It hasn’t been a good year for superhero movies, at least in regards to box office. It doesn’t help the new Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom that the new guys in charge of DC Films has already made it clear they aren’t going to be making more movies in this continuity, that none of the Justice League actors will be reprising those roles–though it could be that they could come back and play a different character if you want to get technical–and with no possibility for there to be a third Aquaman movie with Jason Momoa in the lead role, why should anyone care about it?
I was going to go see it anyway, but a trip to the Alamo Drafthouse to see this was my girlfriend’s Christmas gift to me after I took her to see Spamalot on Broadway. I don’t review theater here, but let’s just say Spamalot was a lot of fun and would have been more so if the seats were designed for someone my size.
Life has moved on for Arthur “Aquaman” Curry (Momoa). He’s the King of Atlantis, husband to Mera (Amber Heard), and father to the infant Arthur Junior. His parents (Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison) are still part of his life as his lighthouse keeper father seems to be watching the baby while Arthur is doing the king and/or superhero thing. The king stuff is mostly there to make Arthur miserable as he doesn’t seem to be cut out for it, but at least he’s kept his kingdom from attacking the oblviious surface world. But then David “Black Manta” Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is still out there, looking to avenge himself against Aquaman, the man who killed Manta’s father. That may come to pass when Kane finds a magical black trident in the frozen remains of the title Lost Kingdom, one that enhances Kane’s own strength and power while giving him access to long lost knowledge that will endanger the world in ways that no one could have foreseen since the technology was lost of millenia.
After an attack on Atlantis itself catches Aquaman flat-footed, he has no choice but to get help from the only man he knows or knows of that might know how to find Kane: his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), the villain from the first movie. Orm, imprisoned for his crimes from the first movie, will need to be broken out first and will not be the most willing of partners to work with the half-brother who usurped what Orm, the Ocean Master, believes is rightfully his own throne. Kane, however, is falling more and more under the trident’s control, and it will take the combined knowledge and strength of both brothers and their respective allies if they’re going to take down Black Manta and defeat the power of the black trident once and for all.
I didn’t go into this with high expectations, and the people I know who saw it didn’t care for it. I can see why. It’s not a great movie, and I would say it may not even be a good one. The special effects are spotty in places, I laughed out loud at one dramatic moment, and the way the brothers overcome the trident at the end was so cliched it wasn’t even funny. And let’s just say that having Martin Short voice a half-fish crime lord is something of a step down from having Julie Andrews voice a sea monster from the first movie. My girlfriend and I even shared a laugh on the way out that Momoa had better chemistry with Wilson than he did with Amber Heard.
And yet, I had a fun time with this one. I don’t know if it was because of the company or where I was or something, but I just had a good time watching the movie. It could even have been going in with really low expectations. I long figured the best way to enjoy Momoa’s Aquaman movies was to not take them seriously for a moment. Even by superhero standards, Aquaman is inherently ridiculous. Heck, Aquaman himself says as much during this movie’s opening monologue. On the one hand, it’s not a good movie. On the other, I had fun in the theater. Draw your own conclusions.
Grade: C+
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