In the DC Expanded Universe of films, which appears to be winding down, there’s only one hero who brings an instinct for fun to every scene, along with an awareness of his own ridiculousness, and that’s Aquaman. Specifically, that’s Aquaman as played by Jason Momoa, who refashioned the half-human Prince (and later King) of Atlantis, aka Arthur Curry,\u00a0as a brawny,\u00a0long-haired, beer-chugging, high-fiving, wisecracking bro who bears quite a bit of resemblance to an actor named Jason Momoa.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Momoa achieves peak Momoa\u00a0in\u00a0“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a neon submarine wreck of a sequel wherein the big guy tries to save the planet from returning bad guy\u00a0Black Manta, aka David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who wants revenge against Aquaman for killing his dad in the first movie, and has allowed himself to be possessed by the spirit of the Black Trident, which was forged by denizens of the seventh kingdom of Atlantis, a necropolis filled with\u00a0demonic creatures.\u00a0Black Manta is dangerous\u00a0to himself as well as others,\u00a0and not as in control of the awesome weapon he wields as he thinks he is. His\u00a0\u00a0plan involves the use\u00a0a glowing green ancient power source that’s like radiation times a zillion,\u00a0and is accelerating the pace of\u00a0climate change (the film’s title is etched into the face of a collapsing glacier).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not a good situation at all. Definitely the kind you’d want Aquaman to handle.<\/p>\n
Momoa is the best reason to see the movie. He’s as alpha-cool, even jerk-ish,\u00a0as a “maverick” action\u00a0star can be while also making you believe his character is fundamentally decent and knows when he’s gone too far and sincerely feels\u00a0bad about it.\u00a0And he’s got range.\u00a0One minute, Momoa will\u00a0practically be doing his own smart-alecky running commentary on the film he’s in,\u00a0and in the next he’ll weep bitter tears or\u00a0scream out in anguish or vengeful fury over some dastardly action by a bad guy, as if\u00a0he’s acting in a silent-movie melodrama with title cards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And it all works.\u00a0The self-awareness never becomes self-conscious or off-putting.\u00a0Rather than give viewers emotional whiplash, Momoa leads them on to the next scene (or mode) in a way that makes it feel as if\u00a0it’s\u00a0all of a piece.\u00a0(By the way, our hero\u00a0has an infant\u00a0son in this one\u2014by his wife Mera, played by Amber Heard\u2014and there are Pixar-style obvious but\u00a0can’t-miss\u00a0jokes about the kid keeping the parents up all night. Momoa’s movie star bona fides are confirmed by the belly laughs that he gets from the baby.)<\/p>\n
The second-best reason to see the film\u00a0is Momoa’s chemistry with his co-star Patrick Wilson, returning as Arthur’s half-brother\u00a0Orm Marius, aka the Ocean Master, the deposed would-be king of Atlantis and Arthur’s chief rival\u00a0in the first movie. Wilson seems to have been warped into contemporary Hollywood from a much-earlier decade. He has a Van Heflin\u00a0quality in this one\u00a0(Matt typed,\u00a0for the benefit of any oldsters and Wikipedia consulters who might be\u00a0reading).\u00a0He is\u00a0as dry in this role as a man playing an ocean-dwelling humanoid could be. He plays Orm not just as a guy who’s never<\/em> in on the joke, but doesn’t\u00a0seem to know what jokes are. That makes him the perfect foil for Momoa’s Arthur Curry, who refers to Orm as “little brother” (despite lil bro’s repeated attempts to destroy him in the last film)\u00a0and messes with his head as only a big brother can. Arthur\u00a0is never more infuriating to Orm than when he’s barreling through life, crashing and smashing his way past obstacles,\u00a0somehow coming out unscathed, and grinning\u00a0at Orm\u00a0as if he had a plan the whole time.<\/p>\n Returning director\u00a0James Wan and screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (one of Wan’s go-to collaborators; he wrote the first “Aquaman”\u00a0and two “Conjuring” sequels) don’t waste a lot of time either setting up the story or laboring to convince us that the rest of the cast of the first film (including Temuera Morrison and Nicole Kidman as Arthur’s dad and mom, and Dolph Lundgren as Mera’s father Nereus) had dramatically sound reasons for staying\u00a0out of the way so Momoa and Wilson could carry the\u00a0picture.\u00a0Probably two-thirds of this sequel’s\u00a0running time is devoted to Arthur and Orm doing the argumentative buddies-on-a-mission thing, with a bit of estranged-brothers-reconciling, plus dashes of redemption narrative, lessons learned, and admitting you were wrong so that you can grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n This\u00a0is a fun movie, but not anywhere near a great one.\u00a0It lacks the go-for-broke bigness of the original, with its flagrantly melodramatic family dynamics and knowingly ludicrous spectacle (like the seahorses that whinnied and the sharks that roared).\u00a0There’s a cluttered\u00a0too-muchness to the production. You may get the\u00a0sense that there was chaos behind the scenes, and stuff that was staged and\u00a0shot with the intention of having it\u00a0play out full-length\u00a0had to get pulverized and reconstituted in the editing\u00a0to make the totality work for audiences and exhibitors. The narrated-by-Aquaman\u00a0opening montage plays like an attempt to shave 20 minutes off the\u00a0running time and\u00a0get scene-setting and expository throat-clearing\u00a0out of the way so the movie could\u00a0jump ahead to the bits\u00a0with\u00a0the brothers getting in and out of\u00a0trouble and working through their relationship issues while toppling statues, punching giant bugs. and zapping people with laser guns.\u00a0<\/p>\n “How many influences\u00a0do you think they referenced in this?” my viewing companion asked afterward. I\u00a0wouldn’t dare\u00a0offer\u00a0a number,\u00a0but the film is upfront about its fondness for “Star Wars,”\u00a0Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Jackson’s\u00a0“Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the “Matrix” films (in particular, the sentinel bots) and the works of H.G. Wells (one spectacular extended\u00a0action scene is built around Arthur and Orm trying to fend off a “War of the Worlds”-like\u00a0tripod machine).\u00a0We follow the duo through a dazzling variety of settings, including the aforementioned necropolis, which Wan has said is modeled on Mario Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires,” and a\u00a0secret underwater\u00a0lair constructed from the wrecks of pirate ships, and a volcanic\u00a0island full of green-goo-mutated flora and fauna that’s like something Ray Harryhausen would have stop-motion animated in the ’60s (the Harryhausen showcase “Mysterious Island,” based on H.G. Wells’s novella,\u00a0is a charming fantasy adventure that’s perfect for young kids, by the way).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the DC Expanded Universe of films, which appears to be winding down, there’s only one hero who brings an instinct for fun to every scene, along with an awareness of his own ridiculousness, and that’s Aquaman. 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