'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' briefing

2 ½ (out of 4)

            Apologies aquapals but I don’t see how propping up Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires as some indispensable influence somehow makes your sloppy sequel redeemable, as if citing more creditable camp were a get-out-of-criticism-free card — when you’re promised that the follow-up to 2018’s Aquaman will be “even goofier,” you just get me too excited for something as uniquely dumb and casual as The Lost Kingdom. Not that I wouldn’t take James Wan’s horror-informed, Snyder-ascending sense of kinetic, shiny cinematic turbulence over just about any of the other more forgettable, flash in the pan, undercooked and under-thought DCEU fare that has led to this shameful, pathetic whimper of a finale, if you can even call it that.

So yes, the second Aquaman is probably a hair or so better than Shazam: Fury of the Gods (remove a mugging Zack Levi and the skittles and there’s an OK movie), The Flash (something was clicking in the double trouble Ezra show, and similar buddy comedy crap happens here), and definitely superior to Blue Beetle, Black Adam, Wonder Woman 1984, even Birds of Prey and yes, most assuredly Zack Snyder’s untenable Cut of Justice League. Wan did just about as good a job as James Gunn (now the new messiah/Feige of whatever clean slate casts off with Superman’s latest legacy in 2025) did for The Suicide Squad, which was almost worthy of its own Deadpool-ripped Reddit-reeking irony and of course a marginal improvement over 2016's original abortion. I really don’t want to even comment on the artistic merit of BvS, I’ve tried to see why the cult is so fervent by way of the extended version but Snyderbros are their own special breed of stubborn, funny enough the frankensteined Joss Whedon version of Justice is somehow more approachable detritus. Man of Steel is arguably not bad in sum even if it gets bad, leaving only Wonder Woman, Shazam! and, of course, the highest grossing DCEU film with over with over 1 billy, 2018’s Aquaman, as the only installments in a 16-part series I could, with a straight face, say were pretty good, and even these finer cuts have their chewy bits. But personally the undersea undertaking is most forgivable…

I never expected anything show-stopping, momentous or in any way climactic — it’s crazy just how standalone the EU entries became, as the original Aquaman was already rather untethered and still made references to Justice League. MCU’s one-offs literally require some moment of context within the brand, some stupid reference to the shared universe, and I used to think ignoring this in-film-shilling made DC stronger, and specifically the separated installments like Joker spoke to this potentiality — The Batman would be another more mature, quality exception if it weren’t the longest, lamest mystery movie ever to wear the mask of a detective caped crusader movie. After all these years of enjoying DC as the foil, the wild card, the crazy cousin to Marvel’s mightier cultural powers, I've finally witnessed the scope of Warner Brother’s failure, and not just because The Lost Kingdom punctuates a decade of filmmaking with Patrick Wilson snacking on a roach burger.

Unfortunately, the incessant inanities save this one from total oblivion, as does some action showmanship, sincerely employed fantasy elements (like giant man-eating grasshoppers or an assistant cephalopod named Topo) as well as Wilson in probably his sixth collaboration with Wan — in addition to inciting the Saw franchise with Leigh Whannell and executive producing many sequels, he created the first two installments of both the Insidious and Conjuring series. There’s some overlap and regular enough acclaim for his horror movies that at least halfway earns the cult, Conjuring with its acting and period elements, and Insidious with a balance of the usual ghost-hunting with domestic disturbances and ethereal astral planes, so all I can say is the man knew how to either actually improve upon a sequel as with The Conjuring 2’s mastery of expectations or how to make the most of the inevitable with a less fondly remembered and yet different enough Insidious: Chapter 2. Point is whether you have him belting Elvis tunes to comfort scared kids, or antithetically playing subject to some Jack Torrence-level episode of supernatural takeover, Wilson is clearly the guy holding together Wan’s sequels, and The Lost Kingdom makes three for three.

Wilson excels as straight man and fish out of water (“fucking surface-dwellers…”) whereas Jason Mamoa is too crass and quippy here as opposed to how roguish and intimidating he could be in the last, and it all evens out to some decent Abbott and Costello buffoonery between. The first act of this film is so rough at recapping events, establishing new threats and moving from very broad pee-in-the-face comedy to some sort of thematic mixer of tepid commentary on fatherhood and brotherhood (yuck!) to the whole Day After Tomorrow angle (wherein they’re scuba diving in minus 50 degree water) not so subliminally screaming some eco-exhale while functioning no less grotesquely as a dullard’s disaster movie on top of it all. The Lost Kingdom only made me smile during the Wilson-Mamoa team-up, and the rest of the movie’s madness is measured by greenhouse gases, cursed tridents and blood oaths rather rapidly coasting by in a colorful, damp fever dream.

Unlike, say J-Law basically mercy killing herself in Dark Phoenix just to get out, Amber Heard, despite whatever heavily publicized off-camera complications, was not too absent from this movie and actually tried her best whatever that amounts to, and Nicole Kidman certainly shows up too. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was trying hard last time, and while I wish a villain elevated to primary bad guy from a previously secondary role (a rarity, can you name anything closer than Spider-Man 3?) made for a better role, he was serviceable even if mystical brainwashing doesn’t trump proper character motivations. This movie misses a touch of Willem Dafoe complete with tight hair bun but elsewhere a bolstered role for Randall Park thankfully doesn’t obviously pigeonhole him for comic relief as thoroughly as Ant-Man and the Wasp does. Speaking of Marvel, the plot of Lost Kingdom pretty much copy-pastes huge portions of Thor: The Dark World, it’s own decade-removed, mixed-reviewed sequel perfect for memory-holing.

I have a soft spot still, carried over from my much fuller, more genuine appreciation for the first Aquaman — when this movie chases down the follies of cheesy, eager adventure movies that made 2018 float on, there’s enough corny, crumby fun (almost forgot that subsurface speakeasy with Martin Short) to call The Lost Kingdom a half-decent holiday flick, if you can stand the whiplash of an event feature that clearly went through the ringer in audience testing, only to be generally derided all the same.