AQUAMAN! And the Lost Franchise.

I like the first Aquaman. It had absurd action, and yet it was done right. It followed the directions of what may have come from “Save the Cat Writes a Screenplay”. From the trailers the Lost Kingdom looked like it could be alright, but the dumpster fires of WW1984 and The Flash had me thinking I was about to be duped again. I was right.

The movie opens with what could have been a cool scene of Aquaman beating up pirates and saving people. But nope… he’s actually playing with action figures in front of his child that came out of nowhere. Once Arthur started monologue my eyes began to roll. Is this really all the studio could give us? A cheesy effortless montage of clips from the first film and an update on a child that had been born? The first movie did not elude that Arthur, in my opinion, was down to… be down, with red hair chick. And just from that first 5 minutes, I knew this movie was going to be a messy mass of tangled seaweed.

From there were given more montage of life on land sucks, life in the ocean sucks… this movie sucks. I really would compare it to the dullness and lousiness of Ant Man Quantum Mania. They literally have to tell the audience everything that is happening even if we already know. Black Mana returns and his plan is to pollute the earth so that it will increase global warming to melt the ice shelves which are hiding a hidden kingdom full of bad dudes. Yes it’s that laughable. And it is explained by Black Manta finding a black and green trident that posses him. It makes him stronger, but that bugs me, because its not really Manta who is strong, but new demon inside him, it undercuts the villain. Anyways, forget Amber Turd, like this movie tries to (and it’s very noticeable) in fact, forget about the baby mentioned above, it’s not important either. Now that Aquaman needs to fight Manta he searches for his brother that he prisoned so they can team up and save the day, in places that don’t include being underwater, except for a scene that tries to be the bar in Star Wars owned by Jabba the Hutt with freaky singing sea creature and Jabbas long lost fat slug like brother himself. (not really)

I will repeat how bad the explanations through out the movie are and how dumb of an audience the movie thinks you are. Arthur’s brother touches that same dark trident and see’s the visions that we have already seen through Manta and then explains everything through telling, NOT SHOWING by saying this paraphrased quote. “I touched that trident. I saw that Black Manta is going to pollute the earth and melt ice caps to free evil in a hidden kingdom.” That’s how bad it is. If someone isn’t telling you what is going on when you don’t need them to, then they are getting punched in the face and falling on their back in pain. This movie, I kid you not, does that at least 5 times! Arther gets hit and lets out a “UGHHH, that hurt.” Then his brother gets hit “Ugggh, that hurt” then Manta gets slammed down “Ughh, that hurt.” I don’t know why they think it’s comedic relief for our superheroes to do that. But it was only funny once, and that was when Loki was slammed into the ground by the Hulk over 10 years ago at the top of Stark Tower.

Anyways, as it turns out, we can remember Amber Turd and the baby cause it requires the bloodline of the family to unfreeze the Lost Kingdom. So Manta steals the baby, but in the end, stupid unknown, non-needed side character saves the day and escapes with he baby. Aquaman kills evil zombie dude with two tridents, then goes to help Manta, but Manta decides to fall from cliff and kill himself anyways. In which Arthur has no facial expression about and just… walks away. And that’s how this movie goes, it just walks around, lost. And that was only me ripping on the plot and storytelling. I don’t know how, but CGI got with the past 5 years since the last movie. The first one did great at what people might look like underwater, but this one is almost like they CGI’d everyone’s bodies and cloths then pasted a terrifying image of their faces over it. You can even see Jason Mamoa’s neck skin somehow move over his golden costume like it’s floating over it. Everything looks highly copy and pasted to the point of annoyance. Seriously, I don’t know what they did to film the underwater scenes this time, but it didn’t work.

So that’s a lot of rant on how bad it is. Here’s how I would have fixed it:

The movie should have picked up where the other left off, but a few years into the future. We are shown for a good 2 minutes the relationship between Arthur and Amber Turd as she tries to help calm him through the trials of being king of Atlantis, while behind the scenes we find out through her tummy touching that she’s pregnant. To add to the stress Black Manta returns and is better than before but still loses to Aquaman and realizes he just can’t do it. Thus he’s sent on a journey to find something more powerful and he does. He finds the Lost Kingdom and uses it’s powers/technology. (during this time Aquaman learns of the pregnancy but it doesn’t hit him too hard at first.) Black Manta then returns and almost defeats Aquaman then flees. Aquaman is injured and very weak, also during the fight Amber Turd is beaten as well and is in the hospital struggling to give birth and stay alive at the same time, but the baby is born. The weight of the Atlantis politics and his war with Manta are weighing heavily and now that he has a son he feels he cannot protect Arthur is forced to make a choice 2/3 of the way into the movie. He must bust his brother from jail to fight Manta. As for Manta himself, while Aurther and his brother chase after him, he is busy negotiating with the Lost Kingdoms demon king and decides to let him go once he learns he too needs assistance in fighting Aquaman. This is when the movie should reveal great chaos in the world caused by the demons powers (not stupid global warming news clips like it did) The final battle and even baby kidnapping can pretty much play out the same, minus the dumb nerdy science guy that we didn’t need. Aquaman and his brother use tridents to kill both demon and Manta. THE END! Much better movie through my direction.

I give this movie D+ or a 6/10. It was entertaining enough but could have been better and was a bad sendoff for the death of the DCEU. We’ll have to see what James Gunn may or may not have up his sleeve. What ever it may be, I hope it’s better than the lego looking bad guy guns from this movie, or worse, the bad guy costumes that look like their from the worst of 1960’s space alien uniforms.