by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: James Wan
CAST: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Randall Park, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 35%
PLOT: When Black Manta seeks revenge on Aquaman for his father’s death, Aquaman forges an uneasy alliance with his imprisoned brother to defend Atlantis and his family.
“They say everybody’s good at something. Me? I talk to fish. …Some people think that makes me a joke. But I don’t care.”
Those lines, spoken in narration by Aquaman at the beginning of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, admirably sum up just about every comic book fan’s opinion of Aquaman and his dubious powers over the course of his existence. The genius move on the part of the DC Extended Universe was casting Jason Momoa as the King of Atlantis. As I wrote in my review of Aquaman (2018): “Hell, I wouldn’t laugh at a guy who looks like that. ‘You talkin’ to fish? Ping away, Muscles!’”
So, you’ve got the right guy for the role, no worries there. The problem now is how to use him. Based on Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it would seem they used up all the best ideas in the first movie. I wouldn’t call Lost Kingdom a rehash of Aquaman, necessarily, but it doesn’t exactly stake out new territory. (Well, except for when they visit the underwater version of the Star Wars cantina, complete with a live band, seedy characters, and a pirate overlord who looks like Jabba the Hutt with fins for hands. That was new. I mean, sort of.)
Putting it another way, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom does not transcend, or even seem to ATTEMPT to transcend, the boundaries of the comic-book-movie genre. The filmmakers did add some witty banter between Arthur and his imprisoned brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), that was a nice source of comic relief. Orm’s almost complete ignorance of life on the surface world leads to some funny scenes involving such basic concepts of what to eat and how to run. But aside from that, a rundown of the plot seems redundant because you’ve heard and seen it all before. “Bad guy from first movie shows up, more powerful than before, threatens life on Earth for personal vendetta against good guy. Good guy learns to get along with semi-bad-guy brother to defeat good guy.”
With that in mind, though, knowing full well that the movie followed the comic-book-movie formula step-by-step…I must truthfully report that I had a good time. I enjoyed it. I could intellectualize endlessly about the bankruptcy of the story, the bloated visual effects, the overly-preachy finger-wagging to climate-change deniers (Black Manta’s plan is to raise global temperatures in order to release an army of mutant henchmen from their icy prison in Antarctica; he has a line where he says something like, “I’m only continuing what we’ve been doing for decades.” Shaaaame on us). But…again, I must admit, I had fun.
At some point, when it comes to comic book movies, I have to start asking myself: what more do I want from a comic book movie? If I expected every single comic book film to be as good as Superman or The Dark Knight or The Batman or even the first Shazam!, I would be sorely disappointed. It’s impossible to have that kind of track record, quality-wise. To be sure, there have been disappointments (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Venom, Wonder Woman 1984, and many others). But none of those films were even close to being as much fun as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Others will no doubt disagree. Understandable.
But I still had fun, and no amount of critical dismantling of the plot will change that.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 