Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 2023

I’m back catching up with another DC movie in my much smaller backlog, at least if I don’t count all of the animated movies but that’s a topic for another day. I actually remember practically nothing about the advertising for this movie. The only thing I really remember about it was that it was a hero/villain team up a la Blade 2, Thor 2, and plenty of other sequels that I can’t think of right now. I absolutely did not remember anything about Aquaman’s baby which is basically the entire opening. I also remember the walking back of Amber Heard’s role in the movie after the media fallout from her trial, and that was really felt while watching. There was a whole lot of dumb stuff on display, and I thought that Aquaman himself felt a lot more childish than I remembered from the first movie, but what pulled me through was the chemistry between him and Patrick Wilson as his brother slash archnemesis Orm.

One of the biggest issues with this film is how it really feels like a bunch of cliche storylines all mashed up together. There’s the Sauron coded lost kingdom with a one ring-coded trident that tempts the user into awakening an ancient evil while also giving them the promise of power. There’s also the being forced to work with your enemy trope combined with the “I know there’s still good in you” softening of said villain. And to top things off, there’s the not very subtle at all environmentalist message thrown in for good measure. And on a smaller level, they also reuse the sympathetic scientist who changes sides when he realizes how awful the person he works for really is that they literally just used in Blue Beetle. Though this one has a much better outcome than he did.

The villain has such an odd plan, there’s this ancient energy source called orichalcum that is incredibly powerful but also releases a tremendous amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that they are using to warm the planet and melt the ice in Antarctica that formed the basis of the entire kingdom’s prison. It’s all brought about by this black trident that is basically the mirror image of the trident from the first movie, and eventually it’s revealed that the king of this lost kingdom was the brother of Atlan just like how Orm and Arthur are both brothers and enemies. And this trident is also this vehicle for the lost king’s memories and his power which is imbued to Black Manta once he finds it in order to poison his mind, give him promises of power to kill Aquaman and his family for revenge, and gives him physical power while he is wielding it. All while he and his minions look like a cross between Sauron and the Ringwraiths with a little HP Lovecraft thrown in for the various nightmare beasts.

As for Aquaman himself, the movie starts things off by showing him as a struggling father of a very slightly superhuman baby, and the parenting duties are mostly shared with his human father Tom, with only an occasional appearance from Mera. He’s also shown as a struggling king of Atlantis, as he is bored by the politics and is facing a hugely uphill battle in his goal to reveal the entire undersea kingdom to the surface world to work with them to reverse the pollution rather than the rest of the council’s wish to simply destroy the surface world. Once he learns of Black Manta’s plans, they almost immediately go to Orm as the only possibility of success, and he has to break Orm out of prison solo or risk backlash from the other kingdoms. And we’re introduced to yet another secret kingdom of ex-undersea dwellers who have adapted to living in the Sahara by drinking blood, and also bear a confusingly close resemblance to the evil lost kingdom except they are more of a sandy brown color rather than the evil black. It is a fun action sequence despite, or possibly due to Arthur’s near constant quips, whether he’s calling dehydrated Orm Cast Away or complaining at his giant, genetically enhanced octopus Topo.

There’s also an extended adventure sequence in a stereotypical land of the lost volcano jungle filled with giant insects and violently carnivorous plants. The only thing missing was dinosaurs. While it was another fun adventure moment, it also was one of several places throughout the movie that showed the limitations of CGI with the cartoonish giant grasshoppers, or the fact that Nicole Kidman somehow never looked quite right, she always seemingly had a CGI sheen around her and everyone else when they were underwater. All of the underwater scenes felt like they were simply filmed dry, then they added CGI hair. There’s not really any better way to represent how they want this underwater realm to be, but it never looked right.

Now, while there’s a lot wrong with this movie, there is also a fair amount of things done right. While the adventure is CGI heavy, it’s still more fun than tedious. And the relationship between Orm and Arthur as well as Orm’s character growth throughout the movie works really well and is paced correctly. He has a very slow build from the enemy who is very reluctantly working together, to a mostly redeemed brother. There are just enough nuggets like learning that Arthur never actually wanted the throne for himself, culminating in how he saves king Dolph Lundgren in the final battle sequence. There are also fun character roles for Martin Short as the fish leader of the pirate haven and John Rhys-Davies as the giant brine shrimp king. There was a lot of dumb throughout the movie, but also plenty of dumb fun as well. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.