Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Review: A Brawny Take on Global Warming

Cast: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Writer: Jason Momoa, James Wan, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick

Director: James Wan

Runtime: 2 hours 4 minutes

Rocks are conferred a lavish amount of screentime in Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom. Our brawny King of Atlantis, and his leaner Draco Malfoy-like brother, whack, clobber and whomp their way through solidified structures which disintegrate into pebbles of coterie of sizes because of our hero’s herculean fist. In 3D, you are effusively subjected to this barrage of gravels, which register feebly, and cloy, mildly. You would think intemperately slinging lumps of sands at your aesthetic sensibilities would feel revolting —  but the film, unfortunately, floats rather glibly under the affluence of its predecessor, and is only able to squeeze out a lukewarm “ugh”. To evoke something visceral as, let's say, disgust, you need a proportionately-sized conviction.

The Ant-Shaped Global Warming Threat

Aquaman (Jason Momoa)  is now, a father, and spends a judicious length of the movie evading pee from his infant son, and then an espionage expert squid when he is on a quest to clandestinely prison-break his stepbrother from an ally nation. He wants to reveal the existence of their civilisation to the surface dwellers, and reasons that they need to combine the UN’s and Atlantis’s technology to combat global warming —  the threat is also spawning plagues underwater. But he is limited by a divided council that seems one poor public policy decision from demoting him.

On the other side of plot is our ant-headed, vengeance striving villain, David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who is back with a renewed vigour to annihilate Aquaman and co. He spouts his iniquitous persuasions: “Everyday I don’t fix my power suit, the Atlantis Man gets to live”, “Thank god for global warming, am I right?”, “First you steal your brother’s throne, and then his woman. Aquaman, shame on you.” The dialogues, written by Jason Momoa, James Wan and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick elicit a tight-lipped shrug.

Amber Heard, with a fusillade of public animosity swarming around her after the defamation trial with her ex-husband Johnny Depp, and, if rumours are true, imposing on her career, has her character, Mera, bed-ridden in the first half an hour when David Kane attacks Atlantis — he is looking for the supply of Orichalcrum, a greenhouse gas emitting substance. Her character is seen in flashes, slapping choreographically moving ocean water at her husband’s enemies at crucial junctions (after she recovers towards the end of the film).

Respite in Formula

Assessing both the David Kane threat and the climate crisis threat, Aquaman concludes that he needs to break his brother, Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson), out of the prison in a foreign nation, brazenly flouting the code of conduct as sovereign, and risking the ire of the council who seem perturbed by his progressive notions. 

The film doesn’t have the existential urgency of Marvel’s Spiderman: Across the Spider Verse (2023), or or an animated engagement with the legacy of the superhero at the centre of the film, like Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022, part of the DC elsewheres, and not DC Extended Universe). After three script revisions, it is comfortably nestled within the conventions of the genre, but twitchily within DC Extended Universe’s larger tussle with its own creative vision, also excruciatingly available to the public to lay threadbare.

Its inoffensiveness chafes. Its villain, who is neither camp, nor necessarily proficient at implementing his motives without the assistance of an ancient weapon, chafes.  Which is, not to say, it's not sunny. Between the bulked-up King of Atlantis, and his sullen, wound-up brother, the buddy-film manages to grab glimpses of buoyancy. Momoa easily wears Aquaman's endearing, soft dude-bro emanation on his sleeve. Despite the hollowed out beauty of the film, Orm and Aquaman, with their antagonistic sibling rivalry that pulls at the other's convictions, also quietly make space for it, attaching substance to an otherwise morass of debris.

Despite a few gratifying moments of bonding between the two brothers, though, the callousness of weaving a film with deficient beauty becomes apparent when one skirmishes against their instinct to let the images of the film wither from memory. All that remains, as you walk out of the theatre, is a deluge of rocks uncomfortably drubbing at your aesthetic convictions, with none of the emotional heft seeping its way in.