[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Film Brain dives into this unintentional finale to the DC cinematic universe before it gets rebooted, being released like a wet fart - but is it really as bad as the months of rumours claim?
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00:00 This video is sponsored by Entertainment Earth.
00:02 Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode Jason Momoa is back as Aquaman,
00:08 forced to team up with his brother Patrick Wilson to find the Lost Kingdom,
00:12 but does this final DC adventure at least end this cinematic universe with some degree of dignity?
00:18 [music]
00:34 Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa, is juggling the responsibility of being a new
00:40 father with being the King of Atlantis, alongside his wife Mira, played by Amber Heard.
00:45 Meanwhile, David Cain, aka Black Manta, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, still seeking revenge
00:52 against Aquaman, finds a black trident that gives him the knowledge of the Lost Kingdom of Necros,
00:57 and begins harvesting aura calcum, rapidly escalating the effects of climate change.
01:03 Arthur is forced to free his brother Orm, played by Patrick Wilson, from his desert prison to find
01:08 Manta before he drives the world to extinction. The DC Cinematic Universe officially concludes
01:14 with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. This is it. This is the full stop. Or at least, as we know it
01:22 today. In a few years time, James Gunn is going to reboot the DC properties and who knows what
01:27 that'll look like, but for now, this is the end. Which is a bit of an unfortunate thing to put on
01:33 Aquaman 2, because it clearly wasn't intended to be a finale in any way, shape or form.
01:38 The DC Cinematic Universe has had a very rocky history, to say the least. If you've been a long
01:44 time follower of mine, you know that I've had a very, very conflicted history with the Snyder
01:50 films that started off this cinematic universe I thought they were very shaky foundations to
01:55 build upon, and it turns out that was exactly the case. And once Snyder departed, largely DC has
02:03 been defined by a lack of cohesive identity, which in some ways is actually kind of liberating next
02:10 to Marvel, where every single movie is clearly meant to be the next chapter, the next installment,
02:17 and clearly very planned, whereas DC largely did whatever the hell it wanted. And so sometimes
02:24 those experiments did actually work out in the case of something like Aquaman or Shazam,
02:30 and then other times you get complete and total dross like Suicide Squad from 2016. The problem
02:37 is that the DC Cinematic Universe just didn't know what it wanted to be, and ultimately just existed
02:44 largely to compete with Marvel. And Aquaman 2 arrives in the midst of discoveries by Out of
02:50 Warner Bros, but also that it's a full year after its original intended release date of December
02:55 2022, which allowed an entire year of rumours to swirl around the production. That it's deeply
03:01 troubled, that it's filled with reshoots, the editing bay is in turmoil, Amber Heard's out of
03:06 the movie, no she isn't, all this stuff has bubbled up around it, and everyone's primed for it to be a
03:13 flash level disaster, and I hate to burst your bubble, but Aquaman 2 is fine. It's not great,
03:20 but it isn't terrible. It's just kind of there, and I think in that way it's very emblematic of
03:26 superhero movies at this present moment, which have very much lost their event status, and are
03:32 just things that happen every couple of weeks now to increasing audience apathy. And for the record,
03:38 I liked the original Aquaman. I thought it was a refreshing change for DC's movies at the time,
03:43 especially coming off the back of the Snyder films, which were very grim and self-serious,
03:48 whereas Aquaman embraced a sense of fun and humour about itself, which honestly needed,
03:54 because the popular conception of Aquaman in many people's eyes is "Teeheehee, that guy that talks
03:59 to fish". Everyone thinks of the Super Friends version of the character, hence the over-compensatory
04:04 casting of Jason Momoa in the role, the most hench-dude you can think of. And even the new
04:10 film opens with voice-over narration that goes along the lines of "yeah, I talk to fish, but also
04:16 I'm good at one other thing, cracking people's heads open". But I think the one thing that really
04:22 worked about the original Aquaman was having James Wan as a director. James Wan coming off the back
04:27 of the Conjuring movies, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think that he would be suited for a
04:33 superhero film, but actually he just felt right for it. He did bring some of his horror bonafides
04:40 to the movie, but largely he seemed to embrace the opportunity of being able to create an
04:45 underwater Star Wars. And if nothing else, Aquaman, the original, looks great. The way that he built
04:53 that world on screen is visually quite stunning. Yeah, it's not quite up to the level of, say,
04:59 James Cameron's Avatar, but certainly it invites the flashy colours that you associate with comic
05:06 books. It's a really visually dynamic movie. It just seemed like it was everyone on the same page
05:13 and embracing the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Aquaman was just straight up camp. And with Wan
05:20 behind the camera, it's perhaps not a surprise to say that Aquaman 2 is largely consistent with the
05:24 original. It's the typical sequel thing. It's the same movie, but bigger, if not necessarily better.
