Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Back in June, my write-up of The Flash turned out more sanguine than I had been expecting, partly because the review turned into an elegy for the DCEU. But I had given that sentiment so much space on the page because I had almost entirely forgotten that the dying franchise still had two more in the offing: Blue Beetle (which I could not finish, even at no additional cost on Max) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, buried so far in the oubliette of the WB release slate that audiences nigh well forgot it existed. (A third film, Batgirl, was obliterated in exchange for a tax write-off.)
 
Since James Gunn announced his takeover of the DC cinematic universe in January 2023, DC and WB released four more movies in what Gunn had already announced to be a dead franchise. It turns out that audiences gave up, with diminishing box office returns for Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle, before this latest Aquaman movie ends the series not with a bang but with a paint-by-numbers whimper, a superhero outing that might have been the best superhero movie of the year, had it been released in 2004.
 
Torn between his duties as a land-dwelling father and as regent of Atlantis, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is bristling under the mantle of Aquaman, even as Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) rallies his forces for revenge against the hero who killed his father. His deep-sea excursions have uncovered the Black Trident, an ancient relic connected to unspeakable evil beneath the waves, and only Aquaman’s imprisoned brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) knows where to find him.
 
After some blunt narration that insists vociferously that yes, Aquaman is cool, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom begins with Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” and absolutely zero sense of irony about deploying what might be one of the most overplayed songs in movie history. (Never mind the fact that Aquaman fought an entirely different Steppenwolf in Justice League.) It’s as though the film has forgotten that this Aquaman made more than a billion dollars last time around, and we certainly don’t need to be bludgeoned with insistences that Arthur isn’t a joke. Insincere postmodernism is a deadly sin for the superhero genre, but here the overeager earnestness comes off as a little desperate. 
 
One senses throughout that the corporate editors have been overgenerous with their pruning shears, taking out anything that isn’t rocketing toward the next action setpiece. Case in point, Amber Heard’s Mera, who has been virtually excised from a movie that ought to be about her son, the newborn prince of Atlantis. The first film had a particularly arresting sequence in which Mera used her aquatic powers to weaponize a wine cellar; here, Mera is relegated to waterbending her son’s urine into Aquaman’s open mouth. Her own legal troubles notwithstanding, every time Heard reappears on screen, one has nearly forgotten how her character fits into the plot, and it almost seems like Dolph Lundgren (as her father, King Nereus) has been skinned into the film in her stead. Similarly, it’s been documented that director James Wan shot footage of Ben Affleck’s Batman, then of Michael Keaton’s Batman, only to exclude them both from the final cut, supposedly so as not to confuse audiences. (Never mind that audiences got no fewer than three Batmen and two Wonder Woman cameos this year alone.)
 
Indeed, the only confusion on the part of the audience is why a decade’s worth of movies is ending here, limping toward an untimely grave. After sixteen movies (of which, maybe seven were good-to-great), I stand stymied at how badly the studio bungled things, beginning with the equally overedited Batman v Superman and spiraling from there. Although given the fact that this is the same superhero franchise that released a literal exquisite corpse in the form of Joss Whedon’s nightmarish Justice League, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that its subsequent releases have come in uneven fits and starts.
 
Of those false starts, James Wan’s work felt the closest to the Zack Snyder aesthetic while still remaining its own thing. Wan had a knack for deep and brisk world-building, indulging in those Snyderesque slow-motion shots to turn the cinematic frame into a comic book panel. But between the editorial excisions and the draconian exclusion of all things Snyderverse (including an off-camera death that feels both capricious and superfluous), it is hard to see some of that Wan charm. Where the first Aquaman felt fresh and energetic, Lost Kingdom is only serviceable if almost entirely forgettable. We do feel the unique Aquaman flair with the unapologetic inclusion of seahorse Storm, cephalopod Topo, and a piratical hideout that feels like both Jabba’s Palace and the Mos Eisley Cantina all at once. Ditto the downright gonzo casting choices that give us no less than Martin Short and John Rhys-Davies as grotesque fish monsters.
 
Meanwhile, Momoa seems to be phoning it in, playing himself as much as anything. He’s spent about half of the meager press tour (without so much as a red carpet premiere, in case you hadn’t noticed) conceding that this is very probably his last outing as Aquaman, imploring all the while for someone, anyone, to cast him in James Gunn’s new utopia. Nicole Kidman reappears, contractually obligated and about as enthusiastic as that sentence implies; her appearance in the AMC Theatres promo reel is more expressive, more emotional than her lifeless Queen Atlanna. Patrick Wilson is doing a better job than this movie deserves, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen is underserved by a revenge plot that gets derailed by demonic possession. (His Black Manta, though, still wins a best-in-show prize for a costume design straight out of the comic book pages.)
 
