December Madness: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

What a mouthful of a title. Oh, and this movie's not very good. This is a perfectly serviceable summer blockbuster that came out in the year 2008. Wait, this came out in the winter of 2023? Well then, this movie sure as heck could've fooled me with its weird plot, bad writing, and overreliance on big dumb CGI monsters. To be fair, this movie at least has some effort thrown in, with fun designs, pretty solid action, and a well-paced narrative if anything. Additionally, many of the actors are trying to save this trainwreck. Let's dive right into Aquaman!

PLOT: A jostled, well-paced mess.

This plot is well-paced enough, but it's baffling. To put it in better words, it's like a jigsaw puzzle that you've put together and it all fits, but it doesn't make a picture. Instead, it's a collage of several different pictures that don't really work together. That is the plot of this movie. Focused on Aquaman being a dad, king of Atlantis, and trying to please everybody; the movie sees Arthur Curry as the villain Black Manta returns and threatens to find the Lost Kingdom, a kingdom of the undead. That being said, much of the narrative is strangely just taking from other stories. There's a buddy cop movie, a leader trying to lead story, elements of horror, and a fun action movie all competing for the spotlight. While the pacing works, it's way too jumbled to make any sense. One of these plots would've been fine, but they seem to mistake more for better. It is not.

CHARACTERS: All very fun and honestly well-fleshed out.

Many of these characters are not new, thus most of them we're clear on motives for. Any new introduction is cleverly given plenty of time to be fleshed out and understood. We know who the main baddie is, king of Necrus and Aquaman's uncle, and he wants to take over the world. Of course, while they do fall flat a bit, no one is really bad here. The characters are remarkably likeable with each having a certain charm and rhythm to them. The only real flat ones are Nicole Kidman and (heh) Amber Heard. One of which definitely deserves more screen time and the other... well, she definitely as a character needed more. That being said, I like Aquaman the himbo superhero and his brother Orm is a perfect person to bounce off of Aquaman's himbo energy with his more stoic and proud energy. Plus, Black Manta is pretty dang intimidating when he wants to be here and his motivation is all fleshed out thanks to the previous film. Where it falls flat is in the writing, but we'll get to that later...

SHOTS: Pretty impressive, but not as good as last time.

While the first Aquaman had a ton of fun action scenes and great camerawork, this one feels a bit more flat on that note. There's a great fight between Manta and Aquaman at the end, but otherwise this film doesn't really look more impressive than a recent video game at times. The overabundance of CGI doesn't help, but it's more reliant on the cuts in an action scene. The first film had some great set pieces and one-shot takes, but this one chooses bewilderingly to not use any of that. I think part of it was the messy production and also constant rewrites. But, who knows?

SOUND: Ooh, good music.

The last Aquaman had great music and this one's no different. The composer from the previous returns and the film has really interesting synth and usage of different types of music for each character which really makes the movie feel unique compared to the first. While Black Manta has his villain track from last time reused (which is very VERY similar to Orm's), most of the music is original. It's pretty nice and doesn't stick out too much. Unfortunately, the biggest con to all this is up next.

WRITING (Cons section): Oh. No.

This film has the most cliche and overused dialogue in any recent action movie. On top of that, some of the writing is just abysmal. There's constant piss jokes, fish out of water jokes, and just too many cliche villain lines. The movie is slogged down with these problems despite having some real potential. This is a shame as the first film overcame bad writing with cool set pieces and fun characters. Without the set pieces and less characters, this film feels unbelievably hollow. What I could've given a 7-8/10 alone on the cool stuff becomes a 5-6 on writing alone. This is why all parts of a film matter. The cons section got removed here because the writing was terrible enough to justify lowering the score of this movie on its own. I cannot understate how important it is to write your film properly otherwise the whole suffers.

LITTLE THINGS: The end of the road.

For those of you who don't watch the news or just don't care for film, this is the last of the films of the DCEU. Those films are now over, with James Gunn's new DCU taking over next year with his new shows and a Superman film set for release in 2025. The film even makes an Iron Man reference at the end to show that this is indeed the end of the path. For those who don't know what this means, it means likely many of these actors will either show up as new characters or just not come back. I'd like to pay my respects to the DCEU. You had more downs than ups, but you gave us such classics as Shazam!, Wonder Woman, and The Suicide Squad. Lastly, you gave us the Aquaman duology. While Jason Momoa is SUPPOSEDLY coming back as Lobo (verdict is not clear on that), this is the last of Jason Momoa as Aquaman for the foreseeable future. Rest in peace, DCEU, you'll be missed.

VERDICT: A fitting end to a middling series.

At the end of the day, this concludes the current DC series. With the new one coming out, hopefully quality over quantity will be the goal. Until then, we have this to remember, and it's hardly even a good film. It's bogged down by a bad script and some rough plot and character inconveniences as the charm of the first one can't even shine through some of the stains. However, what I can say is that I'm glad to have seen it. It felt like a fitting end to everything DCEU related, and I can't wait to see the next chapter of DC's films. As for Aquaman, while you were kinda meh, I did find you entertaining enough to watch. PS: they didn't kill Aquaman's baby like in the comics, 0/10

SCORE: 6/10, rest in peace.