Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) Review

 

    Aquaman, the final movie for DC's old past, well seems like it. So this movie is meaningless right? It seems like this movie is meaningless as its post credit scene. Yeah there's only one, and it's only for a joke from one of the characters here. Skip ahead. So with that out of the way, is it good? Yeah, it's fun, and if you like the first movie I bet you'll enjoy this movie as well. 

    Let's start out with the good shall we? Jason Momoa is great, and his relationship with Orm, his brother played by Patrick Wilson, is fantastic. They are the bones of this movie. Some of the CGI looks fantastic, but some are your typical fake-ish looking. The monsters are great, some of them are practical and uses costume instead of purely CG. They are great but I do wish for some of the king Kordax's creatures to have more screen time. The fights that involves trident are cool, especially the final fight against Black Manta. I wish it had more time though.

    And with that let's go the bad part. Amber Heard is a lot in this movie, so if you hate her, I think you're going to dislike this movie. Same like The Flash, this criminals are still here. Funny enough there's a joke with Mera and Arthur's baby pissing. I don't know why it reminds me of Amber Heard's "dog" pooped on a certain bed. The pacing are little bit off for me, and in the middle of the movie it just becomes this explorer type of movie. Also why there's so little deaths in this movie? Once again it makes Black Manta feel meh instead of threatening. He swore he would kill Arthur's loved ones, and yet, he doesn't kill anyone? It's actually sad knowing that this movie is the final before James Gunn clean the whole slate. But at least he's performance is good in this movie. A shame as well in terms of building a realistic defensive army, I mean there's a kingdom, shouldn't be there's more than one tower defending the whole kingdom? The same problem happens at the end as well, there's no defense on the villain's castle. Also there's this giant kraken looking like monster who just stop after King Orm cut one of its tentacles? Like why stop? Why?? You're a monster for God sake, just go after them and kill them! It's just weird, and it feels like the writers just want to make that final scene to be as easy as possible, as fast as possible. Also the plot of this movie is just preachy, so there's this giant refinery that pollutes the ocean and the air, and it makes global warming much faster. Where's the other superheroes? Where's Superman? Where's Batman? Also where's Karathen? Remember the giant kaiju at the end of the first movie? Where's all of that, those who can help Aquaman win easily? Oh yeah, and the ending is so preachy and hilarious, seeing Jason Momoa speaking on behalf of the Atlantis in this UN meeting. The leaks are all true! It's ridiculous and preachy. I'm fine using a global warming plot in a movie, but as long as it's not preachy, I'm fine with it. Once again, metaphor! Just like the King build bridge joke in this movie. Metaphor! Don't forced it down our throats. 

    In the end this movie is fun, I had a fun time watching the movie, the monsters as well. But at the end of the day, it still makes me question. Does this movie matter?

5.8/10