Even at two hours and change, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels a little too long for its own good. Its action sequences are efficient and entertaining enough, colorful without the typical CGI dark muddle to obscure things. Yet the superhero genre has come so far that Lost Kingdom feels almost like a throwback; if this were the only superhero movie this year, it might have felt sweeter. As it stands, I lost count of how many times the film dramatically cuts to black, how often the plot spun its wheels to introduce some exposition via narration-heavy flashback, and how frequently urine ends up in Jason Momoa’s mouth. (I stopped at three.) At times the film feels like it is blissfully unaware that it is the ostensible swan song for the DCEU.
 
Then again, at other turns, the film seems hyper-aware that it is the finale for a divisive, often unpopular decade of DC movies that began under the auspices of one idiosyncratic auteur, dethroned and given a second chance while the franchise fell down around us. Staggering toward an inevitable reboot, the film launches this motivational speech at its hero, who might seem to be standing in for Zack Snyder as the torch passes from one king to the next:

You’re not as bad at this as you think. The people of Atlantis are lucky to have you. You were everything I was not. You do the right thing when doing the wrong thing is much easier. You’re willing to ask for help, even from your worst enemy. I know it may not feel like you know what you’re doing sometimes, but keep trusting your instincts. If you lead, Atlantis will follow.

 

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi violence and some language.” Directed by James Wan. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, James Wan, Jason Momoa, and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Randall Park, Dolph Lundgren, Temeura Morrison, Martin Short, and Nicole Kidman.

Aquaman (2018)

I don’t think any of us could have expected that we’d get an Aquaman movie before, say, The Flash or another of DC’s heavy-hitters that hasn’t labored under decades of “talks to fish” jokes. (Thank credited writer Geoff Johns, who spent years recently doing yeoman’s work to boost the profile of Aquaman comics after the character languished following Peter David’s seminal 1990s run.) But here we are, in the wake of a disappointingly passable Justice League and a DC cinematic universe that looks to be more standalone than unified – which is actually smart. Instead of chasing the Marvel method, DC appears to be organizing its universe around its unique and resonant characters, even if they (Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Aquaman) aren’t the ones you’d expect. 

Enter, then, Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, rightful heir to the Atlantean throne currently held by his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who wants to unite the seven kingdoms of the sea in an offensive against the surface world. Drafted into the conflict by princess Mera (Amber Heard) and royal advisor Vulko (Willem Dafoe), the man who would be Aquaman sets off on a quest to reclaim his birthright and his destiny.

As a piece of big-screen spectacle – placed at Christmastime, it feels a bit out of place, but so too does its land-and-sea protagonist – Aquaman is a real popcorn movie. Looking like an underwater Tron: Legacy, with a narrative that feels like a cross between Thor and Indiana Jones (and a Rupert Gregson-Williams score that’s part Vangelis, part Henry Jackman, and part Junkie XL), there is something contagious about Aquaman’s gee-whiz enthusiasm for bright lights, big setpieces, and wild monstrous creatures. From merpeople to colossal crabs, from talking krakens to zombie fishmen, director James Wan is clearly having a ball inventing and adapting the daftest denizens of the deep. Moreover, the film carries with it a sense that any mad adventure could be just around the corner – par for the course are a tidal wave or jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Don’t worry too much, the film seems to say; just have fun.

And for the most part, Aquaman is quite fun, thanks in large part to Momoa’s seafaring swagger. When we last saw him in Justice League, he was the surfer bro monarch, howling with glee and cackling “My man!” while spearing parademons. Here he’s lost none of that cockiness, overconfident and scrapping for a fight. His headstrong nature is countered by Amber Heard’s steady Mera, always cautious and deductive but a strong hand in a fight as she defies her father (Dolph Lundrgren, astride a seahorse) and his alliance with Orm.

Poor Heard, though, is saddled with scores of expositional dialogue, as are most of the characters in the film. Atlantis and its rival kingdoms are dense in mythology, and there’s a lot of ground/water to cover, but the film does pack in a lot, including Aquaman’s three biggest villains. On that count, despite the film threatening to buckle under its own weight, it is possibly the most straight-faced comics-accurate superhero film in recent memory, with Mera, Orm, and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) looking as if they’ve stepped directly off the printed page without any self-conscious jokes. In fact, it’s easy to overlook a lot of the film’s flaws – choppy exposition, cartoonish filters on the visuals and the audio – because of how earnestly it emulates its source material; when Orm puts on that Ocean Master helmet, it’s like looking into the eyes of an Ivan Reis page. Indeed, from Zack Snyder we sense that James Wan has inherited that widescreen approach to the cinematic frame as a comic book panel, slowing down key action beats to give us a fist-pumping rah-rah pose before revving back up.

