This movie is in a weird spot because we know that it doesn't count in the grand scheme of DC's future movie franchises. I guess they thought they could recoup some money, but honestly, they should have just put it on Max and called it a day. They'll bury a Batgirl movie, but let this one see the light of day? Give me a break.
We're not really told where this movie fits with his appearance in that Justice League movie. Its as if the two movies themselves are in different universes. We start off finding out that Aquaman and Mera (we'll get into her later) had a kid, Aquaman is a part time king (how does that even work?) and splits time between Atlantis and living with his pops in a lighthouse.
The family dynamics are so weird here. We know who Aquaman's mom is (Nicole Kidman) and she comes up to say hi to him and her lover every now and then, but also spends her time down in Atlantis with her new baby daddy, Dolph Lundgren. Look, I can barely be bothered to say character names, so I will just say the actors in most cases. Mera is a mom that is around sometimes and other times she's just gone. Aquaman keeps making comments about being a single father, when we just saw Mera helping out one scene before. I would argue that Amber Heard has zero chemistry with Jason Mamoa and the baby.
The movie also centers around Orn, his half brother who was imprisoned after the last movie. Confused yet? Imagine watching this movie with all the family drama I mentioned above and they don't dig into it, outside of the brother relationship. You got a ready made family drama if you wanted to go there, but this movie has zero interest in that. Let's just show cool shit.
To the movie's credit, all the fun is in the Orn/Aquaman pairing and the movie is smart to have them together as much as possible. They use the odd couple dynamic to a t. One guy is messy, the other guy is clean. One guy is buttoned up, the other guy wants to have fun. Jason Mamoa is being Jason Mamoa in this movie and when I saw he had a writing credit, I was like, "Of course he did." Unlike Amber Heard, he has chemistry with Patrick Wilson (Orn).
There are a lot of good jokes in that pairing. My personal favorite is the rare, specific detail of how Orn runs when he is on the surface. He starts the movie doing a Naruto run (look up that reference if you don't get it. This is a nerd blog, you should know already!) and when Aquaman calls him out on it after one too many times, he replies that he's used to swimming, not running on the surface world, which makes sense. It is the ONE clever thing this movie does and will do. It's a great joke. There are other jokes that they do make callbacks about, so the movie at least commits to that.
Like I said before, this movie is a mess. The special effects are very suspect. They don't match the ambition of this movie and things looked best when they weren't underwater. The plot is predictable and you know where it's going to go. Also, as much as I liked seeing Black Mantis be mostly the sole bad guy here, he's still being manipulated, so he's a mini-boss at best. At least there was no redeeming arc for him.
My final thoughts. Amber Heard. After all that went down with her and Johnny Depp, I'm surprised she's in this movie as much as she is. They clearly wrote around her character instead of just recasting it, so things just feel off in every scene she's in. I didn't think she was great in the last movie, she's not great here and it's just a weird thing where real life intervened here.
Is this movie worth a watch? Sure, for free. With friends where you can make fun of it as you watch. It's a big dumb movie that is at least more put together than the first one. It isn't trying to do four things at once.
Oh and Randall Park is in this movie being Randall Park. So if you like him, you get moments of levity. I personally like him, so it gave me stuff to watch for.
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