Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom review – a superhero sequel that sinks

That’s right: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. If ever a first draft holding title ever made it right through all the levels of notes and amends and attempts to think of something just a tiny bit memorable, it’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Given that most people will likely refer to this film as Aquaman 2, as it is the moderately-delayed sequel to James Wan’s surprise 2018 hit, it’s not really an issue. But it’s handily evocative of pretty much every creative decision in a film which addresses its audience over and over and over again with the words: will this do? Perhaps we should answer the question: will it do?

The original was one of the few titles to ring box office tills and garner polite (if hardly spectacular) critical notices within the eternal failson blockbuster franchise that is the DCU. Coming hot on the heels of Shazam! Fury of the Gods (tanked), The Flash (tanked) and Blue Beetle (tanked), it’s hard to know if this film is considered just another piece of corporate cannon fodder to be fragged by the exponentially-more-meagre audiences who, at the height of summer 2023, administered an unequivocal broadside towards the time-honoured superhero movie by turning out in droves for a glossy feminist parable and a three hour film about nuclear fission.

And so, the timing of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom could not be worse. One might speculate that, in this moment (when even the largely more robust MCU is foundering), it would have needed to be an across-the-board 5‑star masterpiece, 100 percent fresh, 90+ points on Metacritic to have even had a shot at success. Alas, what we have is a completely fumbled, cobbled-together movie-esque collage of unwatchably fuzzy CGI in which ten thousand percent more effort has been put into making floaty underwater hair look authentic than it has to the script, story, characters, drama, attaining a sense of basic logic, meaning, etc… So no, it will not do. 

One of the problems with this film is that Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry is no longer an underdog, and the film does very little to make you want to root for his victory. The jacked alpha quarterback kegger-type schtick worked well enough in the first film, but to be frank, he comes off here as an annoying jerk. And so during all the extended combat scenes when he’s fighting cephalopod submarines or a phalanx of oversized carnivorous crickets (?) you’re not really bothered as to whether he gets turned into bro bouillabaisse or not. Patrick Wison returns in straight man detail as his banished brother Orm, who has little more to do than project disgust at Arthur’s goofball prattling.

There’s a faint wisp of a story in there somewhere, with the antagonist of the first film (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Black Manta) returning for some afters, this time armed with a dark magic trident that he needs to take to the place to do the thing. But this is a(nother) prime example of blockbuster filmmaking by rote, with ambition levels deep in the negative numbers and the only passion on screen coming from the prospect of getting to leave the green screen every day and hit the bar.

Inevitably, when words like this are published, the writers are often tarred as sad-sack dweebs who don’t understand the lore and wouldn’t know a fun time if it swam up behind them and took a chunk out of their torso. But there are little pockets of creativity nestled in the film, in some of the design aspects and the references to camp mid-century sci-fi in the production design, but without context they’re all but meaningless flotsam on a sea of digital murk. 

So no, this really won’t do. If these are the cinema tentpoles of the 21^st century, then at the very least they can hold up a colourful, well-made canopy in order to justify not only their existence, but their prominence too. And if it turns out the superhero movie has to be wheeled out for palliative care (prove us wrong Hollywood!), then the sad thing is, people will unlikely remember Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom long enough to saddle it with the blame.

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