There are moments in Aquaman that are difficult to engage, moments that take you out of the film because of how ludic and unserious it can be; for me, it was the moments when some of the dialogue, already leaden with exposition, was muffled by an underwater filter that sounds like a kid in a bathtub (Tom Hardy, eat your heart out). But the film is buoyed by its relentless exuberance and my own predisposition to like this sort of movie when it doesn’t step grotesquely out of line. Between a comics-accurate Black Manta and Nicole Kidman wearing a sequined amphibious skeleton, the geeks have well and truly won.

Aquaman is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.” Directed by James Wan. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall, Geoff Johns, and James Wan. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, and Nicole Kidman.

Monday at the Movies - April 14, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two spooky offerings on tap.  Coincidentally, both feature a character named Annabelle/Annabel – one a creepy doll, the other Jessica Chastain.

The Conjuring (2013) – Though the words “from the director of Saw” might give viewers pause, the truth is that James Wan actually turns in the strongest work of his career with this retro-exorcist horror film that both unsettles and goes for the full jump moment.  Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor play a married couple who move into a seemingly haunted house; as the supernatural occurrences grow more dire, they contact paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) to banish the malicious spirits possessing their home.  Usually typecast as milquetoast, Wilson musters up instead a stalwart and defensive skeptic pushed beyond his expertise.  Farmiga, who’s doing career-best work over on AMC’s Bates Motel as Norman’s loopy mother, plays a very convincing empathy who connects with the demonic spirit in frightening ways where the disquiet is superbly evident on her face.  Fortunately, The Conjuring suffers from none of the overacting or hacky clichés that often plague horror films; while the film does venture into moments we’ve seen before, the execution really sticks the landing in terms of genuinely unnerving the audience.  I’ll be honest and disclose that the exorcism subgenre of horror freaks me out more than most (second only, perhaps, to home invasion narratives), and the success of The Conjuring is that it’s immersive in the way of the best horror films – that is, it successfully eclipses your surroundings to the point where you’ll forget there’s a real world outside the film, allowing the mounting dread and inevitable punctuations of fright to pervade into your soul.  While I’m not sure that lightning can strike twice in these cases, I’ll be in line for The Conjuring 2 (2015).

Mama (2013) – Hitchcock famously said that the true terror is in the anticipation and not in the bang; by his logic, Mama is a highly successful horror film, but the rest of us will likely find ourselves disappointed by the way Mama handles “the bang” in the last twenty or so minutes of the film.  Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau star as the adoptive parents of two girls found in a feral state five years after their father abducted them, though it quickly becomes apparent that the girls’ invisible friend “Mama” has sinister intentions for the new parents.  Where The Conjuring crafted a compelling climactic possession sequence, Mama fails maintain its momentum at its narrative summit, in part because it discloses too much about the supernatural goings-on.  Mama is at its best when the spidery phantoms are unexplained, when the film’s visual language tells us that something is viciously awry (as in one brilliantly directed moment depicting what seems to be the girls at play – until we realize that one of the figures in the playroom isn’t human).  I even forgive the film its disclosure of who/what Mama really is, though what it does with that reveal leads it into some bizarre territory that takes a hard left from deft horror into something more at home in a Guillermo del Toro fantasy tale.  Chastain is gifted as Annabel, playing against type as a wannabe punk rocker; she’s suitably distressed by the haunting happenings, and her burgeoning affection for the girls is engaging.  But Mama forsakes its scarier moments when it sprints toward a conclusion that conforms to its own internal logic but is, beyond the borders of the film, likely to leave audiences asking, “Whaaa?”

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The A-Team (2010)

Even though I have never watched a single episode of the television show on which it's based, I knew I wanted to see The A-Team once I saw the trailer, in which Bradley Cooper fires the machine gun turret on a tank as it plummets in midair. And the good news is that the movie is filled with moments like that, unapologetically and gleefully screaming "Summer popcorn movie!"

Liam Neeson stars as Hannibal Smith, leader of an alpha unit - or A-team - that's regarded as the best covert ops team in the armed forces. Cooper plays Face, the beauty to Hannibal's brains, every bit the ladies' man; Quinton Jackson plays B.A., the warrior/pacifist role made popular by (or which popularized, if you want to go chicken-v.-egg) Mr. T; and Sharlto Copley, late of District 9, plays the borderline-cuckoo pilot Murdock. After a mission in Iraq goes awry and with the aid of the CIA's secretive Mr. Lynch (Patrick Wilson), the A-team turns fugitive in an attempt to recover a stolen MacGuffin while creatively evading recapture at the hands of Face's former flame Charisa Sosa (Jessica Biel).

