From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
Aquaman was a massive hit in 2018, and it also had good reviews and word-of-mouth, which made it only the second of the DC Extended Universe to get both those things (the other being Wonder Woman the year before). So a sequel was pretty much inevitable.
The starting point for it was a treatment that star Jason Momoa wrote during the filming of the 2018 movie. Momoa wanted the second picture to have a message about curtailing the negative impact of climate change. James Wan was signed on to also direct this sequel, for which he wrote the script alongside his collaborator on the prior film, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Wan’s desire was to expand on the worldbuilding of the first movie and to take a more serious tone.
Post-production took much longer than planned, as the movie’s release date wound up being moved forward an entire year, at least in part due to schedule-shuffling following the apocalypse of 2020. This gave the production team more time to do the many and varied visual effects required for the undersea scenes. There were also reshoots that wound up significantly reducing the roles of both Amber Heard and Dolph Lundgren as, respectively, Mera and Nereus. While the official story is that Heard’s chemistry with Momoa was deemed poor, it’s likely that Heard’s very public legal troubles with her ex, Johnny Depp, contributed to her role being marginalized. In addition, the producers wanted to emphasize this as a buddy movie between Aquaman and Patrick Wilson’s Orm. Willem Dafoe was unavailable to reprise his role as Vulko, so the character was killed off-screen.
Back from The Flash is Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman. Back from Aquaman are Heard as Mera, Lundgren as Nereus, Wilson as Orm, Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane/Black Manta, Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin, and John Rhys-Davies as the voice of the Brine King. New to this film are Martin Short as the voice of Kingfish, Vincent Regan as Atlan (the role played by Graham McTavish in Aquaman), Pilou Ashbæk as Kordax, Indya Moore as Karshon, and Jani Zhao as Stingray.
Upon release, the movie was nowhere near the success its predecessor had been, and also got very poor reviews and worse word-of-mouth. Rumors are that Momoa may play Lobo in future DC productions under the new stewardship of James Gunn and Peter Safran, but that’s not definite, nor is it definite that Momoa won’t reprise the role of Aquaman (statements have been made in both directions on that). Time will tell…
“Promise me you will protect each other”
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Written by Jason Momoa & Thomas Pa’a Sibbett and James Wan & David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Directed by James Wan
Produced by Peter Safran, James Wan, Rob Cowan
Original release date: December 22, 2023
It’s been four years since Aquaman, and Arthur Curry has married Mera, and they’ve had a kid, a son imaginatively named Arthur Jr. Aquaman is now King of Atlantis, though he finds the job frustrating, as it’s mostly politics and meetings, plus there’s a High Council of the Seven Kingdoms, who mostly won’t let him do what he wants.
However, he’s also still working as a superhero, regularly stopping pirates and the like.
Aquaman splits his time between Atlantis and the lighthouse in Maine, where Tom Curry and Atlanna help Aquaman and Mera raise Arthur Jr.
Meantime, David Kane is still searching for Atlantis, aided by Dr. Stephen Shin. Kane wants revenge on Aquaman for killing his father, while Shin just wants to prove that Atlantis is real. (We find out in this film that Atlantis has continued to remain hidden from the rest of the world by the choice of the High Council, despite Aquaman’s desire to go public so they can actually participate in the world’s discourse.)
Shin and one of his assistants fall into a crevasse in the Arctic, only to have the assistant snatched by a tentacle. Kane finds Shin, and then discovers a black trident. The voice of Kordax speaks in Kane’s head, promising him his desired revenge on Aquaman. When he grips the trident, his eyes turn green, which isn’t concerning at all…
We cut five months ahead. Kane has been gifted a very old ship by the Kordax; Shin is amazed that it still works. They need a substance called Orichalcum to power the old tech, however, which they’ve been stealing from various vaults around the ocean. Meantime, the effects of climate change have accelerated over the past five months, and a brutal plague has spread through Atlantis—Vulko is among those who have died from it.
Kane goes after an Orichalcum stash that’s very close to Atlantis’ border, which results in a response from Aquaman, Mera, and Atlantis’ army. In the ensuing battle, Mera is badly injured, and Kane gets away with the Orichalcum, mainly thanks to a vicious sonic weapon.
Atlanna explains that Orichalcum was once used by Atlantis, but they stopped employing it for power when it turned out to release harmful greenhouse gases. It can’t be destroyed, so they hid it in vaults all over the ocean. Kane’s use of it explains both the plague and the accelerated climate change.
Aquaman decides that he needs to free Orm. He worked with Kane, so he would know where to find him. Atlanna points out that the council will never go for that, so Aquaman doesn’t intend to consult the council. He’ll just put Orm back where he came from when he’s done.
With the aid of a large genetically engineered squid named Topo, Aquaman is able to break Orm out from his prison. Orm takes him to a haven for pirates, and talks to Kingfish. Aquaman reluctantly pretends to be Orm’s prisoner, but when Kingfish isn’t forthcoming with the intelligence they require, Aquaman busts out of the restraints and kicks ass. Kingfish eventually tells them that Kane has set up on an island in the south Pacific.