05:31 That being said though, there are a couple of things that The Lost Kingdom does better than
05:36 its predecessor, but it also takes several steps back in other areas, unfortunately. If nothing
05:43 else though, it is undeniably a James Wan movie. In an era where so many superhero films feel like
05:50 the steamroller, even talented directors, and make them feel anonymous, at least the Aquaman movies
05:56 feel like something that came from James Wan. So much of his personality comes through in these
06:03 movies. It almost feels like he's kind of giggling behind the camera at just how much he's being
06:09 allowed to get away with. He puts some very strange things in front of the camera, largely because the
06:16 fantastical setting allows him to do whatever the hell he wants. You want a spy cephalopod in your
06:23 movie to accompany Aquaman for much of the running time? Here you go. You want John Rhys-Davies to
06:29 come back as a crustacean warrior that keeps losing his arm? Well guess what? That's in the
06:35 movie too. You want Martin Short to turn up as a Jabba the Hutt knockoff? It's in the movie. James
06:43 Wan is just indulging every whim he possibly can, and it feels like he actually doubles down on the
06:51 Star Wars and Lord of the Rings comparisons. That is what he wants to emulate just underwater,
06:58 and I think he makes that abundantly clear by the time that he has that Jabba the Hutt knockoff scene
07:03 in a knockoff cantina. And while maybe it doesn't get quite as weird as its predecessor, it's still
07:08 the movie where Jason Momoa rides the back of a giant seahorse, and it helps that Momoa himself
07:13 embraces the "anything goes" atmosphere. He's played the character so many times by this point
07:19 that he's pretty relaxed in the role. I think it also helps that Momoa is clearly incorporating
07:24 elements of himself to the characterization. Momoa has a story credit, and he's clearly
07:29 contributed a fair bit, especially the idea of Arthur being a father. He's managing that with
07:35 being the king of Atlantis, and he's kind of struggling to juggle all that. He spoke about
07:40 in the Piara interviews how the recurring joke of the baby peeing in his face is actually inspired
07:46 by his real life, although I've got to be honest, that's a cheap joke that I've seen in a lot of
07:51 movies before now. But nevertheless, that shows that he wants to embrace the character and enjoy
07:58 himself. He has that kind of devil-may-care attitude that makes him fun, but also makes
08:04 it understandable why Arthur isn't really suited to traditional kingly duties. He's not a politician,
08:11 he doesn't come from the underwater world, and there's a bit of that tension going on. He's very
08:16 much someone that uses his force to try and solve his problems, and fortunately, he doesn't really
08:23 use diplomacy. That's always been a bit of a deficiency on his part. Luckily though, the film
08:30 doesn't focus too much on aquatic politics. Although speaking of politics, what Momoa has
08:35 contributed is clearly an even greater emphasis on its environmental start, even more than the
08:41 first movie, to the point where it's frankly unavoidable. Lost Kingdom is explicitly a movie
08:47 about climate change. The big plot device in the film is the auricalcum, which is being harvested
08:53 by Black Manta, who wants to use it to destroy the world. And this auricalcum was used by the
08:59 titular Lost Kingdom of Necros, and it's basically shown as being a destructive, corrupting force. As
09:06 Manta uses it, it effectively speedruns the effects of climate change. There are several moments where
09:12 characters sit down in front of the television and see breaking news of huge natural disasters
09:18 happening at a frightening and unprecedented rate. It's meant to echo what we're seeing right now,
09:25 in our present moment. Of course, it's not a perfect allegory, because the effects of climate
09:30 change, unlike in this movie, are not something that are going to be rapidly reversed by the end
09:36 of the running time. I know this is a very unflattering comparison, but it actually reminded
09:40 me of Superman 4. No, I'm not trying to say it's anywhere near as bad as that movie, but certainly
