Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) *No Spoilers*

Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) No Spoilers

If you're like me and didn't go to see Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in theatres you made the right choice.

For context, I loved the first Aquaman movie. It's one of my favorites from the Snyder/DCEU era. It is a relatively well made adventure story, with some fantastic world building, amazing visuals, and included some commentary on environmental issues as well.

Despite having, mostly the same creative team, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes across as a film that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, in terms of a sequel.

On the one hand it wants to showcase the cool, fun, wisecracking, but bad ass, rock'n'roll version of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) with another rollicking adventure.

On the other it feels like someone said it had to be epic with potentially world changing stakes so Aquaman would have to do 'King Shit' and be all serious, navigate deep sea politics, and generally try to be a responsible heroic good guy that he is when he's not being the fun, life of the party.

Confusingly the movie tries to be both, fusing an amalgamation of themes that seem to fight each other rather than mesh together as a fun superhero adventure.

For example, the song Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf is on the sound track, a song that is completely in line with this version of Aquaman, but seems out of place in this film because it doesn't feel epic enough to gel with what's at stake, or to be a soundtrack for a king.

At the same time this is a film about Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) wanting to get his revenge on Aquaman for killing his father. Which would be fine as a personal Aquaman versus Manta story, but to get his revenge Manta goes after the Black Trident which has world changing consequences brought about by anyone who wields it.

In the end, the lost city of the title is somewhat just there as a backdrop. It's not really that central to the story of Aquaman so much as it is central to the story of Black Manta. It might have been better to just call this movie Aquaman Versus Black Manta since that's really what it's all about.

Honestly I struggled to stay focused through this. Unlike the first Aquaman film it isn't really presenting anything new. We saw most of this world building in the first film, with many of the cooler ideas from that movie not even carried over. Aquaman barely even uses his one unique ability, to talk to fish, in any meaningful or creative way that drives the story.

Aquaman The Lost Kingdom is what happens when you put all your best ideas into the first film (as you should - that's not a criticism). There was really no need for a sequel but, if you are going to do one, maybe it needed a new creative team with a whole new story, instead of trying to weave the threads of the first film into something that didn't really need to be explored further.

Black Manta's revenge could've waited.

Comments

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

TV Review: X-Men '97 (2024) Disney+ Spoiler Free

A fter hearing just about everybody I know, who's into comic book TV and film, say how great the new animated Disney+ series X-Men 97 is, I decided to check it out. Most people said you didn't need to watch the actual 90's animated series that this continues from in order to enjoy it or know what was going on. More than one fan of this new series offered the hyperbole that this is one of Marvel's best, up there with the likes of Wandavision and Loki , and that it should be more popular and getting more attention than it has. Typically animated series don't usually do as well as live action shows, so it already has that hurdle - and it is a continuation of a show aimed directly at younger audiences to begin with. However those, in my opinion, are not the biggest problem. As mentioned, most people said you didn't need to watch the original series to follow this, so I didn't. I never saw it growing up in the 90's. I wasn't really an X-Men fan but I...

TV Series Review: 12 Monkeys (2015 - Season 1 ) Spoiler Free

Being a fan of the 1995, Terry Gilliam movie, Twelve Monkeys , when I discovered SyFy channel had adapted it into a TV series, 12 Monkeys , I was interested to see how that would pan out. Although the show has been aired in Australia on free to air TV (I'm pretty sure I've seen it listed there at ridiculous hours on occasion), it's only recently that the first two seasons were added to Australian Netflix. So I added it to my list of shows to watch. This article is not so much a review of the show, rather it's my thoughts on adapting to the TV version after being a big fan of the film. At this point, I've only seen all of season one and the first episode of season two. Going into the TV series I literally went in cold, not knowing anything about the approach to this adaptation from pre-publicity or trailers beforehand. I didn't really have any expectations other than wondering if the show would stick to the movie plot lines closely and, if they did, how w...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

HRP-4C Robot, Proof of Concept

The HRP-4C Robot (pictured right - photo, Yahoo News ) that recently strutted down the catwork at a Japanese fashion show is a very exciting development in humanoid, robot technology because, as far as I'm concerned, it's 'proof of concept'. What I mean by that is it looks good enough and is functional enough as a piece of hardware to say the technology is there to build human like robots. Stating the obvious really but that's what 'proof of concept' actually is, a working example of an idea. Watch the video below to see HRP-4C in action. Video posted by sys2074 This humanoid fashion model is 158 cm (5 ft 2 inch) tall, weighs in at 43 kg (95 lb) can walk, talk and even express some facial emotions was developed by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The only thing that really spoils its human like appearance is that the robots hands are currently not automated from the wrist down. No doubt this will be addressed...

Movie Review: Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) Spoilers

I don't know why I go into every WB Animation/DC Comics animated movie hopeful that it's going to be good. It almost never is. You'd think my expectations would be so low by this point that it wouldn't take much to be pleasantly surprised but apparently not. I can only guess that WB Animation's latest DC offering, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is intended to be some kind of special release for Halloween with the amount of monsters and supernatural elements that lie within. The trouble is, I don't know who this is for? Given the body count, it's not for kids and, with all the magic and supernatural elements front and center it's not really a detective story? Set in 1920's Gotham, an ancient evil is awakened, and only Batman can save the city (I guess? I mean a good proportion of the city gets burned to the ground so... did he save it?). Given the time period I was hopeful this could be something of an interesting take on Batman along the li...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog