Movie Review – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Dec 22, 2023

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in -Movie Review, Action, Adventure, DC, Fantasy

DC doesn’t disappoint. By that, I mean DC has been so consistently disappointing that I’ve come to expect their movies to be disappointing, and in that way, they don’t disappoint.

Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom is a fitting end to the DCU, since the DCU is now itself, the Lost Kingdom. This will be the last movie of the current DC experience. No more Jason Momoa as Aquaman; no more Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman; no more Ben Affleck as Batman; and no more Henry Cavill as Superman. Which is a shame because all of the actors were, in my opinion, brilliantly cast for their roles. It’s the writing and directing that so often fell flat and dragged down the talents of these actors.

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Story Salad

This movie wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but I expected it to be pretty bad. It felt obvious to me that this story is just a salad of other stories. There was a lot of Lord of the Rings feeling to it, especially with the evil bad guy from the ancient past—very ring wrathy. There was just a dash of Harry Potter in a few scenes and a whole heap of Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake right in the middle of the movie. And just like in King Kong that scene made for an excellent Peetime. 🙂

Formulaic

The worst part is that the movie is full of little tricks that I suppose the writers thought would be dramatic but turned out to be nothing more than completely predictable. Case in point:

Character A doesn't trust character B.

Later, A finds themself in desperation for help. B sees that A needs help but apparently is unwilling to assist.

But no, the writers are deceiving us because B is really a good guy and comes back to save A.

Later, A gives B a symbolic or material form of appreciation signifying that he now trusts B.

Also, the entire plot of the brotherly conflict is formulaic. There’s zero originality in this movie.

And OMG, it was painfully obvious that the scientist would eventually betray the villain. The writers rode that horse to a lather by showing us the scientist betraying the villain, but the villain doesn’t find out about it and so the scientist betrays him again in another scene. Dear writers, there’s a thing called internal conflict. Look it up.

Music

If there’s one thing that DCU is consistently better than the MCU at it’s the soundtracks. Mostly because they spent bank to get Hans Zimmer to score many of the movies and that man is a soundtrack god. But not this movie. I wish the music was forgettable but it was worse than that. It was noticeably bad, mostly techno crap that was completely out of place.

Grade: D+

About The Peetimes: The first Peetime isn’t bad, but I think the 2nd Peetime is the best. The third Peetime isn’t very long, but it’s the best I could find before the climax begins.

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There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Rated:	(PG-13) Some Language \| Sci-Fi Violence
Genres:	Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Starring:	Jason Momoa, Ben Affleck, Patrick Wilson
Director:	James Wan
Writer(s):	David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, James Wan, Jason Momoa
Language:	English
Country:	United States

Plot
Plot unknown. Sequel to the 2018 film ‘Aquaman.’

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Comments

6 responses to “Movie Review – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”

Anonymous

December 22, 2023

I have to say that I had high hopes for this movie, since it’s the same director (James Wan) who did a great job in the first Aquaman movie. But in my opinion, I think few technical things made this movie terrible. The movie felt it was handed from a director to another. It was so obvious the movie ran into so many reshoots and re-writing. The scenes where they tried so much to shadow Amber (because we all know why) were very terribly edited. There were a couple of scenes with slow-motion that looked like a scene from the 80s, that’s not James Wan style, those were also terribly edited.
Overall, the movie felt so rushed and so inconsistent. One last thing, is that I think this movie was first 2:30 but DC wanted it to be 2hrs. So again, DC single handedly ruin their movies.. Overall if those technicalities were addressed, we would have seen an above average movie regardless of the weak writing.
In the positive side, a few fighting/chasing scenes looked awesome, definitely were James Wan style.

PS: I have a feeling that we will hear an explanation from James Wan in the near future. That’s not a movie he would approve of.

Reply
1. Dan Gardner
  
  December 22, 2023
  
  Thanks for the comment. It makes sense that the original runtime was 2:30 because Ben Affleck is listed in the credits but he’s nowhere to be seen in the movie. Maybe they’ll release a director’s cut that no one will watch. 🙂
  
  Honestly, I didn’t know anything about Amber Heard. I’ve heard of her but didn’t pay attention to the news. I perused her Wikipedia entry and see that she’s the lady who was married to Johnny Depp. I remember hearing about their divorce but I have no idea what it was all about or why it made the news.
  
  Reply
Mark Haless

December 25, 2023

Dan hello , whereas I do agree with a lot of your reviews however in this case your negative comments of the entire recent DC universe surprised me. There have been some poor DC movies as there have been very disappointing Marvel movies however to put Wonder Woman, Batman , Justice League and Man Of Steel in that category surprised me. To be honest I love both Marvel and DC but some of the latest Marvel movies have been almost Mystery Science Theater quality productions. I’m not troubled by your review but more of the disqualification of the latest DC productions as a whole.

Reply
1. Dan Gardner
  
  December 25, 2023
  
  I totally agree that the recent MCU movies have been hit-and-miss, mostly miss. I hope they can get the magic back, but they’ve dug a deep hole of disappointment recently.
  
  I don’t dislike DC, I just dislike the movies. There have been a few good DC movies, as you mentioned. Although I think both versions of Justice League were a mess. I thought the Snyder version was unwatchable. And WW2 was, in my opinion, one of the worst superhero movies ever. And I love Gal Gadot as WW, but the writing couldn’t be worse. I think the biggest problem the DC movies have is that the villains are trash. Rarely do they have a sympathetic villain. That’s not to say that all of the villains in the MCU have been great. But they get it right more often that they get it wrong.
  
  I basically have low expectations for all of the DC movies because that’s their track record, and it’s becoming that way for the MCU. There is some hope for DC now that James Gunn has taken over. The tone will certainly be different going forward. Fingers crossed we can have some good superhero movies in the next few years.
  
  Reply
Anonymous

January 11, 2024

Awesome review. Sooooo, worth watching at home on streaming? Maybe as a background movie, or does one need to pay attention?

Reply
1. Dan Gardner
  
  January 12, 2024
  
  I don’t think you need to pay much attention to the movie. It isn’t hard to follow at all.
  
  Reply

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Movie Review – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom