Welcome back my fellow Cosmic adventurers to another new mind expanding episode of your favourite location of monthly for the dissemination of information. This time around the keyboard I’m typing with a strange jubilation regarding the most unexpected of origins, the dreaded movie Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Now I can understand if you want to remove yourself from this conversation, the movie pretty much sank at the box office like a submarine made of Swiss cheese but that isn’t going to dissuade me from defending it.
Aquaman the lost Kingdom was released in 2023, is the sequel to the original 2018 Aquaman. The film marks the end of the Zach Snyder DC extended movie universe series which began with the Man of Steel back in 2013 and now hosts close to 17 individual films.
DC is now looking ahead with a new incarnation of these same characters spearheaded by James Gunn of Marvel Studio fame. These new films which star a whole new list of actors are in full scale production as I sit here typing this.
However many including myself wonder if they are perhaps moving too quickly into this new territory when the ground left behind is still relatively fertile.
One could argue that revenues from the past couple films in this series have fallen and one would be correct, pushing the producers of the franchise to evolve their strategy. truthfully it started with Wonder Woman 1984s poor performance which was a real disappointment.
Yet even with the poor box office returns I have to admit I thought the Flash had great promise and was actually entertaining despite the controversy surrounding its star Ezra Miller, and admit it, who doesn’t want to see Henry Cavill return in the red cape?
This brings us back to Aquaman and the sequel to nowhere because as it seems the franchise is now drier than Batman’s wit. This is in my opinion a lost opportunity to continue with an entertaining character that is not only well established in this version of the DCU but the fact that this sequel was better than the original.
The film produced by DC studios and Atomic Monster, it’s directed by James Wan and stars the likes of Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard and the larger than life Jason Mamoa who ironically plays the larger than life version of this character. Honestly if it wasn’t for Mamoa’s larger than life charm we would be stuck with the original version of Aquaman which hasn’t changed much since I was a kid.
So yeah I said it, I really thought this movie was better than the original and this is not saying it’s a great film, I hated the original but this one really wasn’t so bad, despite what the internet says.
If you can get past some budgetary cutbacks in the special effects department and focus upon the pure science fiction aspects which makes this film shine you have a real shot at walking away satisfied. I was really impressed with the ideas and thought that went into the design of this film, and like I said the budget probably made it difficult to fulfill many of those ideas but what is left is still passable.
It reminded me of 20,000 leagues under the sea meets Flash Gordon, bright lights and fantastic machines with crazy looking futuristic engines sparking lightning bolts, none of it made any practical sense but it made for a great subsurface spectacle of science fiction.
I mean where else can you watch a fully CGI Nicole Kidman wearing tights riding a mechanical shark, come on now that’s just rich!
Now back to my point of the DCU moving forward while prematurely leaving the established behind is something I guess we’ll have to wait and see what is going to happen in the near future.
James Gunn has cast several key roles in his upcoming ‘re-boot’ of Superman and while I would rather not travel back down the dusty roads of a Kansas teenager version of Clark Kent James Gunn is a good storyteller, it might be good?
At the same time I wouldn’t mind watching more of the pre-established versions of the Ben Afflect Batman, Cavill’s Superman or Gal Gadot as Gal Godot… Even the Ezra Flash and Mamoa Aquaman. Aquaman as it turns out, using this latest movie as an example, has more stories to tell but I guess they could tell them with another actor playing the role.
Maybe they could pursue both versions at the same time, who knows maybe they are?