a while. He’s a very funny, charismatic actor. I’m not entirely sure why he was cast in the first one. The character he plays was a background antagonist introduced in the New 52 Geoff Johns run of Aquaman and not a particularly interesting one. In this he gets way more to do than I expected. He’s the audience’s window into Black Manta’s world of submarines and possession, and he eventually realizes he’s doing a terrible thing just so he can look at a city underwater. So pretty standard stuff, but better because it’s him.

AND NOW…

THE TIME IS FINALLY HERE…

THE MOMENT THAT WHOEVER HAS BEEN READING THIS REVIEW IS SURELY WAITING FOR…

IT’S SPOILER TIME!!!

Yes, that’s right. It’s time for me to spoil Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Did you see it?

Or are you just reading to the end because you don’t care?

Either way, it doesn’t matter to me!

I’ll never know! Anyway, let’s do it!!!

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Spoiler Review
I think this is a bit better than the first one, but neither is really any good honestly. These are the closest things DC has to the Fast and Furious movies, which makes sense given the people involved. The plot is so like every other superhero movie and the main beats are nearly identical, so my eyes began glazing over and I wanted to leave the theater, but less so than when I saw Shazam! 2, Black Adam, and The Flash. In the end, Aquaman defeats Black Manta and the king briefly possesses Orm so the brothers can fully reconcile and they defeat him together. Orm swims off to eat a cockroach burger, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, and Amber Heard go back to being poorly written side characters with no real depth, and Aquaman goes against the wishes of the elders of Atlantis and reveals their existence to the world. The funniest part of this sequence is that he ends his speech by telling everyone that he’s Aquaman. The internet folk have all pointed out how Orm eating a cockroach at the end of the movie is a funny metaphor for the DCEU. But I direct your attention once more to “I am Aquaman”. I personally think there’s no greater ironic piece of evidence that most of the people at Warner Brothers haven’t understood basic filmmaking for years than the fact that this boring, barely enjoyable movie ends on a reference to the first Iron Man movie. You don’t get to do that like you’re in on the joke. The only way that would work in any way is if this movie was of equal quality to Iron Man (Never my favorite superhero movie and not one I’ve rewatched a lot but I do like it) and this clearly is not. But I digress. Also they kept playing “Born To Be Wild” throughout the movie and I really don’t know why. It’s a weird choice.

Is this a good sequel?
I touched on this earlier, but I think so. In that it’s slightly better but there’s still weird things about it. Martin Short plays a weird fish gangster that they talk to midway through. The action sequences set underwater look terrible, but the ones set above water look pretty good. I don’t like Atlantis either. You can’t just throw a bunch of digital underwater crap together for people to crash into during fight scenes and tell me that’s a society. There’s nothing to any of that. But I liked it more, like I said. I really enjoyed all the submarines and underwater ships and designs for all of that. It was like it was two different movies. A movie I actually really enjoyed about an insane submarine guy and his increasingly unsure scientist friend, and their plans being thwarted by the rightful king of Atlantis learning to overcome his racial biases and become the hero his people needed him to be. And a second movie where a good actor plays a character he was never right for and continues being the King of Atlantis, even though the character shouldn’t have that job either. Again, even Jason Momoa was confused that they cast him as Aquaman and not Lobo. It’s really weird.

What do the post-credits scenes set up for the uneasy future of Aquaman and DC?
They set up absolutely nothing at all. It’s just a fun little scene where Orm eats a cockroach on a hamburger. Because earlier in the movie, Aquaman tricked him into thinking that humans snack on cockroaches. Lots of people hate this. I think it was funny.

Should they make another Aquaman movie?
Obviously we won’t get one in this iteration. If we do, it should be Patrick Wilson or someone else as Aquaman. Or at the very least, whoever is cast should have a defined character that fits the persona they’re embodying. Maybe that’s crazy talk though.

Overall Rating – 6/10(I just didn’t hate it. There’s not much more to it.)
Rudd Rating – 1/10(Paul Rudd is not in this movie, but this movie deserves a point for having more Randall Park in it than Ant-Man 3.)

So that’s the end of the DCEU. Finally. Anyway, my end of year superhero rankings post and end of year movies post will be on the way soon. Hope you enjoyed this!