The sequel to the 2018 Aquaman and the final movie in the DCEU came out recently and I finally got a chance to see it. The buzz for this movie was pretty weak for several reasons, mostly the fact that the first movie wasn't very good and the fact that this movie will have no impact on the upcoming DC movies. I guess it's unfair to judge a movie based on those reasons, but the trailer for this movie didn't do it much favors either. Unfortunately, a movie like this was just kind of destined to fail as soon as it hit the theaters, most people weren't going to give this a fair shot. The movie actually ended up being the most successful DCEU movie of the year, but in a year where all the other DCEU movies were box office bombs, it's not very impressive. So with all that being said, was the movie even that bad?
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom continues the story of Jason Momoa's Arthur Curry as he is now the King of Atlantis and a new father. He spends his days trying to balance his life as king and father but is frustrated that he can't seem to make a difference in his Kingdom. Things get worse when an old nemesis known as Manta finds a new powerful weapon that he can use to awaken a dead army that could lead to the destruction of the world. Aquaman is forced to team up with his old rival/brother whom he imprisoned in the last movie to try to stop Manta from accomplishing his mission.
I was surprised that I actually ended up liking this movie a little more than the first one. You should probably know I thought the first movie was incredibly mediocre and was carried by Jason Momoa's charisma as Aquaman. This movie is also carried by that charisma, but this time we also get a lot of good moments between Jason and Patrick Wilson as his brother. The two guys are just great actors and have a fun dynamic with each other that both actors are great at making entertaining. That can only carry the movie so far when pretty much the rest of the movie is a big mess. The villain from the first movie returns, and while they make him a much bigger threat, he still ends up feeling like a generic "going to destroy the world" bad guy with little to no interesting dialog. His motivation is revenge, which is understandable, but outside of that, his character feels really boring and one note. I almost felt like they could have replaced him with another villain to make the movie more interesting, but since they built him up in the first movie they had to bring him back, I guess. A lot of the other characters from the first movie return for small parts in this new story, almost like cameos until the end battle where you get the generic CGI fest of explosions and the good guys beating countless nameless enemies. You also get a new character played by Randall Park who's just there to be a comic relief to play off the villain and try to make those scenes the slightest bit more entertaining. It doesn't really work and it feels the movie should have just removed his part to make the movie shorter... this coming from a fan of Randall Park. He deserved better.
The movie ultimately just feels like a very generic comic book movie at this point, and after years of seeing great MCU films and some really good animated ones this year, this is a movie that would have been a little more successful in the early 2000s when comic book movies were still trying to figure themselves out. Looking back at a lot of the comic book movies/shows of the last few years it feels like we're getting more and more of these and less of the great films we got used to. The interest in comic book movies and shows seems to be going down these years, especially with the MCU and how many shows they put out on Disney+ that ended up being pretty forgettable. Now that the MCU has moved on from a lot of the big stars and the DCEU is officially over it seems like both studios are headed to a place where they can start to focus on building new stars for the future and trying new ideas out to keep the genre fresh. Could be a good idea to maybe start spreading the releases out a bit too and not have 6-7 MCU movies/shows and 4-5 DC movies coming out in one year. Both Disney and Warner Bros have been making some bad decisions when it comes to their movies like WB deleting shows from streaming to not have to pay actors and scrapping fully completed movies for tax write-offs. It's hard to tell if things will get better with the new James Gunn DC universe, but his work on Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad leaves me feeling optimistic about things. Hope that means we finally get some good Superman movies.
So Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom sends the DCEU off with a whimper, which feels right since most of the DCEU movies were pretty bad. It's been a long time coming and now we can finally move on from it. That being said I will miss Jason Momoa as Aquaman, as he was one of the few that really felt like he fit in as his role in the movies. There's always a chance he could play a different role in the new movies, but for now, I'll remember him as one of the few bright spots in the DCEU. A man so charismatic he carried this awful movie and turned it into a below average movie.
Overall Grade: C-
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