Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the kind of movie you forget about the instant you leave the theatre. And given this year’s run of bad superhero movies, that’s quite impressive. It seemed to emerge from the depths all of a sudden at the end of the year, with little fervour or promotion, only to sink immediately back into irrelevance -the last spark of an old regime at the unwieldy DC Studios that couldn’t be sooner laid to rest.
It is the sequel to one of the better entries from that enterprise -not a great movie, but owing to James Wan’s direction, a very vivid and visually original one, full of bonkers world-building, goofy characters, and a richness of aesthetic that made it fairly unique. Each of those things is tempered in this second instalment to the point that it’s a surprise to see Wan is still in the director’s chair; and is accompanied by an amalgam of story beats, stylistic cues, relationships and personalities stitched together from other superhero movies -some of which weren’t even that good the first time. If you need any more proof after The Flash that DC is running on empty you don’t have to look any further than this movie not working off of a single original idea.
The film opens by prefacing the last one in the first of several moves by Wan and screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick to imitate the style of Taika Waititi. Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry is living a dual life both as a land-dwelling lighthouse-keeper dad and the King of Atlantis -though the latter vocation he finds increasingly boring. Meanwhile the more pathetic of his adversaries from the last movie David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen III) finds an ancient Atlantean trident, which he uses to put into motion his plot of revenge against Curry and the Atlantean people more broadly. To defeat him, Aquaman aligns with his imprisoned half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson).
Waititi’s take on the Thor series is the most obvious influence on the sensibility and character dynamics of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The title character is drawn as a similar kind of charismatic himbo with an inflated sense of grandiosity and a marginalized home life; while his brother, the first movie’s principal villain, is set on the path to redemption through a character-building journey with Arthur. Their odd couple dynamic has obvious traces of Thor and Loki in both the second and third instalments of that series while the irreverent dialogue just seems lifted from the general tenor of the MCU overall -something that at the very least was more moderate in the first movie.
Where that one had been so distinct from the Marvel competition by way of its intensely colourful and creative visuals, this one seems to concede defeat by tempering that visual language -it’s a far less bright movie than its predecessor- and includes far fewer distinct techniques of style. Granted, any movie post-Avatar:The Way of Water will find itself lacking for its underwater sequences, but the choice here of merely illustrating that via floating hair and just some agitation feels exceptionally weak creatively. And the plot is a deeply boring one that makes little use of the extravagant comic underwater world that so fleshed out its precursor. Sure, there’s a return of the Brine King (voiced by an always welcome John Rhys-Davies), and one sequence where Arthur and Orm have to barter with a fish crime lord -but the bit is a blatant reference to the Jabba the Hutt side-quest at the beginning of Return of the Jedi that adds nothing original beyond some fairly weak banter.
With the absence of Willem Dafoe and highly reduced roles for Nicole Kidman and Amber Heard (which I’m sure is not at all for bullshit reasons) -all strong parts of that first film, it’s left to Momoa to carry the movie, which he has a hard time doing. The character of Arthur is boxed-in by this script, far less interesting or distinct, and therefore with less opportunity for Momoa’s charisma. Though he has a couple of fun moments, it feels like a regulated performance, and quite a hollow one. Wilson is improved, in several scenes the more engaging personality of the two, but still limited in his own way, while Abdul-Mateen exchanges a somewhat hammy performance for a broadly monotone generic ‘bad guy’ one. Honestly as the one normal guy in the movie and the source of its only effective comic relief, Randall Park as the unwilling henchman is probably the stand-out performance of the piece.
There are some added layers of lore to the story here that are extremely difficult to get invested in, as hollow as anything from the Snyder era; and it’s all in vain for the terribly boring trajectory of the story, posing little challenge or intrigue for Aquaman’s character -indeed Orm’s redemption seems to be a higher priority. It's not just that Arthur is more blandly written, it's that the story does absolutely nothing for him. Mostly he's there to look good, provide a model for CG action scenes, and make lazy comic observation. Very little care is put into setting up the importance of Arthur's family; despite being his primary motivator for the last act, his infant son is reduced to merely one scene and a montage of first-draft parenting gags. Very little sense is conveyed of anything much mattering in this guy's life. A minor thread, this one ripped from the films, follows a debate around Atlanteans making themselves known to the surface dwellers. And regardless of where the movie takes this, none of the main characters, Arthur least of all, seem to care one way or another about such a gravitational choice.
There are a few semi-creative bursts of action in the film. Enough to confirm Wan is still in possession of some of his familiar energy. But I don't get the impression he's lost his spark to begin with; rather it just isn't being deployed here. A lot of comparisons can be made with the Waititi-directed Thor outings, and one of the more severe is that like Love and Thunder, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom seems to be mere insurance for a more interesting, personal project for Wan. Even disregarding the fact that this movie belongs to a superhero cinematic universe that is about to be wiped, and was unlucky enough to wind up through release scheduling as its last whimper, it still bears all the hallmarks of a movie that from all levels of production and beyond, nobody too much cared about. And my guess is the audience won't either.
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