AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM (2023): Destined to Sink Beneath the Waves

It’s been a wild ride; ten years of anticipation and most of it being misled. The DCEU is finally over and it ends with a film swallowed in a tidal wave of production hell (suppose that’s fitting for such a troubled cinematic universe). This is DC’s answer to The Marvels: you can see the production complications in almost every frame that you feel sad rather than out of pure hatred. James Wan and his team dealt with a lot of problems that all it could do was wash up on land without any grace. It won’t lead to anything anyway, so it was dead on arrival. It’s not like Quantumania where there were pathways to greatness and yet it was arrogantly ignored, this was inevitably cursed. 

To describe how apathetic the sequel is, I will inform you that I had three pee breaks during the screening. And no that isn’t a result of the water onscreen. It’s yet again, like The Marvels, a superhero movie that races across its three acts without a pause for a single human moment as if conceived by AI. And the only time there are pauses is when a person has given exposition dumps. No character feels as though they have progressed since the original; Arthur Curry resorts back to (and even accelerates) his man-child mannerisms that derail the development he had way back in 2018. The only thing keeping this reverted character afloat is Jason Mamoa always being charismatic and infectious. Nicole Kidman looks dead-eyed as her role is reduced to exposition spouter. Patrick Wilson and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are the only two actors who seem to take it seriously, however, whilst the former makes up half of a duo in a semi-buddy film, the actual heart is lost in a sea of subplots and breakneck pace. As for the latter, Black Manta’s long-awaited revenge is mismanaged in every conceivable way as yet again we have a villain possessed by dark magic that grants him immeasurable powers and plot conveniences. Hollywood really seems obsessed with diluting its villains by now making them servants to McGuffins. 

You can also feel the haphazard production that went on behind the scenes; time jumps occur and narration drops to cover a character globe trotting. The CGI is horrendous, particularly the way they attempt to make the hair float underwater around the heads of the actors. And is it me or is the movie very circular? Films like Thor Love and Thunder and The Marvels felt like a checklist for the plot - obviously, we have the equilibrium to disequilibrium back to equilibrium, but there’s always a side quest before the climax. Aquaman 2 seems to increase the number of side quests, with excessive amounts yet leading nowhere, wasting valuable time of this shrunken sequel in comparison to the almost three-hour-long predecessor. 

Honestly, it’s almost sad to talk about the DCEU because it’s now a long afterthought; James Gunn’s plans were laid out at the beginning of the year and these last four films have been sold as lambs to the slaughter. I suppose though it is fitting for a cinematic universe that began on such shaky grounds to end with such disappointment (four big instances of disappointment). Couple that with general superhero fatigue and none of what was released from DC this year has anything new to say and, sadly, they knew it. Nowhere is that more evident than in the mid-credit scene; after ten years, this is how it ends, an apathetic, ill-fated whimper.