09:46 it reminded me of how star Christopher Reeve was also involved with the story of that movie,
09:51 and wanted to promote an anti-nuclear weapons message, in the same way that Momoa is involved
09:56 in the story here, and wants a climate change message in it. And that comparison is only
10:01 further reinforced by the fact that both films have a sequence where they address the UN. That's
10:08 right, they actually evoke Superman 4 to a certain extent, which is probably not the greatest thing
10:14 to remind the audience of. You can kind of admire both those movies, even though they're deeply
10:20 imperfect for their attempt to try and incorporate commentary in the realms of a superhero movie.
10:27 Although, with all that being said, this entire subplot of Aquaman wanting to reveal the existence
10:31 of Atlantis to the rest of the world, and use their technology to try and fix its problems,
10:36 is very reminiscent of Black Panther, where he too wanted to reveal Wakanda to the rest of the world,
10:41 and use their advanced technology to try and fix the world's problems. Oh, and also ended with a
10:46 scene revealing their existence to the UN. I feel like the fact that it keeps reminding me of other
10:52 movies is a bit of a bad thing. Despite what has been rumoured, Amber Heard is very much still in
10:57 the movie, in a prominent role. She actually has third billing. I think a lot of people assumed
11:01 she was going to be almost entirely cut out, or reduced to a borderline cameo, like Margot Kidder
11:07 in Superman 3, or Kelly Marie Tran in The Rise of Skywalker. She's not given that treatment here.
11:14 She's in all of the movie, or at least most of it. She does largely sit out the film's second act,
11:21 and the story isn't focused upon her character as much as it was in the first movie, but that's
11:26 largely because it is just going in a different direction. But Heard comes back for the third act,
11:32 and she's very much involved with the action. In fact, that's actually the weird thing about
11:37 Mirror in this movie, in that I do think she has noticeably less dialogue than she did in the first
11:44 movie, and largely the character exists in action sequences, and saves Aquaman at several points in
11:51 ways that cannot be removed. It feels like Heard has had her dialogue cut on occasion. There's
11:57 moments where Heard is present in scenes, but she doesn't speak, and sometimes that can be a little
12:04 bit distracting. I don't know if that was any conscious effort on anyone's part, but it's just
12:09 a little bit odd. Although I do think that in general, there is a bit of a reduced focus on
12:14 the women. Nicole Kidman returns as the former Queen, but she's only in a handful of scenes,
12:19 and sits out the big finale, and it does feel like Kidman's largely here because of contractual
12:25 obligation. Missing in action entirely is Willem Dafoe. There's not even a line of dialogue
12:30 acknowledging his absence, he's just simply not there this time. Although, as much as I love
12:36 Willem Dafoe, I don't think he really added very much to the first movie, and certainly that's
12:41 clear because I didn't really feel his absence at all, especially because what seemed to be Israel
12:47 has been given to Dolph Lundgren returning as one of the Kings of the underwater kingdoms,
12:53 and I've got to admit, I'm a sucker for Dolph Lundgren getting a bit more to do. It's always
12:58 fun to see him in ridiculous red long hair, and he seems to be enjoying getting a prominent role
13:04 in a big blockbuster that isn't named The Expendables. And Yahya Abdul-Mateen II also
13:09 returns as Black Manta, finally getting the payoff to his role in the earlier movie, being a stand-up
13:15 to the main villain in this one. And Abdul-Mateen does provide a very intense performance. He has
13:21 a lot of presence in the role, certainly, but it seems like it's trying to compensate for the fact
13:26 that the writing for Manta is very one-dimensional. In case you forgot, Manta wants revenge on
13:34 Aquaman for the death of his father, and he will burn the world down if he thinks that that will
13:40 get to him personally. He acquires the Black Trident, and clearly they wanted to try and do
13:46 something interesting here in that the Trident is corrupting him and taking him down this even
