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.
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