Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It’s no secret that superhero movies are on the decline in popularity – just look at the highest-grossing movies of 2023 compared to the past quarter century of box-office statistics. Hollywood studios are panicking, they are losing their guaranteed paycheck and scrambling to find other IPsant that will make up for the gaping hole in their pockets.
That is why Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will likely be the last time we will see Jason Momoa’s rendition of Arthur Curry, the half-human lord of Atlantis. When James Wan first dipped his toe into the world of blockbuster superheroes after building a horror empire for Warner Bros. with The Conjuring universe, he seemed like the necessary key to getting the DC universe up off the ground. Wan’s Aquaman is a delight, a nonsensical, hilarious adventure that fed life into the tired superhero formula. So, what went wrong with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom?
Where Aquaman felt original, Lost Kingdom is stale, void of all originality. From painful product placement, to the sets of underwater city Necrus that look like they were ripped straight from the architectural plans for Minas Morgul in The Lord of the Rings, the shift in creativity with Wan’s sequel is a constant disappointment. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom lacks imagination and delight, which is what made the first film a blast. The sharp wackiness has been sucked dry, left in the middle of the desert to perish like King Orm (Wan regular Wilson), the Ocean Master that was Promised. There are brief echoes of the first film’s zany antics, mostly after Orm is brought back for some necessary brotherly bonding with Aquaman as they try to derail the plans of the villainous Black Manta (Abdul-Mateen II), but the film zooms by so fast that they’re both literally sprinting to keep up with the plot.
The one nice thing that can be said about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is that out of all of the superhero blockbusters, Wan is perhaps the only director to make the action sequences look unique and good. Wan has banked a living off of playful, engaging cinematography that really sucks the viewer into the film’s world, and he works his magic in Lost Kingdom still. If only it has the script to back it up, to build a film that’s as majestic and animated as the first, but it’s a film that feels dumped. The last hoorah of Synder’s messy DC Extended Universe – one that could have been a thrilling goodbye and a reminder that not all of it was bland – will likely sink to the bottom of the ocean, a forgotten relic of an era. Momoa’s Aquaman deserved a lot more.
This article appears in December 29 • 2023.