Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

The first Aquaman was an awful movie. Starting this up, I saw that the reviews from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes were even worse, so I watched some other movies to give myself a buffer. Given how concerned I was, this movie was almost a pleasant surprise. It is still by no means a good movie, but it was decent enough to get what seems to be the DC movie average score, a 4.

There is a lot to dislike about this film. The same bad guy that had no purpose is now back as the main villain, sort of. He is (and looks) ridiculous, and has no personality. Randall Park’s character from the first film, who was I think an anthropologist maybe? Is now an engineering genius who, instead of trying to prove Atlantis is real, is working to destroy it. There are still so many minutes of underwater laser fights between hordes of nameless and faceless characters that are pure boredom. Dolph Lundgren is just not meant to play an underwater, Atlantean king. Aquaman making a political speech is just terribly done.

However, there are at least a few things to like. I have a newborn child, so a few jokes about Arthur’s kid landed for me. I also enjoyed most of the scenes with Orm and Arthur, even if it is just kind of a straight steal from Thor and Loki in Marvel. I wouldn’t recommend this movie, but it made a huge leap from the first to be a mediocre film. It gets a 4.