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Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Mike Tyrkus

Despite seeming to take small steps forward with both The Flash and Blue Beetle earlier this year, the DC Extended Cinematic Universe (DCECU) suffers a calamitous setback with the arrival of the atrocious sequel to 2018’s Aquaman – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

The bewildering and often aimless story within Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is concentrated primarily on the exploits of David Kane (aka Black Manta, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) as he searches for the means to defeat Aquaman in the most brutal and destructive way possible. This forces Aquaman to make peace with his brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), to have even a remote chance at stopping Black Manta before he causes catastrophic ecological destruction to the planet.

While the first Aquaman film tread water between mediocre and awful, the sequel dives deeper into the morass of convoluted plot tangents and overblown villains that have plagued the DCECU since inception. Working with a story penned by himself, director James Wan, star Jason Momoa, and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick delivers more of the same in this go around for the newly crowned King of Atlantis. There is little in the way of character development apart from Aquaman now sporting a more sparkly costume and the return of Patrick Wilson (Orm) in alliance with Aquaman to do battle with Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who seeks to destroy the ecological system of the planet to exact revenge on Aquaman for killing his father in the first film (a scene which is clearly laid out lest it was forgotten by anyone in the audience).

Jason Momoa in “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.”

Even though the film’s main characters are given little room to grow throughout this go around, supporting characters fare even worse as they are pushed to the back and all but completely forgotten, showing up only sparingly in attempts to create a cohesive family unit for Aquaman to defend or be justified in being increasingly angry over any harm coming to them.

In this way, characters like Amber Heard’s Mera, Nicole Kidman’s Atlanna, and Teamuera Morrison’s Tom Curry become nothing more than filler to transition the story from scene to scene as the film tries to gain a solid footing in any meaningful way.

Granted that expectations for films of the DCECU have been reduced to the bare minimum, the disappointing mediocrity of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom appears to have set a new low for the films that they are unlikely to climb out of at any point soon.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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