Quick Synopsis: Super scary villain fails to kill a baby.

It’s hard to give a shit about DC films at the moment. They’re clearly being written with the idea of building towards something, but the audience knows that with Gunn taking over and resetting everything, they’re not actually building towards anything. This is partly why The Flash was such a frustrating film, It was setting up questions that we knew would never be answered. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (AATLK, pronounced Arterlook) doesn’t set up anything like The Flash did, but it also doesn’t feel like the closure that it actually is.

Like a lot of superhero films, it is hard to not wonder where the other characters are. Even considering that they couldn’t withstand the water pressure, there’s still a lot of stuff that takes place on land that they could have been used for. Even just a quick scene of “contact your friends” “There’s no time/they’re busy” would be useful.

Those absences would be fine if the story itself was engrossing enough. This film is so pedestrian, it’s at risk of being hit by a car that mounts the pavement. The visuals aren’t that exciting either. Something like this should create magical-looking worlds that you want to live in. We should forget that these worlds don’t exist. You never get that, everything looks so fake that it resembles a mid-2000s video game more than real life.

At least the performers are having fun. Momoa is having a lot of fun, and the sad thing about him not being Aquaman in Gunns DCEU means that that character is effectively over now, because they can’t recast it without it seeming like a downgrade. It looks like they’re thinking of having him as Lobo, which would kind of make sense, but I think we all know that Joseph Anoa’i would be a better option. Momoa is helped by him and Patrick Wilson having tremendous chemistry, much more than they had in the first one. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was good in the brief moments he’s seen as Black Manta, but isn’t really in it enough to be memorable. It doesn’t help that Black Manta doesn’t really do much. His whole thing is “I’m going to find this weapon and take over the world”, so the heroes need to stop him getting the weapon that will make him unbeatable, he finds the weapon and then is defeated almost instantly. It reminded me of something, but it’s so generic that I don’t know what it reminded me of. He also seems to know he’s a character in a film, so makes decisions based entirely on what the film needs him to do. The best example of this is when all he needs to do is kill Aquamans son, so he stands above him holding a knife, and pauses, raising it far too high, just so Aquaman can save the day. If he was actually bothered, he could/would/should have killed that baby immediately; would have been easy too, babies are shit at fighting, I reckon I could take like 10 of them on my own. Also, he knew he had to sacrifice the child, yet still did everything on his own. Logically he should have sent one of his henchman to fetch the child while he was off doing other shit. I’ve never said this sentence before and I’m not sure I’ll say it again, but if he was a good manager and effectively delegated his duties, he could have killed that baby instantly.

That’s how I’m ending it.