AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM– 2 STARS

LESSON #1: WE’VE COME TO THE END OF THE ROAD– As the timeline and statistics will tell you, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the 15th and final film of the DC Extended Universe which began 10 years ago with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. It finishes over a year’s worth of “play out the string” death march energy since the appointments of Peter Safran and James Gunn to lead the rebranded DC Studios on a reboot beginning in 2025. Since James Wan’s incredibly successful billion-dollar global earner Aquaman from 2018 was never really part of the so-called problem, this new sequel and conclusion can feel bittersweet.

If there are folks experiencing those feelings, might I suggest putting on Boyz II Men’s classic #1 chart-topper “End of the Road” to match Lesson #1. If we do, the question becomes matching the appropriate level of sadness coming out of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with the Boyz II Men lyrics.

Genuine DC and Aquaman loyalty matches the song’s main refrain:

Although we've come

To the end of the road

Still I can't let go

It's unnatural

You belong to me

I belong to you

Those fans carry the understanding that, no matter where the future DCU goes under new stewardship, you’ll always have Jason Momoa. You’ll match us old Superman fans who still hold Christopher Reeve in the highest regard. They’re the sweet people who will stay that way and be ready for Superman: Legacy in July 2025 with open arms.

Maybe, despite all the rants of “comic book movie fatigue,” some fans saw a hot guy named “Marvel” and broke up with DC for a spell while trying to wish for the best of DC, like the first Aquaman, to come back to you. This verse would be for those wayward rubberneckers:

Girl, I'm here for you

All those times at night when you just hurt me

And just ran out with that other fella

Baby, I knew about it, I just didn't care

You just don't understand how much I love you, do you?

I'm here for you

However, that kind of verse is tip-toeing to the clingy side of obsession, which brings out the “Snyder Bros.” They are the butthurt militants with their hashtags of false internet courage and internet spamming who will not accept new film attempts going forward and cannot admit that the DCEU is dead and gone. They’re trying to play uneducated movie moguls nonsensically selling the Snyderverse to Netflix. Those toxic people seem to hang on this kind of “End of the Road” verse:

Said we'd be forever

Said it'd never die

How could you love me and leave me

And never say goodbye?

You needed a minute to say goodbye and Warner Bros. gave you a year and four movies to “play out the string.” If that segment of fandom was really present or as well-populated as they claimed to be then Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, The Blue Beetle, and now Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (and yes, even the new one that’s not out yet is heading that financial direction) would not all be box office failures of disinterest and indifference to the masses. If they cared, an impending reboot rendering their future meaningless wouldn’t stop them. If anything, they would have come out to support them even more urgently to save the greater movement.

Well, they didn’t and here we are with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom at the end of the road. When stock is taken for the final movie and the zero ceremony it’s being given, it’s as messy as the breakup from the song. That sweet harmonizing refrain of belonging no longer applies. This clunker of a sequel gets this lyric instead:

When I can't sleep at night

Without holding you tight

Girl, each time I try

I just break down and cry

Pain in my head

Oh, I'd rather be dead

Spinning around and around

Yup! That’s the winner. Go ahead and read each line of those richly-sung actions into Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Between the spinning, the lost grip, and the headaches, it’s all unfortunately and loudly there.

In the years since the first film, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) has assumed the dual responsibility of becoming the King of Atlantis ruling many competitive undersea kingdoms and the father of a new baby with his main squeeze Mera (Amber Heard). At one moment of an “aw shucks”-level introductory voiceover, he’s in his Aquaman costume sleeping through international decisions of governance at the Council of Atlantis and, in the next, his son is peeing directly into his mouth on a diaper change (not once, but twice in fact) while the monarch is bumming about his father’s (Temuera Morrison) lighthouse residence in rustic loungewear. Tonally, what was majestic in the first movie now looks like something that could be cut to the Family Matters theme for cheesy effect. That’s not the best way to reestablish the hype of who became arguably this cinematic universe’s best lead hero.

Luckily, the main villainous presence of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes out as serious as a heart attack. Yayha Abdul-Mateen returns as David Kane, better known as Black Manta. The thirst of his vendetta to blame Aquaman for his father’s death (seen in the first film) remains unquenched. His quest to increase his suit’s offensive power brings Kane to the possessed black trident of Kordax (Pilou Asbæk of Samaritan), an exiled and evil ancient ruler of a frozen and entombed Atlantean kingdom that’s been wiped from the history books. With no other leads to find Black Manta, Arthur needs his condemned brother Orm’s (Patrick Wilson) assistance and breaks him out of his desert prison in an overbooked action sequence.

LESSON #2: BRING BACK YOUR BEST VILLAINS– One legitimate kudo of credit that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom deserves to be celebrated for is bringing its villains back to extend their story as much as the hero’s. Too often, comic book movie villains are as one-and-done as stud high school basketball players wallowing through a year of college basketball before turning pro. Collecting a story treatment conceived by director James Wan, Momoa himself, Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, and the final credited screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, the scaffolded returns of Black Manta and Orm/Ocean Master carry more weight than the thin and underdeveloped baddies trotted out by the Mouse House’s Marvel brand. On that point alone, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom won at least something.

However, even with the reinstated aggression, the scheme of Black Manta is extremely imbecilic and does Abdul-Mateen no favors. Armed with a new sonic weapon that can subdue the nervous systems of his marine targets, Kane has been traipsing all over the ocean pilfering the kingdom’s potent glowing green orichalcrum (MacGuffin alert!). Aided by the reluctant tag-along Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park, a purely doltish distraction despite his usual charm), Manta’s crew have created massive hidden furnaces topside that burn the orichalcrum to increase the greenhouse games at a rapid rate and planetary scale. The resulting global warming helps Kane create human upheaval and thaw Kordax’s waiting undead army in Antarctica.

This nefariously silly plot and globe-trotting pursuit plays out at a clumsy pace. Like the third act of a Pixar movie that’s in gotta-get-back mode, everything about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is in a massive hurry. Battles and transitions bleed together with little time for thickening explanation, pauses for emotional effect, or the application of pressure stemming from the ramifications of what is really at risk. This movie would have been better served stopping once in a while to soak in a little wonder or terror manufactured by the visual effects from supervisor Nick Davis and producer Alex Bicknell.

LESSON #3: BROTHERS, BROTHERS, BROTHERS– Naturally, Arthur and Orm are forced to team up, mend their issues, and save the day together as former worst enemies turned reunited brothers. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom goes out of its way, both with its dramatic notes and injections of levity, to play up the sibling strife and offer Patrick Wilson a gradual (and convenient) face turn of restored familial honor. Their hijinks rarely lift above buddy comedy level where Wilson’s playing the straight man paired with Momoa’s loose cannon clown. 

Taking stock over the entire kitchen sink that is this sequel and franchise finale, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels like a movie that gave up itself or had puppeteers do it for them in post-production– as rumored with extensive rewrites and reshoots– once a new regime arrived. For example, the notion to weave in classic rock soundtrack inclusions feel very James Gunn-inspired, only to result in the extremely simplistic Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” (which will always belong to Easy Rider and no one else) and cinema’s most overused pop song “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum. 

Somewhere, originality died. Somewhere, someone in charge (disappointing if it’s James Wan with his perceived clout and respected taste) said “to hell with it” and “what do we have to lose.” By the time this movie ends with a global press conference of Jason Momoa aping Tony Stark with an “I am Aquaman” mic drop, the answer of what is lost is dignity. Go ahead and put a pile of “Road Closed” barricades all over the end of this road.