"Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom", 2023

Underwater bros: review of the movie "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"

A mediocre comic book movie about brotherly love, kids and evil underwater skeletons.

After the finale of the first movie Aquaman (Jason Momoa) had time to take on several new roles: he became the father of Arthur Jr. and the king of Atlantis. If swaddle and put the baby to sleep hero is given to the hurrah, then to rule on the throne - not very much. It is necessary to delve into politics, solve territorial disputes and discuss global problems for hours. Aquaman misses the good old battles and feats.

At this moment, the Earth's temperature is rapidly increasing. It turns out that the villain from the last movie - a vengeful loser Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) - is to blame. He has acquired a powerful trident and seems to be planning to destroy the world. Only Arthur's traitorous brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) can find him - but the former king has long been imprisoned. If he is released, civil war will break out among the underwater inhabitants.

The first "Aquaman" showed one of the best results of DC comics at the global box office: with a modest budget of 150 million, the movie paid off more than 10 times. The sequel is clearly worse: almost a month blockbuster price of 200 million collected only 340. There are several reasons for this, starting with the collapse of the rental industry as a result of a protracted coronavirus epidemic and ending with the crisis of superheroics. In addition, the new studio head James Gunn has given up on old projects and plots: now he will build his universe with a young Superman and Swamp Thing - movies like "Aquaman" do not fit into his plans.

"Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom", in general, and feels like an artifact of a bygone era. Wan and the screenwriters again build the story around family values: the protagonist must become a father, learn to take responsibility for risky actions, and mend his relationship with his brother. It's also an old-fashioned road trip movie, so the plot is more like a changing series of action scenes in different locations: desert, underwater, forests, mountains and uncharted lands. Sloppily staged battles with cartoon graphics are interrupted now and then by a couple or three pranks of Arthur on his grief-stricken relative: in the climax, the hero makes Orm eat a cockroach - according to him, it is a delicacy in the human world.

Aquaman sequel reminds of an old-fashioned adventure movie. Tales of old kingdoms are interjected into the narrative now and then, mysterious tridents fall into the hands of the villains, and the army of enemy minions is literally hordes of skeletons - if it weren't for studio restrictions, Wang would have probably made them with stop-motion animation, as it was in "Jason and the Argonauts" in 1960. This naive retro aesthetic does at least something to set the sequel apart from the pale comic book movies of recent years: even in the hair-raising Hollywood cinema, there is room for unusual references and sources of inspiration.

Otherwise, "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" falls victim to the classic problem of sequels: it wants to be everything at once. Geopolitics (Arthur doesn't know how to run the country, and doesn't really want to), baddie-movie about the complicated relationship between two brothers, and even ecology - because Black Manta utilizes ancient fuel to melt the ice. In an era of comic book movie fatigue, the Aquaman sequel offers shouting, carnival and endless guffaws. 5 years ago it would have been a passable action movie, which is needed to catch your breath between new large-scale movie phases, but now it's just an underwater wonder-juice: lives in his world and does not find a place in the new reality.

This article was sponsored by S. Belfer