Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

PG-13 mostly for superhero violence.  Since Aquaman and its surrounding characters have gone for amore optimistic tone, these movies are pretty watchable for kids of all ages.  I guess that would be mostly true if it wasn't for the real casual use of the s-bomb.  I mean, boy-oh-boy, that's the go-to curse word for superhero movies, isn't it?  Also, if you don't care for Amber Heard, she's also all over this movie.  I'll address that in a minute.

DIRECTOR: James Wan 

I can tell you right now.  More than anything else right now, I don't want to be writing about Aquaman 2.  I'm going through some self-loathing nonsense.  I already wrote about a movie today.  I want to shut down and play some Alan Wake 2, but I also know that --if I've done my job right --I'll have a plate of movies to write about on Monday coupled with a lot of grading to get through before the end of the quarter next Thursday.  So here's to me powering through some writing that doesn't sound appealing to me at all.

Here's something that will make this blog completely unrelatable.  I'm the one dude who absolutely loathed the first Aquaman movie.  With that perspective, you have to understand that I think that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a big improvement.  Now, is it a good movie?  I won't go that far.  It's still a rough film from my perspective, but I don't see the hate that it got from viewers.  It's my last time to talk about the DCeU while the DCeU is still going, but it might come from the fallout of "What an odd farewell story".  I get that.  I get that some people really invested in the whole concept of a cohesive DCeU. I know that the Snyderverse fandom --potentially the most toxic fandom out there right now --really needed this whole thing to come together.  I know that post-Snyder, there was this feeling of betrayal towards anything either DC or Marvel related.  It was Snyder's vision or bust.  Then there were the people who just wanted these DCeU movies to keep going.  I was in the camp of what's happening right now.  I wanted to let it die and to come back with a clean slate under a focused banner.  For those people who said Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was bad because it's  a weird foot to end up on, I kind of get that and even support that.  It's a bummer when something you love dies an unceremonious death.

For me, what made Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom completely watchable --if not great --was that it was a way more focused story that the first one.  The first Aquaman was trying to do the entire mythology and canon of Aquaman in one movie. It didn't understand that there was a large gulf between complicated and complex. Golly, they touched on everything in that movie and all of it felt --pun intended --watered down.  This is a straightforward movie.  Occasionally, the way-too-many writers of this film through in a couple of light curveballs in an attempt to complicate the movie.  Honestly, some of Lost Kingdom felt like it was trying to pad out a two-hour runtime.  I also know that this movie got really butchered in some edits and reshoots.  A lot of that comes down to the reviews and response to The Flash, which I honestly believe gets more hate than it deserves.  Okay, Ezra Miller is a hard sell, but the rest of that movie is mostly fine.  But Lost Kingdom, like The Marvels, is a simple story.  I'll take a simple story done well over a complicated story that sacrifices gorgeous story for fan-service.

But the problem is that Lost Kingdom, as simple of a story as it is, doesn't really do that one story well.  It's not bad.  I don't think it is a bad movie, by any stretch of the imagination.  Like I said, it kept my attention for the entire runtime.  But there are so many moments that just feel like set-pieces and skewed logic.  In terms of set-pieces, it's really weird how Orm's prison works.  Orm is kept prisoner in the desert.  I love that.  Very smart.  The guy is powered by water, so keep him water-starved.  But his prison in the desert is right by the ocean.  It's almost like we desperately didn't want to answer how to get an emaciated Orm from his prison back to full power, coupled with the broey moment when Orm hulks out and takes out all of his captives. But the biggest problem is that this movie is about reconciling Arthur and Orm.  That's a cool concept and I absolutely love it.  Too bad no one had a nuanced reason for putting Orm in this movie.  

Arthur's big problem is that he has to do something off-the-books.  As King of Atlantis, he would not be sanctioned to investigate this problem that they are having.  The Atlanteans are hesitant to have any kind of relationship with the surface world and this is a problem that needs cooperation with the surface world. Now, that seems like a problem that Aquaman would have to deal with.  But his first and only suggestion to solving this problem is busting Orm out of prison.  See, that doesn't scan at all.  I get it.  We need Orm out of prison so the brothers can be brothers again.  I love the goal.  It's just just the "how" doesn't make a lick of sense.  I don't know why they need Orm for this problem.  They are looking for Black Manta.  Why would Orm know where he is?  I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here.  What ultimately happens in the movie is that Orm uses his knowledge of the seedier parts of the ocean to make a connection to get information about the location of Black Manta.  But there are lots of people in Atlantis.  Heck, Mera seems pretty knowledgable about these things.  Where's her input?

