After failing to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences, they join forces to protect their kingdom and save the world from irreversible destruction. The DC Extended Universe has been quite a bumpy ride to say the least, but not without some genuine bright spots along the way, namely Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the first Shazam, the first Wonder Woman, and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. I didn’t LOVE the first Aquaman movie, but I fairly enjoyed it as a big dumb superhero blockbuster with a visually exuberant looking Atlantis and solid direction from James Wann. I think Jason Mamoa is generally great in the role, especially in Zack Snyder’s Justice League and it is truly a bummer that this will be his last go around as the King of Atlantis. I say it’s a bummer because I take zero pleasure in saying that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom may very well be one of the worst DC movies ever made and accentuates all of the bad qualities that plague modern comic book cinema.
There was a time where Aquaman and the rest of the Justice League heroes were portrayed as myths, larger than life beings. Just about all of that mythological seriousness is thrown out the window in favor of laughably bad writing, goofy dialogue, messy plotting, astonishingly subpar CGI, and an extremely uneven tone. Before I get into everything that’s wrong with this movie, I’m going to touch on its few positives. The buddy cop like chemistry between Mamoa’s Aquaman and Patrick Wilson’s Orm is mostly fine, with a couple of funny moments of them bickering back and forth about how each of them would handle the daunting task of being King of Atlantis. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is pretty menacing (at times) as Black Manta, and towards the end of the film there is around 45 seconds to a minute of well choreographed underwater fighting with Aquaman which had some undoubtedly cool moments. The soundtrack by Rupert Gregson-Williams isn’t half bad, and the deep bass themes for Orm and Black Manta are admittedly badass. Sadly, that’s about all of the positive things I can say about this movie. The script from David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick is all over the place in almost every way, with a bad or juvenile joke being thrown at you nearly every couple of minutes.
Mamoa is barely even trying here, oftentimes cracking unfunny jokes or one liners like he’s on an overproduced SNL skit. There is absolutely no weight or dramatic stakes with Mamoa’s performance and it doesn’t help when he obnoxiously makes eye rolling pop culture references. There’s clearly an attempt to make Arthur and Orm’s brotherly dynamic be like Thor and Loki, but it has none of the depth, dimension, nor the believability of that relationship. When they both eventually work together, I never felt any visceral satisfaction as they fight a bunch of ugly looking CGI creatures and machines underwater. So much visual noise, so little magic. At around the halfway point, I felt my head throbbing from all the meaningless CGI nonsense being tossed in my face and overly loud sound effects piercing my eardrums. The supporting performances are also shockingly bad. Taking away all of the behind the scenes drama surrounding Amber Heard and judging her performance from an objective standpoint, she is utterly atrocious and her line delivery makes it feel like this is a satirical parody version of Mera. She’s only in the movie for about 5-10 minutes and almost every time she spoke there were audible groans from several of the audience members in my IMAX theater.
Black Manta’s quest for the revenge of his father’s death is such a generic, paper thin, and cliché motive that barely gets any interesting exploration. Manta gets ahold of the black trident, giving him superhuman powers from some green bad guy who offers to fulfill his wishes in destroying Aquaman. It’s so redundant and we’ve seen that done before countless times, and in far better comic book movies. To add insult to injury, Black Manta even makes a few cringy disses at Aquaman that completely undercut any dramatic tension between the two. I usually like Randall Park, but he was rather annoying and felt wildly out of place in this movie.
Whereas the first Aquaman movie had a visually vivacious Atlantis, the underwater locations in this sequel look even more ugly than the Gungan city from the Phantom Menace. It really is a damn shame that this will be how the DC Extended Universe concludes. I truly believe that in the long run, Warner Bros will regret getting rid of and canceling Zack Snyder’s Justice League sequels, both from a creative and business stance. No I’m not saying every DC movie needs to be super dark, but having these beloved comic book characters be treated like they’re jokes is something that doesn’t appeal to myself and a vast majority of passionate superhero fans globally. Overall, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom brings the DCEU to an embarrassingly anticlimactic conclusion. With a laughably bad script, astonishingly poor performances, a goofily uneven tone, and shockingly subpar visual effects, this is one superhero movie that should have stayed well below the surface.
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