Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is brimming with a child-like sense of play that so many blockbusters lack. More than any other director on the DC side, few have captured the fantastical like James Wan. With the Captain Nemo-like submarines and Lovecraftian lost cities of the undead, Aquaman 2 transports us to a world of imagination and breathless wonder.
Wan and his cameraman, Don Burgess, so adroitly tell the story visually that David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s script feels redundant. It doesn’t help that the dialogue sometimes feels clunky and that the actors seem uncomfortable speaking the lines. But then Wan and Burgess show us some underwater vistas brimming with life and imagination, expanding Aquaman’s world, I could give a crap about how the script stumbles over itself, trying to tie it all together.
I’d argue that Wan’s directing is so masterful that visually, the story is moving and engrossing enough that they could have cut much of the dialogue and the movie would have been improved. Wan and Burgess tell the story with such a keen eye that it works best as a silent film with Rupert Gregoson-Williams’ pulse-quickening score throbbing underneath.
Aquaman is a wrassler straitjacketed by the constraints of tradition and Atlantian bureaucracy. Aquaman 2 sees him paired with Patrick Wilson’s Orm as they essentially do a buddy cop movie underwater trying to find out what’s going on with Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a stroke of B-movie genius in a two-hundred million dollar picture. Plus, there’s way more Dolph Lundgren than I expected, which is always a bonus.
Clunky script be damned, Aquaman 2 is one of the best-looking comic-book movies in ages. Even in IMAX and in 3D, I felt myself gasping in delight, and if a movie can look good in 3D, then it must be stunning in 2D. Aquaman 2 harkens back to when we used to make fantasy movies regularly.
Watching Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and his Queen, Mera (Amber Heard), debate the high council of the whosits, it felt like Doug McClure or Brendan Fraser might show up at any moment. A gee-whiz, whiz-bang vibe emanates from almost every second of Wan and Burgess’s frames. In other words, it’s an Aquaman movie that isn’t ashamed that it’s an Aquaman movie.
One of the highlights is when Wilson’s Orm and Momoa’s Aquaman have to visit an Atlantean version of Jabba-the Hut, Kingfish (voiced by Marin Short). The scene plays out almost rotely, but the spectacle distracts enough from the script’s pedantry. The scene ends as all Aquaman scenes must, with a rousing action set piece that makes us forgive any minor quibbles about the plot or corny dialogue.
Then again, I quite like corny if done earnestly.
Jonson-McGoldbick’s script gives Wan plenty of space to make Aquaman 2 feel like a fantasy epic. With the always charismatic Abdul-Mateen returning as Black Manta and Randall Park as the scientist super keen on discovering Atlantis, Stephen Shin, we have a nice mixture of evil villains, bad guys, and bad guys who are not really bad guys. Toss in a few possessions, a cursed trident, a blood feud, and some drama carrying over from the first Aquaman film, and Aquaman 2 has a lot of plot chum to wade through. To say nothing of Wan and McGoldbrick’s use of climate change as a big obstacle our heroes must overcome.
Wan’s good luck charm, Patrick Wilson, returns as Orm and turns in the best performance next to Abdul-Mateen. Both men do an excellent job of showing their interior conflict play across their faces.
Orm and Aquaman are forced to work together and overcome their differences; all the while, Orm begins to see the errors of his ways. Wan includes a scene in which a bony and hairy Orm falls into some water and emerges as a buff version of Patrick Wilson in a celery-padded suit to make him look ripped and buff. It’s a nice little nod to the audience from Wan to chill; no need to take this so damn seriously all the time.
A bulk of the charm of Aquaman and Aquaman 2 is Momoa. Momoa plays Aquaman as a well-meaning himbo, led more by his heart and a code of righteousness, who would rather get into a bar fight than rule a kingdom. Momoa’s Aquaman is different from the other heroes in that he’s happily married, both his parents, Atlanna and his lighthouse keeper father Tom (Temurra Morrison), are alive and happily married, and he has a kid now, Junior.
Wan’s Aquaman is like the Columbo of superheroes. Happy, well-adjusted, usually disheveled, sees the good in everyone, happy life, and happy wife, has a solid moral code, a proud family man, and likes a Guniess now and then, and constantly underestimated by the bad guys.
Junior might be the worst name for a child I’ve heard in a comic-book movie. Yet, simultaneously, it provides no end of amusement as it requires everyone from Momoa to Kidman to scream out “Junior” in a tone usually reserved for Greek tragedies. Then again, it’s how the epic crashes into a WWE steel cage match is what makes the Aquaman movies so damn enjoyable.
Meanwhile, Heard looks like she stepped out of a Jim Lee comic. Heard’s suit may defy physics, even by Aquaman standards, but Burgess’s camera never feels as if it’s leering. Nonetheless, both Heard and Kidman get to kick ass and take names, and never in a sort of “Let’s give the ladies a turn” way that some films try to do. One of the things I like about Aquaman 2 is how it’s a group effort. Everyone pitches in and plays a part.
The message at the end brought a tear to my eye, if for no other reason because of its naked optimism. It’s refreshing to see a superhero movie about a hero wanting to unite two worlds rather than merely save the galaxy or stop a genocidal Grimace. Aquaman wants to save the world, but throughout the movie, he desperately wants to work with the surface dwellers, unite Atlantis with the outside world, and do something. It’s a pipe dream, but damn it all, it’s a nice pipe dream.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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