In terms of action, director Joe Carnahan gets points for imagination with his management of some of the most inventive action sequences on screen in recent years. In truth, the action is the real star of the movie: character development is negligible (though it exists, in small doses) and plot twists are present (though you'll probably see most of them coming), but it's the visuals that will make your eyes pop. If you've ever wanted to see a flying tank or a man parachute into a moving helicopter, this is the summer picture for you.

As for the acting, it fits well into the "action film" stock tropes, but the fact that the cast is made up of very talented people brings this film in above the level of "cliche." Though he's not quite as good as in Taken (review coming soon) or Love Actually, Neeson is endearing as always, showing off his sense of humor and ennabling us to have as much fun as he is; Cooper too is just as fun, having made a satisfying transformation from the slightly irritating Will Tippin on Alias to the genial star of gutbusters like The Hangover. Jackson and Copley are supporting characters in the classic tradition, not overbearing but still entertaining; my one gripe (aside from the broad strokes with which B.A. is painted, which I imagine is faithful to the spirit of the show) is that Copley's thick South African dialect slips through in a few moments, distracting from his otherwise jolly turn. And Wilson and Biel are just fine in their roles; Wilson is the stronger of the two, stepping solidly out of the schleppy shoes he normally fills for this slick and cagey part, while Biel's acting chops are overshadowed by how pretty she is (which is really the only requirement given to female co-leads in an action movie - attractiveness).

So if there's a word that encapsulates my take on The A-Team, it's "fun." It may not be credible or particularly layered, but The A-Team is a lot of fun. And that, first and foremost, is all I ask of a movie - that it be entertaining, that I feel satisfied on a gut level if not on a creative level. Fortunately, what this movie lacks in narrative imagination, it makes up for in how far it pushes the envelope of originality. There are numerous moments in the film that caused me to think to myself, "I've never seen that before," and that alone is worth the price of admission. If the action sequences were more conventional, in the vein of Michael Bay explosion-centric CGI-fests, perhaps this would only be a so-so movie. But what might have been an average action vehicle has a backbone which makes it stand up straight and be better than it ought to have been. This, in a way, is what The Losers should have been.

The A-Team isn't one of the greatest films of all time - nor does it pretend to be. What it is- and what it is successfully - is a bona fide popcorn flick that doesn't shortchange the audience on pure
visceral entertainment.

Like all good summer popcorn blockbusters, The A-Team is rated PG-13, this time "for intense sequences of action and violence throughout, language and smoking." Basically, stuff blows up, people get shot, mild profanity (no F-bombs) gets issued, and Liam Neeson smokes a cigar.

Watchmen (2009) [Director's Cut]

Cinema King's journal - July 21, 2009. Tonight a comedian died on Blu-Ray. And Zack Snyder's ambitious adaptation of Alan Moore's sacred graphic novel has never looked - or downright been - this good before.

If there's one thing comics fans can agree on, it's that Moore's 1985-6 classic (illustrated lovingly by Dave Gibbons) is almost gospel as far as funny books are concerned. If there's a second thing we (because I'm one of you) can all agree on, it's that the film adaptation - from the "visionary" director of 3oo (itself a filmed version of Frank Miller's Spartan text) is highly divisive; you love it, or you hate it, but there's no middle ground. Of all the people I know who saw the film and read the book, I'm the only one who liked it. (Uninitiated folk who hadn't read the book, like my father, liked the film, too.) With the director's cut released on DVD now, I'm pleased to say that I like Watchmen a little bit more now.

For those who haven't read Moore's seminal book (and, really, you should), Watchmen takes place in a dystopian 1985 where Nixon is still president, where America won the Vietnam War, and where superheroes existed but have been forced to retire. The film begins with the murder of one of those retired masked avengers, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, pitch-perfect at laughing in the face of life's absurd joke). Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, who I'd like to see get an Oscar nod for his spectacular performance), the last vigilante, believes there's a conspiracy afoot and tries to warn Night Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), and Dr. Manhattan (a CGI'd Billy Crudup, who keeps his Mastercard voice), who initially doubt his theory. An assassination attempt on Adrian "Ozymandias" Veidt (Matthew Goode) and worsening tensions at home and in the heating-up Cold War quickly change the heroes' perspectives, forcing some out of retirement and to a cataclysmic, now-classic climax.

