Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
The DCEU comes to an ignominious end with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, a sequel to the 2019 blockbuster. DC’s cinematic output has been wildly uneven, from highs like Wonder Woman to lows like Shazam! Fury of the Gods. That kind of all-over-the-place track record is reflected in this new outing. It’s a hot mess.
The story is simultaneously overly complicated and overly simplistic. Villian Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) has vowed to destroy Aquaman (Jason Momoa) for killing his father in the first film. To do this, he harnesses a special element called Orichalcum that contains great power, along with a link to a fabled lost kingdom. Using the Orichalcum has the negative side effect of speeding up global warming. That’s the basic gist of the story – a standard, low-stakes “You killed my [whatever], so now I’m going to kill you!” tale. Aquaman turns to his imprisoned brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) for assistance in foiling Black Manta.
At the same time, the movie tries to build a mythology. There’s complex talk about the creation of a unique trident and the history of the kingdom of Necrus, which was inhabited by demons and became frozen in time. None of this is particularly satisfying because Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom only utilizes those concepts as exposition. When something needs explained, there’s a boring information dump, after which the plot moves on to whatever’s next, without providing much big-picture context.
This approach leads to a disjointed feel. Various sections don’t seem to go together. A sequence where Aquaman and Orm venture to a land where the climate has mutated rats and grasshoppers to thousands of times their normal size is the only genuinely entertaining part, but it comes out of nowhere and is promptly forgotten. Same goes for an encounter with a crime lord Kingfish (voiced by Martin Short) whose sole purpose is to point the brothers in the right direction. What a long way to go for such a minimal outcome.
Important characters from the original are weirdly sidelined. Nicole Kidman is back as Aquaman’s mother Atlanna. She gets little screen time, and when she does, the Oscar-winning actress is reduced to spewing platitudes at the aquatic superhero, as opposed to having a function as she did in the first film. Amber Heard, who plays Aquaman’s wife Mera, is likewise shoved into the background. The movie keeps emphasizing what a family man Aquaman has become, yet there are few scenes in which he interacts with his spouse.
What Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom does offer is an overload of CGI action scenes that become virtually identical by the end. To be fair, several of the images in these scenes look cool in 3D. However, the underwater fights are too cluttered and chaotic to generate tension. Excessive mayhem is not the same as true excitement. Characterization gets tossed aside in the process. Basically, anything the original did well, the sequel botches.
DC Films is set to have a different vision going forward, courtesy of new CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran. Their stated aim is to bring more consistency to the DC label onscreen. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a prime example of why an overhaul is desperately needed.
out of four
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and some language. The running time is 2 hours and 4 minutes.
