Written by James Wan And David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick And Jason Momoa And Thomas Pa'a Sibbett
Directed by James Wan
Aquaman: "Four years ago I was basically unemployed, a wanderer with no home. But now I'm a husband and a father and I wouldn't have it any other way. Oh yeah, I finally got a job. I'm the King of Atlantis."
And so it ends. It's been a very volatile ten years. Fifteen movies and one TV series and one director's cut later, we've gotten to the finishing line for the DC Extended Universe. It's been a hell of a time.
In terms of sequels, this was something that took way too long to get here and now that it's here, was the wait worth it? I don't want to say "not really" but I can't entirely say "yes" either. Overall, this happened to be a sequel that's a sum of its parts.
Four years has passed since the events of the first movie. Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is still Aquaman and the King of Atlantis, though he finds the day to day council meetings extremely boring. On top of that, he married Mera (Amber Heard) and has become a father, the latter thing bringing him much joy and bonding as Junior started to develop his own powers.
Of course while fatherhood played it's role and spanned three generations, there are other themes that have a bigger prominence on display. Notably, the theme of the planet getting too hot. Yes, this movie has an environmental theme and it's pretty choppy in terms of how it's handled.
The cause of the extreme heating of course happened to be because of Black Manta/David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Since we've last seen him, he's gotten even more obsessed with destroying Aquaman and his team up with Dr Stephen Shin (Randall Park) as well as a pirate with second in command Stingray (Jani Zhao) and there's nothing he won't do to get his revenge.
This included uncovering the Lost Kingdom otherwise known as Nekrus and getting a hold of the Black Trident. The Trident which showed a lot of scary but noticeably that King Atlan (Vincent Regan) went to war and eventually imprisoned Nekrus as well as his tyrant brother, Kordax (Pilou Asbaek), the latter of whom spending most of the movie further corrupting Manta.
Anyways Mamta going all batshit crazy, stealing orichalcum to heat up the planet while badly injuring Mera did lead to Arthur having to team up with Orm (Patrick Wilson) and lets just say that the Arthur and Orm was the biggest strength of the movie.
As a pairing, both Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson played off each other very well. There's plenty of comedy as Arthur and Orm as well as the pair of them going over their differences, connecting as brothers and putting a stop to both Black Manta and Kordax.
In terms of villains, I hate to admit it but Manta who I liked better in the first movie felt a bit one dimensional here as did Kordax. Kordax's relationship with Atlan paralleled Arthur and Orm but wasn't anywhere near as compelling. Even Orm being briefly tempted to revert to his former ways before choosing redemption was better handled.
As for the rest of the main characters, Mera was largely sidelined and both Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) and Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison) hadn't a lot to do. There are slightly larger roles for Neureus (Dolph Lundgren), the Brine King (John Rhys-Davies) and Topo the Octopus. Even Shin and Storm the Seahorse have bigger roles than Mera in this one and no, Arthur Jr doesn't get killed off. It's a family friendly comic book movie after all.
- Vulko died off screen between movies while Karshon (Indya Moore) seemed to be in name only as a character.
- There's an amusing cameo from Martin Short as Kingfish, the ruler of the Sunken Citadel, a pirate haven.
- A mid credit scene had Orm on land enjoying a burger with a cockroach inside it.
- Jason Momoa co-writing this certainly explained why more of his own real life personality seeped into his performance more than usual.
- Standout music: Deep End by X Ambassadors stood out the most as well as the use of Born To Be Wild.
- Chronology: Four years from the events of the first movie with Arthur revealing Atlantis to the surface world at the end of the movie.
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom doesn't necessarily end the DCEU on a damp squib but it's hardly the high note it should've gone out on. It's not a bad sequel and might end up faring marginally better than Wonder Woman 1984 and Shazam! Fury Of The Gods but unlikely by much. Anyways, the DCEU is done and lets hope the DCU will fare better.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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