Shin is more and more concerned about Kane’s growing psychopathy, but he’s also trapped.
Aquaman and Orm head to the island, where the local flora and fauna has been mutated by the Orichalcum. They barely survive getting through to the control center, where Shin immediately surrenders to them. However, Kane and his other hench-thugs are able to take on Aquaman and Orm, mostly through the new technology they’ve acquired from Kordax.
At one point, Orm gets his hands on the black trident. Then he sees everything Kane saw. Orm tells Aquaman that the black trident belongs to Kordax, who was the king of Necrus, the lost kingdom of Atlantis. When Kordax tried to usurp the throne from Atlan, the latter imprisoned the former via blood magic. The only way to free him is with the blood of someone from the royal line. Orm figures that they’re okay, as Aquaman and Orm are the last of the royal line.
Except they aren’t. They head to Maine, but by the time they get there, Kane has kidnapped Arthur Jr., leaving Tom badly injured. Atlanna stays with Tom while he recovers (Atlantean science is able to save him), while Aquaman, Orm, Nereus, the recovered Mera, and the Brine King all go after Kane.
When they arrive, fisticuffs ensue, though Aquaman and Mera are able to save their kid. However, at one point, Kane throws the black trident toward Mera. Orm catches it before it strikes her, and Kordax transfers himself from Kane to Orm, latching onto Orm’s hatred for Aquaman, which is as great as Kane’s.
While Orm is able to make Aquaman bleed, thus starting the process of freeing Kordax, Aquaman is able to convince Orm to let go of his hatred, which gets Kordax out of his head.
Without Kordax to hold it together, Necrus starts to collapse. Kane falls down a chasm, and Aquaman—in a reversal of his actions with Kane’s father, when Aquaman left him to die—offers his hand to rescue him. However, Kane refuses, and chooses death over being rescued by his greatest enemy.
Aquaman tells Orm to escape to the surface world—he’ll tell Atlantis that he died in battle. Orm thanks him and gives him advice on how to rule properly. Aquaman returns home and insists that Atlantis reveal itself to the surface world, with Aquaman giving a speech to the UN on Ellis Island announcing Atlantis’ intention to join that organization.
“Aquaman, shame on you!”
Jason Momoa’s original pitch was a movie that had something to say about climate change. James Wan’s desire was to do a more serious movie than Aquaman that expanded the worldbuilding. On top of that, the tag of Aquaman promised a team-up between Kane and Shin, which did not sound promising, given how uninteresting they both were in the first movie.
One of the many reasons why Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom just does not work on any level is that the third of those three expectations was the only one that was met.
Okay, technically, the movie has something to say about climate change, but it’s mostly that it exists and it’s bad, and it’s mealy-mouthed about it given that the cause of the nasty changes in this movie are from Kane’s use of Orichalcum, so it avoids the issue of actual climate change.
Aside from positing the existence of the titular lost kingdom, there is absolutely no worldbuilding going on here, as we see less of the undersea world than we did in 2018. And the notion of a lost kingdom is so old it has whiskers on it, and this particular version of it is your standard stuff, with the lost city being found, and the big bad guy promising to fulfill all the wishes of the smaller bad guy, plus some Cthulhu-esque plant creatures for good measure.
Besides giving us two uninteresting main bad guys in Kane and Shin, we also get Patrick Wilson’s spectacularly boring Orm back. Whoopee. Credit where it’s due, though: Randall Park actually does much better with Shin here, mostly because the script writes him as tormented and trying to be ethical, instead of the one-note conspiracy nut he was last time. But Yahya Abdul-Mateen II—who has been superb in pretty much every other role he’s ever played—is once again dreadful as Kane; Wilson remains boring as all hell as Orm; and Kordax is just another demon on the shoulder being a tempter. Snore.
To make matters worse, the focus on the buddy movie is so great that all the other characters are shunted aside. Amber Heard’s Mera, Dolph Lundgren’s Nereus, and especially Nicole Kidman’s Atlanna are pathetically marginalized, even though all three are significantly more interesting than Wilson’s unrelentingly dull Orm. (John Rhys-Davies is, at least, entertaining as the Brine King’s voice.)
Finally, there’s the title character, who spends way too much time playing Jason Momoa (or at least Momoa’s persona) instead of playing Aquaman. In Justice League and Aquaman, there was a balance between those two extremes, but in Lost Kingdom, it’s all the former, with only occasional bits of the latter. Wan’s alleged desire to make this film more serious is swimming upstream against Momoa’s determination to be a big ol’ goofball no matter what, an act that works best in at least some moderation. But it’s completely unmoderated here, and it’s too much. You know the movie’s overdoing the goofy humor when one of the first jokes we see is that Arthur Jr. regularly pisses in his Dad’s face. Hyur, hyur, that’s funny!
Next week, we close out this batch of movies with the only 2024 release in the first half of the year, Madame Web.
