A film review by Craig J. Koban January 10, 2024

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM ½  

2023, PG-13, 125 mins.

Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman  /  Patrick Wilson as Orm Marius / Ocean Master  /  Amber Heard as Mera  /  Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane / Black Manta  /  Nicole Kidman as Atlanna  /  Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus  /  Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin  /  Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry  /  Indya Moore as Karshon  /  Jani Zhao as Stingray  /  Vincent Regan as Atlan

There are two separate scenes in AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM when the titular King of Atlantis himself gets projectile peed in the face.

I'm not kidding. 

Both times by his new infant son during a badly timed diaper change.  

Oh, Aquaman also get sprayed in the face by a cephalopod while he's on a world-saving mission (was it water...or pee-pee...who knows?).  

That's gotta be a first when it comes to blockbuster superhero films, if not more than a little debasing for this film's hero in question.    

On the other hand, maybe the makers behind AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM are just throwing creative caution to the wind with a meh, who cares attitude, seeing as this 15th installment of the long since announced dead DCEU is the final  nail in the coffin for this mixed bag franchise.  To be fair, I have fond memories of the first AQUAMAN picture back in 2018, which had director James Wan doing some thanklessly epic underwater world building while also achieving the once thought impossible - making Aquaman (a longtime ridiculed member of the Justice League) look cool and capable of carrying his own movie.  AQUAMAN displayed levels of pure imagination and raw spectacle and showcased a very game Jason Momoa in peak charismatic form.  Rather unexpectedly, the film went on to earn a billion dollars at the box office, making it the DCEU's highest earner.  

That's nothing to sneeze at, folks.

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM picks up where the first film left off, which now shows Arthur Curry knee-deep in newfound fatherhood after the love of his life, Mera (Amber Heard), gave birth to their child.  Returning to be a major thorn in their sides is their arch nemesis Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who's still smarting from being defeated in the last film and now is not only seeking revenge, but also has a dastardly plan to speed up global warming on the planet (more on that in a bit).  AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM has an awful lot going on in its story, and not all of its sticks to landing (this may or may not have anything to do with the well reported test screenings that went disastrously, not to mention numerous pandemic related release bumps and the recent announcement that James Gunn will be rebooting the DCEU as a whole).  This sequel certainly has too much visual ambition to be levied as a pure write-off for the DCEU, not to mention that Momoa remains a striking physical presence on top of being naturally likeable as this aquatic hero.  The real problem, though, with AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM is that the fresh sense of eye-popping discovery of the 2018 film is certainly not here, which is also burdened by the meandering and unfocused nature of the underlining screenplay itself.  That, and the film never feels as fully formed and ultimately satisfying in the ways that Wan and company were obviously hoping for, leaving this a less than stellar swan song for the DCEU as a whole.  

But, yeah, there are some fun moments to be had - at least the ones not involving urine to the face - in the film's early exploratory scenes of Arthur coming to grips with fatherhood and overseaing...sorry...overseeing a vast waterworld empire with various political parties squabbling for dominance.  For the most part, Arthur, Arthur Jr., and Mera seem to be living a modest and stress-free life both on land and in the ocean, but Black Manta's lust for vengeance is almost unstoppable.  With the forced assistance of a lowly scientist, Dr. Shin (Randall Park), Manta hopes to acquire the fabled Black Trident to give him god-like abilities via an evil king, Kordax (Pilou Asbaek), who feeds him visions of a lost kingdom.   Manta is also looking to attain vast deposits of the somewhat icky sounding "orichalcum," a substance so toxic that - if in the wrong hands - it could accelerate climate change and destroy the world (now, why Manta wants this is never thoroughly explained).  Feeling desperate, Arthur decides that he needs an ally as powerful as him to defeat the now all-powerful Manta, so he breaks his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) out of a desert-based prison (he was placed there after his traitorous actions in the first film) to form a mighty alliance.  Predictably, Arthur and Orm have a lot of sibling rivalry issues.  

Now, the whole concept of the hero and villain (also brothers, in this case) having to overcome their respective differences to conquer a seemingly unstoppable enemy seems more than a bit contrived, but somehow the teaming of Momoa and Wilson provides one of the best reasons to see this sequel.  One of the unexpected pleasures of Wilson's turn as Orm (the former Ocean Master) is that he's a - cough, cough! - complete fish out of water when it comes to customs on land, which requires Arthur to help navigate him through it (one uproarious moment has him convince his ex-enemy to pick up a live cockroach off of the ground and eat it raw, citing that land dwellers love it).  A little bit of the bickering brothers and their spirited interplay goes an awfully long way in AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM, which is assisted by the fact that Momoa seems to play Arthur with an all-knowing wink to the audience that he's in on the joke of this movie while Wilson plays Orm as a deadpan and straight man foil to him.  Most of this sequel becomes an odd couple buddy movie, which on paper seems kind of silly considering the events of the last installment, but somehow oddly works here.  The actors' chemistry is quite good to boot, which helps.  And Wan is a pretty committed showman here too, and he tries - sometimes with success, and sometimes not - to wow and dazzle audiences with one grand set-piece and bombastic action sequence after another. 

Like all sequels, AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM tries to go bigger and bolder with his portrait of Atlantis, its denizens, and new underwater worlds built around it.  There's a pretty staggering number of old and new environments here vying for screen time, with arguably my favorite being a huge volcanic island littered with gigantic flora and fauna that's more dangerous than they look.  However, one of the main problems with this sequel is that the bravura and thankless VFX work of what we saw before is not quite up to the same polished standards here.  Some moments look genuinely awe-inspiring and meticulous detailed, whereas others come across like the technical departments were rushed to get this film done and out into cinemas as quickly as possible.  That seems weird, seeing as this film has been in the making for a long time and has had its release date changed numerous times.  Like THE FLASH from earlier in 2023, AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM isn't trying to look and feel like every other comic book extravaganza out there, but oftentimes lacks the discipline to see these uniquely offbeat sights through to successful fruition.   

Superhero films are also only as good as their villains, and Black Manta certainly looks awesome and has well-thought-out motives, but he's not really a memorable antagonist here and is only powerful because of a new mighty trident that he possesses.  There's not much depth in this character, when all is said and done, which doesn't help the stakes later on in the picture.  Speaking of stakes, I rarely felt like there was any tangible danger in the film as far as Aquaman himself is concerned, mostly because Momoa more aggressively plays his hero for absurd laughs half the time.  The first film balanced its outlandish strangeness with seriousness rather well, but Momoa has been given more free rein here to play Arthur as a beer-chasing, fist-bumping, and joke-dispensing smart aleck dude.  That's not to say that he distractingly hams it up to THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER levels of obnoxious camp, but Momoa is definitely playing things for laughs more often than not.  On one hand, he's clearly enjoying himself and having a grand time returning to this world.  On the other hand, the same cannot be said for returning performers like Nicole Kindman and Temeura Morrison, who seem more stiff and bored this go around.  Momoa could have dialed it back a couple of degrees.  Still, it's hard to imagine any other actor that could make this superhero look as badass (when required) as him.