By Lucas Castillo ’26
SPOILER AHEAD!!! For anyone who actually wants to see this film.
The last dying breath of the DCEU; we will never forget thee, no matter how hard we try. Over the years, there have been good times, with movies like Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and the second Suicide Squad, and there have also been some pretty abysmal moments, with movies like Wonder Woman 1984, Batman vs. Superman, and the first Suicide Squad, just to name a few. Now, in the DCEU’s final dying moments before new vitality is brought into this decaying and scattered mess of a franchise with James Gunn’s new vision, they end it all not with a bang and not with a whimper. Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom is just alright.
Before this movie came out, I had heard that Jason Mamoa had said they were trying to squeeze in a whole Aquaman saga into this one movie. With that being said, the plot should logically be a rushed, bloated, haphazard abomination, right? Well, yes, and no. I can definitely see where they rushed things, particularly cutting to when Aquaman has a kid, but the other elements of the film, if they were originally meant to stretch out across multiple movies, were translated well into a two-hour film. There were just too many locations for my liking, particularly with the mutated volcano island, while a cool location, feeling quite unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. Amber Heard was benched toward the middle of the film while her character was hospitalized; however, she did have a fairly prominent role in the third act and ended up saving Aquaman’s life a few times. I did not expect her to have as prominent a role as she had in the film, but I guess they couldn’t have cut any more of her role than they already had, without the film feeling too disjointed and incoherent.
I think that the best film to compare Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom to is, funnily enough, Marvel Studios most recent film to bomb at the box office, The Marvels. One of The Marvels’ better elements was its charming and fun dialogue and writing, and one of the worst parts of the film was the messy and flimsy plot. In Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom’s case, it’s the complete opposite. The plot of the film is fairly solid, with only a few issues, and the writing and dialogue makes your brain cells die a slow and painful death. When Aquaman’s father was bleeding in the rubble of his burning house after Manta stole his kid, three different characters, consecutively, blurted out “NOOOOO!!!!”. It was at this moment that whatever immersion I had left before, popped up daisies and was buried six feet under. The number of times that Aquaman cries out “GET AWAY FROM MY WIFE!”, or “GET AWAY FROM MY CHILD” makes it so glaringly obvious that he has absolutely no drive in this film other than his being a father and husband.
At this point, Jason Mamoa is just playing Jason Mamoa. Aquaman has zero motivation outside of “I’m a Dad” and “Being king is hard”. The plot and other characters push him around like a rag doll, and he has no growth or development in this film whatsoever. Now Orm, on the other hand, had a decent redemption arc throughout this film, as he goes from being hateful and spiteful towards his brother, to trusting him and saving his life once in a while, to, eventually, giving up the opportunity to kill his brother and gain, not only his throne, but ultimate power as well. Now, that is growth.
Another character who, while not exhibiting any sort of arc or even internal conflict, does exhibit some form of depth, is Manta. What Manta lacks in many of the deeper aspects of a character arc, he makes up for in raw external and internal motivation. Fueled by the death of his father, Manta, throughout this movie and the previous film, goes to the ends of the earth to seek vengeance against Aquaman for leaving him and his father for dead. In the end, when Manta is hanging on a cliff over a pit of certain death, and Aquaman reaches out his hand, Manta, blinded by his hatred and pride, leaps off of the cliff and is buried alive by the falling debris. Now, granted, many of these elements were already set up in the first movie, such as his backstory and motivation, but we should still give the sequel props for not completely vitiating what was already good in the first place and competently progressing his character.
In an ironic twist of fate, there is practically nothing very deep about this film. Every character, plot point, and piece of dialogue in Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom has at least some level of shallowness. Now, is that a bad thing? Not really, this is an Aquaman movie after all. Sure, it would be nice if there were a hint of depth in a movie about the ocean, but in all honesty, there doesn’t have to be. Most normal people just like to turn their brains off and watch a fun movie, and if that’s you, then I would highly recommend Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom. Overall, in my personal, and all but factual opinion, I would give this movie a 6.5 out of 10.