Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Aquaman was one of the few major hits the D.C Cinematic Universe had after Zach Snyder left.  It wasn't that good and had about every usual problem of the DCCU, but it found its audience and they went to go see it.  A sequel was planned almost immediately and Jason Momoa, the star of the film, along with director James Wan and screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick began forming an idea of what it would be.  They just never planned for it to be the last movie ever released before the whole mess got rebooted once again.

Arthur (Momoa), aka Aquaman, is raising a child with his wife Mera (Amber Heard) on land while also ruling Atlantis, a job that he soon finds quite tedious.  During this time Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) has been working with Dr. Shin (Randall Park) to find Atlantean technology to fix his power suit.  What he finds instead is an object called the Black Trident, a weapon that was wielded by King Atlan's (Vincent Regan) brother Kordax (Pilou Asbæk).  Kordax ruled over the kingdom of Necrus which had in the past gone to war with Atlan over the use of a substance called orichalcum, a dangerous substance that used to power Atlantean technology.

That doesn't phase Black Manta who is willing to do what he can to destroy everything that Arthur has loved and built.  Once it becomes known who was behind the raids on orichalcum storage facilities Aquaman must break his exiled brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) out of prison in order to track Black Manta down and put a stop to his plans before the entire world is destroyed.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I liked this movie much more than the original.  Amber Heard is still in it too much, and this does have a rather heavy-handed environmental message, but it is barely over two hours and all that time is filled with action.  The plot is about as basic as it can get, but Mateen gets to be in this movie like he should have been in the last and, although Kordax is the big villain behind the scenes, he doesn't crowd the stage.  Black Manta gets to be the baddie throughout and that focus is needed. 

The other thing that works is the buddy cop relationship between Aquaman and Orm.  Wan and Momoa admitted this was somewhat a tribute to 48 Hrs., and it works well.  I still think there is something left to be desired in the writing, and a number of the jokes fall flat, but Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson manage to work through that to help make the movie as entertaining as possible.  Randall Park is decent, and Dolph Lundgren gets a bigger part in this as well.  Unfortunately, Willem Dafoe doesn't return, and Nicole Kidman still gets put on the back burner more than Heard. 

I still don't like the CGI that attempts to make them look like their underwater.  It looks just as bad as it did in 2018, and that is in a movie that is about 90 percent computer animation.  As usual for the DCCU the creatures look good, but a lot of the environments look terrible.  I noticed in some cases, especially when they get to Black Manta's island lair, that Wan could have just used matte paintings and it would have looked better than the computer graphics they came up with. 

This is still much better than I would have expected.  It's not a great film, but it easily could have been phoned in since by the time reshoots were done and this hit the theater it was known that the DCCU was over.  This only saw the light of day because the first Aquaman did well, and this movie managed to turn a small profit despite not being well-liked.  Truth is, if more the D.C. movies had been like this, with a focus on action albeit with a bit better writing, it would have been more successful.  

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Time: 124 minutes

Starring: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Director: James Wan