13:52 more terrible path where he will just commit genocide just as a way of getting back for the
13:59 death of his father. But there's not a lot of nuance to the role. The idea that the Trident's
14:05 corrupting him, he's already so absolute in his desire to hurt Aquaman and find retribution that
14:13 really, it doesn't feel like he changes over the course of the film. It doesn't feel like it's
14:18 making him do anything that he wouldn't already be doing in the first place. His best scenes are
14:23 largely when he has to interact with Randall Park as a scientist working for him, who gets
14:28 increasingly uneasy about that proposition and starts to become a turncoat. And Park largely
14:35 provides a bit of welcome comic relief in these scenes, but also someone for actually him to bounce
14:42 off of a lot of the time. You know, having that lighter character going up against someone that is
14:47 so extreme in their beliefs, that actually makes him a little bit more threatening and scary.
14:54 That works. Unfortunately, a lot of the time he just feels like a generic villain. He's not really
15:00 given enough nuance in his characterization for this to really work. But for me, the best part
15:06 of the movie was another returning cast member, and that's Patrick Wilson as Arthur's brother,
15:11 Orm, who you might recall was the big bad guy in the last Aquaman that he had to fight for the
15:16 throne. Here, he has to break him out of prison and work alongside him, and effectively the middle
15:21 act becomes a buddy comedy between the two. Wilson has long been Wan's good luck charm. They've worked
15:28 together numerous times on the Insidious and Conjuring movies. It feels like they're very much
15:33 on the same wavelength. And so, Wilson is effectively a straight man to Momoa, but also
15:40 has a kind of deadpan humor, especially in kind of his physicality. A recurring gag is the fact
15:46 that Orm, because he's lived his life entirely underwater, he's not really familiar with the
15:52 surface world or how to actually interact with it. There's a very physical gag where Wilson spends a
15:59 lot of his early scenes running around with his arms just bolt straight until it's corrected. It's
16:06 such a funny run, and that's the kind of thing that Wilson just does. Just completely deadpan,
16:12 and it works so well opposite Momoa. One of the complaints I had about the earlier movie
16:18 is that Hood and Momoa didn't really work very well together in the middle section of that movie.
16:25 Their chemistry was a little bit lacking, whereas Wilson and Momoa, on the other hand, have a great
16:32 comic timing between each other. And this comparative Broly dynamic is very derivative when it comes to
16:38 comic book movies, so much so the movie even points it out for you. At one point, Aquaman actually
16:44 calls him Loki, jokingly, acknowledging the fact this is blatantly trying to replicate the dynamic
16:49 between Thor and Loki in those movies. And it is rather striking how much this reminded me of
16:55 Thor The Dark World. Again, not a very flattering comparison, considering that was largely considered
17:01 one of the weaker MCU entries, or at least it was before this year and Quantumania came out.
17:07 But even so, I do think that if you are going to blatantly try and emulate something, you could do
17:14 far worse than trying to copy the dynamic between Hemsworth and Hiddleston in those movies. And I
17:19 think that Momoa and Wilson are up to the task. They work together really well, and humor is one
17:26 of the great strengths of Aquaman. They are genuinely funny together, especially in scenes
17:32 where Momoa is trying to dupe him into eating cockroaches. That dynamic elevates the movie
17:39 when it threatens to become a completely generic comic book exercise. But it also reveals how much
17:45 these superhero movies are starting to eat their own tail. It is very much feeling like something
17:51 that we've seen numerous times before, and Aquaman doesn't really bring a lot of its own ideas to the
17:57 table. If there is a disappointment here, it's the action sequences, which should be one of the
18:02 things that sets a superhero movie apart, and was one of the big strengths of the earlier movie.
