Film Review - Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the new Aquaman film and James Wan returns to direct and Jason Momoa returns as Arthur Curry aka Aquaman as he faces off again against David Kane/Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who now possess his own dark trident of power and to stop him Arthur will need the help of his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson)

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is not a bad film per se but its one that while I was watching it I wish it was a lot better than it is as this film has so many talented people involved (Wan, Momoa, Wilson, Mateen II, Nicole Kidman, Teumeura Morrison, John Rhys-Davies, Amber Heard and Martin Short) that it feels like their all stuck in a pretty run of the mill story that does very little with most of them, Kidman in particular really gets the short end of the trident this time as she an iconic talent is stuck in a pretty thankless mother role that anyone could’ve done, if you’ve got Nicole Kidman give her some fun aquatic action of her own same with Morrison who pretty much does the napping grandpa role.

As for the story it feels like James Wan really wanted to channel Peter Jackson and his work on Lord of the Rings in terms of referencing his horror past but also delivering that big scale spectacle which Jackson did brilliantly in the Lord of the Rings but it feels more like your watching the Jackson of the Hobbit era with this film where the horror references kind of work but the spectacle feels small and very CG heavy and the CG is fine for the most part but it isn’t that large scale that you saw with the first film in 2018.

As for Momoa and Wilson their okay and have some good chemistry but Mateen II feels pretty wasted here with a pretty run of the mill villain role that doesn’t have the bite it should have given his plan here while Heard is in more of this movie than I thought she would be given what’s happened with her in real life but she does okay here.

And okay is not only how I would sum up Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom but also 2023 as a movie year on the whole, it wasn’t bad but not as good as it could have been either but I fear 2024 will be worse given how long and drawn out the writers and actors strikes became (and unnecessarily so too) that led to a big production shutdown for months hopefully it doesn’t get too bad but we’ll have to wait and see, 2 out of 5.