It's impossible to talk about the film as if the director's cut didn't exist, because this is the Watchmen you should see. Though it runs three hours long, the director's cut patches up the flaws of the theatrical release - wooden acting, poor pacing, and a streamlined yet loosey-goosily-loyal treatment of the source material - even if it doesn't restore Moore's fishy ending (it's a pun, not a knock on the man from Northampton). Akerman didn't strike me as particularly solid in the theatrical cut, but she's at worst serviceable and at best complex in the new version. Crudup brings plenty of emotional depth to the seemingly withdrawn Manhattan, Wilson is his standard schleppy self (a perfect fit for Dan Dreiberg, the ultimate schmuck), and Goode - though he's not given much in the film to work with - does a more than decent job of wrestling with his great powers and his greater responsibility to the planet.

The stand-out in the cast - Morgan aside - is Haley, who is so far 2009's Heath Ledger as far as outstanding performances go. Haley completely becomes Rorschach, inhabiting everything from his posture to his gravelly voiceover - and, after Adaptation., anyone who can make me enjoy narration and isn't named Morgan Freeman is doing a lot of heavy lifting. (Of course, to remove the iconic narration from the source material would here be criminal, especially when it contains such fanboy-giddy lines like, "The city screams like an abbatoir full of retarded children.") Haley does a great job with the mask on, but once the inkblot face is removed he unleashes a range of facial twitches and verbal tics that will probably get snubbed by the snooty Academy.

The director's cut is a more loyal adaptation of Moore's work (again, ending notwithstanding), reintegrating a lot of the book's smaller moments and taking the time to build an entirely new world. Extended scenes with Nixon (though the actor portraying Tricky Dick isn't as talented as Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon) as well as amped-up flashbacks (especially Akerman's) and extended conversations (as with Dr. Malcolm Long) create the sense that this three hour epic is just that - a huge-in-scope undertaking. What's most welcome in the 24 new minutes of footage is some more material with Stephen McHattie's Hollis "Nite Owl I" Mason, whose life - and death - are finally given the sadly nostalgic treatment the book afforded him; with this comes more Carla Gugino, too, as Silk Spectre's fame-crazed dramatic stage mom, who is less compelling and perhaps a bit too showy. At three hours, the film can now relax and breathe for a second (the theatrical cut suffered a bit from over-exposition - a necessary evil with such weighty material - while the original climax seemed rushed and frenetic), giving fanboys and newcomers alike the chance to really watch the Watchmen.

And by the end, you'll forget all about that dang squid, anyway.



Watchmen is rated "R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language." The director's cut is slightly grittier, but both edits feature gory close-ups of extreme violence, including vaporizations of people, street fights, and the hacking and sawing of several gory body parts. While Dr. Manhattan is almost exclusively naked (and blue - we see everything), other sexual content includes one sex scene with nudity and one abortive one without, as well as discussion of adultery, rape (an attempted rape is shown), erectile dysfunction (treated humorously), and sex as placation. Language consists of several F-bombs tossed around lightly.

Note: the director's cut includes neither Tales of the Black Freighter nor Under the Hood. These are still available separately, though a flyer inside the DVD case teases of an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" 5-disc set coming in December, which will contain both side-features. For my money, though, the film is stronger with these as separate bonus features than as part of the film proper, and so I recommend eschewing the 5-disc splurge set and sticking with two separate discs.

Trailer Park: Watchmen (2009)

Get ready. If you thought my anticipation for The Dark Knight was overwhelming, take a look at this comic book adaptation. Zack Snyder attempts to do the impossible - adapt Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons's magnum opus Watchmen - and he seems to be doing a pretty good job of it so far. This is twice I've been wrong about comic book movies. First Heath Ledger knocks it out of the park with a performance I didn't know he had in him, and now "the visionary director of 300" seems to have a strong handle on this adaptation.

What's spectacular about this trailer is it appeals to both the diehard Watchmen fans - who are sure to marvel at Snyder's almost photorealistic rendering of panel-by-panel shots from the original maxiseries - and those new to the series that changed comicdom forever. Newbies, I challenge you not to marvel at the three Doctor Manhattans or feel a cold shiver run up your spine when Rorschach says that "I'll whisper... 'No.'"

What the trailer doesn't tell you is that Watchmen is landing on IMAX screens as well. Take another look at those special effects and tell me it won't be glorious to see Archie (the owlship) take flight or the clock structure on Mars rise out of the red dust - all on the big screen. What the trailer also doesn't do is give a semblance of plot to the movie. But that's the function of a teaser. What this one does - and does well - is generate interest in the movie. How else would you explain a skyrocketing of graphic novel sales on Amazon?

Who watches the watchmen? Anyone who's interested can, on March 6, 2009. 3-6-09.