18:07 Aquaman 2's action set pieces are well orchestrated and perfectly fine on their own terms,
18:13 they're just not very memorable. I feel like Wan has fallen prey to the sequel curse in these
18:19 trying to outdo himself. He makes them bigger and more bombastic, throws explosions across the
18:25 screen, more characters, more fighting, and it just ends up making them feel clustered. And worse,
18:32 I feel like some of the action sequences are overextended, there's too much focus on them,
18:37 to the point where they start becoming repetitive. There's a middle act set piece where Patrick
18:42 Wilson gets blasted four times over the course of that sequence. That's too many times to keep
18:48 knocking that character out of the action like that. It makes it feel like we're in a Groundhog
18:53 Day loop. I think what's missing here is a sense of ambition. You think back to the first movie
18:58 and that big fight scene in Sicily, which was largely staged in a continuous free-flowing shot,
19:04 which obviously was stitched together from several takes, but even so, that was a really dynamic use
19:11 of the camera on Wan's part, and it made that sequence exceptionally distinctive and memorable.
19:18 There's nothing really like that in Lost Kingdom. The action set pieces feel more perfunctory this
19:25 time out. Wan isn't really doing much with the camera that's especially memorable. It feels like
19:31 the inspiration behind the first movie has kind of been lost. The typical sequel thing of trying
19:37 to recapture the magic, but not quite getting there. So yes, it does have a lot of bang for
19:44 your buck, but it feels emptier and less creative. And while it doesn't look like a complete hat
19:50 job like the 2016 Suicide Squad movie did, it does feel like occasionally it has had a little bit of
19:57 too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to the editing. There might have been some post-production
20:02 tampering, especially to bring the running time down to two hours, given that it is a little bit
20:07 shorter than the first movie. There are occasionally points where it seems a little bit
20:12 jumpy in the third act of the movie. They're waiting for the army to fight them and then
20:16 suddenly they're there in the space of a couple of seconds. Things like that. There's also a couple
20:21 of moments that clearly betray it. They backtracked on certain decisions, the most obvious of which
20:26 is when a character is attacked by Black Manta near the end of the film that clearly was meant
20:32 to be fatal. They clearly intend to kill the character off in that moment as a shock to the
20:37 audience and then decide against it and added in an ADR line from Manta saying "I'm leaving you
20:44 alive so Acro Man can watch you die" and then when the other characters find this person there's some
20:51 really clumsy editing, especially a jarring slow motion shot that clearly wasn't intended to be,
20:58 to obviously cover up the fact that we were meant to find this character dead in that moment and
21:04 then obviously the subsequent scenes are a reshoot and you get these ADR lines just to confirm that
21:10 and you go "his condition has stabilized, I can see his parachute, he's okay". It's that kind of stuff.
21:17 I had fun with Acro Man 2. I think it's largely consistent with the earlier film but it's also
21:22 forgettable. It's very emblematic of superhero films at this point in time. Big, expensive,
21:28 with sometimes questionable CGI and strangely disposable. In some ways it feels like it's
21:35 missed its moment. The original Acro Man came out in 2018 and that's half a decade ago now. A lot
21:43 has passed in that time and I know the delay wasn't entirely its own fault. There were
21:49 circumstances, we're very aware of that, but even so it arrives at a point in time where audiences'
21:56 interest in superhero films is starting to wane. Even the MCU is starting to show signs of
22:03 vulnerability. It's all looking a bit precarious and Lost Kingdom isn't going to turn the tide.
22:09 If you are a fan of the character who probably isn't going to be immediately rebooted into the
22:14 DC Universe anyway, at least you've got a pair of perfectly respectable and entertaining movies
22:20 and it doesn't end the DC Cinematic Universe on an embarrassing note. And that's pretty much all
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