Burial at Sea
Warner’s first… second?… DCEU experiment closes with a gurgle rather than crashing waves.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Director: James Wan • Writer: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Starring: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Temuera Morrison
USA • 2hrs 4mins
Opens Hong Kong December 20 • IIA
Grade: C+
Back in 2018, Aquaman was a bit of a surprise. By that point none of us expected much from Warner Bros. and its anaemic yet somehow meth-jacked DC comics output. But it had director James Wan on it, a giant nerd (that’s a compliment) and the mind behind some of the most creative films of recent years: The Conjuring, the out-of-its-mind Malignant, the surprisingly graceful Fast & Furious 7, Paul Walker’s last. In Aquaman he managed to turn out a fun, fluffy, easily digested adventure, thanks in part to a crazy-charming star and some imaginative world-building and CGI. It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it was solid entertainment.
This time around expectations are a bit higher, but really. It’s WB, a studio quickly developing a reputation for prioritising shareholder dividends over art. Wan is back, as is writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (who concocted 2022’s gloriously unhinged Orphan: First Kill) so Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has to have something going for it, right? It does. Jason Momoa as King of Atlantis Arthur Curry, AKA Aquaman, is very rarely less than charismatic; he’s a natural movie star and one of the better ones to watch. There’s a decent villain, some amusingly goofy underwater creatures, a single timeline and no goddamned multiverse to follow, and a previously untapped chemistry between Momoa and Patrick Wilson as his half-brother Orm, the former King of Atlantis and Ocean Master. Too bad there won’t be a third film that could be exploited in. But Lost Kingdom just kind of sits there for the most part, and it’s hard to imagine new DC Overlord James Gunn picking up the ball and running any more.
Practically twins
One-time pirate David Kane, AKA Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Candyman, HBO’s Watchmen), who was left to die on a sub in part one, is dead set on revenge for his father’s death at the hands of Aquaman. He wants his world to burn, even though it’s underwater, but whatever. Kane’s been busy in the intervening years, and he’s found the Black Trident, and artefact created in the seventh (?) lost kingdom of Necros. Necros was turned into a war zone by battling brothers Atlan and Kordax, until a spell was cast, sealing them in a frozen prison for all eternity. Kane is also mining an ancient Atlantean mineral, super-heating the Earth and threatening all life, much to the chagrin of scientist Stephen Shin (Randall Park), an Atlantis-obsessed marine biologist who’s been sucked into Kane’s increasingly mad mission.
In the meantime, Arthur is living a sort of bi-coastal life. When he’s not half-assedly ruling Atlantis and fending off power grabs he’s topside with his wife Mera, the Queen of Atlantis (the much-maligned and unfairly shunted off Amber Heard) and his newborn, Arthur Junior. For some reason Arthur’s still living with his father, lighthouse keeper Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison), probably so they can have a Guinness every night. These worlds collide when Black Manta attacks Atlantis directly and Arthur has to spring Orm from the clink and reluctantly team up. Opposing philosophies and all that. Eventually Arthur and Orm’s mom, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), Mera’s dad, Xebel king Nereus (Dolph Lundgren), and Brine King (John Rhys-Davies) join forces with them and save the world.
Aquaman pulled a ton from the scifi-fantasy-superhero playbook but Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels even more reliant on it, to a distracting degree. You’ll see Army of Darkness in here, tons of Star Wars – is that a Mandalorian jetpack and a Jabba-type crime lord? – a touch of Lord of the Rings (Helm’s Deep is truly deep), and however many classics you can recall about clashing brothers; the symmetry between Arthur and Orm and Atlan and Kordax has the depth of a rain puddle. Lost Kingdom is sloppy at times (why is Junior here if he does nothing monumental?), the CG is cartoonish, and the story is by-the-numbers. Every beat you expect lands exactly when it’s supposed to, with very little thought going into narrative creativity. The climate change preaching doesn’t help. It’s not the worst gimmick to hang an ocean-based story on but really, we get it. And, and, and sneaky bitch can be in 3D, which only mutes the bright colours and muddies the creatures. But all that said, Momoa and Wilson are great together, and there’s something retro-refreshing about the simplicity of the narrative. The disconnect from a larger “universe” and freedom from random inserted characters we’ll have to pay attention to in 27 months works for Lost Kingdom; the rumoured Batman cameo is not missed. On an outdated, shallow note it’s really not hard to look at Momoa, Wilson and Mateen for two hours (it’s really easy in fact) and for most of its runtime Wan reminds us of why we love a good B-movie. Most of the time. — DEK