On top of that, Arthur Curry is really tied to the greater DCeU.  From what I understand, Michael Keaton's Batman was supposed to be in this movie at one point.  Again, the failure of The Flash movie may have had the studio scrambling.  I can see a studio making knee-jerk edits to a movie to make everything that failed in a movie dowmn to a mathematical formula.  It's what bad studios do.  But there were so many other ways for Arthur to get the information or help that he needed and none of them made sense that you would bring in the old bad guy.  (It's not shocking that it happens in a James Wan movie. That's what happens in every Fast and the Furious movie.) This whole tirade about how to get Orm into the movie is indicative of every other sequence in the movie.  It's not that I hate Orm. (I mean, I don't love Orm, but I like the idea of this being a story about family and forgiveness.) There are so many scenes that are just meant to look pretty.  At one point, on the island where Black Manta is, there is a jungle filled with giant creatures that are trying to kill them.  Was it necessary that this island had giant creatures?  Not really.  These giant creatures never really came back into play outside of the fact that it created a fun and visual action sequence.

Ultimately, this movie felt like scenes were only there to keep people chowing down on popcorn.  You could set these characters anywhere and give them things to punch and it would be the same movie.  Honestly, right now, I could put these characters in New Zealand fighting biker gangs and the movie would fundamentally have the same flow.  Everything is only remotely related to the main plot of stopping Black Manta from freeing this monster who was pretty easy to take down.  Yes, I kinda / sorta liked the whole global warming message.  If you make an Aquaman movie without talking about how humans are ravaging the planet, you kind of missed the point of Aquaman.  But like with the first one, there's nothing in the movie that was built on nuance.  Instead, we're constantly fed action sequences to keep our attention.  There are some lovely parts, to be sure.  But just the constant conflict was hurting the more vulnerable, character building moments.  Were they successful at bringing Orm and Arthur together?  Sure.  But could it have meant something more?  Probably.

Can I have a hot take?  I love Jason Momoa. I'm almost tempted to say that we should give him any role he wants.  But the hot take is that...maybe he's not the best Aquaman?  I really want to like him in this role.  I've been saying that DC needed to have the same fun that the Marvel movies have.  Here's my own hypocrisy at work.  If you were a hardcore fan of Iron Man before Iron Man came out, you might have been angry.  Robert Downey, Jr. injected some perfect humor into that character.  (See, how I wrote "perfect"?  That's not fair or equal measured.) I know that Aquaman is not a great IP, but neither was Iron Man.  It's just that it felt like Robert Downey, Jr. took the template of Tony Stark and made him snarky.  In the comics, Aquaman is intense.  He's way too intense.  His personality is a big ol' grumpus.  Namor and he have too much in common.  While I love the idea of Aquaman being this giant of a man who can rock people when they go toe-to-toe (giving him some validity as a superhero), Jason Momoa might be having...too much fun?  This is coming from a guy who crapped on the DC movies for being too serious.  It's just that I think we need to pick our movies that are serious and which ones are fun.  Superman, Flash, Guy Gardener, Shazam, those are fun time movies covered with the jokey-jokes.  Batman, Aquaman, Swamp Thing?  Those guys can get darker.  

Okay, let's talk Amber Heard.  What am I supposed to think about Amber Heard right now? (What?  I'm being honest. Apparently the wind has changed.)  Last time I checked, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were both terrible toxic people and that we were going to be done with them.  Has there been an update?  Amber Heard was all over this movie.  Okay, here's me sounding that I want someone to stay cancelled and I'm not sure what I'm really saying.  There are times when the actor overshadows their characters though.  I had a hard time coming around to Mission: Impossible III because Tom Cruise was jumping on couches at the time.  The same thing kind of happened with Amber Heard.  I kept thinking that her scenes were done and then there was more Amber Heard.  Mera wasn't a huge character in this movie, but they just kept bringing it back.  Part of it came from the fact that Arthur's a dad in this one.  But the one thing that really didn't get sold is the role of fatherhood.  Parts of the movie were all about being a dad in the lightest way possible.  But that story kept disappearing when it was convenient.

The final beef I have with the movie was something that impressed me in the early DCeU. When Atlanteans were underwater, they looked rad.  Their hair floated and it was super cool.  Their hair still floats, but was I the only one who got the vibes that people's faces were just filtered onto their heads?  It looked so weird at the time.

I don't know.  It's a fine movie. It's not great.  I'm not going to miss the DCeU, but I didn't hate this movie outright.