The wait is almost over! After Warner Bros. Discovery repeatedly pushed back the release date, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is finally heading to theaters officially on December 22, 2023. Unfortunately, top critics are not exactly loving the movie and it’s currently ranked 39% ROTTEN on Rotten Tomatoes based on 93 reviews.
Lost Kingdom was originally set for release on December 16, 2022, but was moved to a March 2023 date when Warner Bros. adjusted its release schedule due to the impacts of COVID-19 on the workload of visual effects vendors. It was further moved to its current December 22, 2023 date due to the necessity of additional post-production time, including numerous reshoots.
After failing to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences, they join forces to protect their kingdom and save the world from irreversible destruction.
Here’s what critics are saying:
Nick Schager from The Daily Beast said, “There’s no serialized-storytelling reason to be invested in James Wan’s sequel to 2018’s marine blockbuster. In fact, there’s no cause of any kind to pay attention to this lavishly hectic and cacophonous washout of a follow-up, whose plot is nonsense, visuals are garish, and performances are the wooden sort born from having talented actors pretend to be underwater and interacting with fanciful creatures on green screen sets. It’s a franchise farewell so underwhelming, nary a tear will be shed over its passing.”
Lovia Gyarkye from Hollywood Reporter had this to say, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom isn’t totally concerned with shaping a cohesive story so much as contriving situations for Arthur and Orm to bicker like children. The film seems to count on waning attention spans over its two hour run-time because as the story progresses so do questions about the narrative. Fiery power struggles are ignored and threads of seeming importance quietly abandoned. The brothers get into increasingly ridiculous situations. Some of them include imaginative renderings of ecosystems impacted by increased emissions, but most of the antics and their accompanying jokes are forgettable.”
Owen Gleiberman from Variety also panned the film, “Arthur and his comrades must journey to corrupt kingdoms and dingy mines that look like discarded James Bond sets from the ’70s. They spend most of their time fighting: face to face, spear to spindly CGI monster, trident to trident. Does the 3D heighten the action? Not especially, but the real answer is: Nothing could heighten it. The movie, with all that combat, is staged on an impressively grand scale by the returning director, James Wan, but at the same time there’s something glumly standard about it.”
Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian attested, “There is no doubt about it: where the first Aquaman movie was in enough trouble, with Jason Momoa smirking his way through the story of Aquaman’s undersea travails as if guesting on a lager ad, now we have a terrible sequel, again directed by James Wan, reportedly the final film in the DC Extended Universe. The Aquaman franchise is just flatlining, floating through the dreary depths like the kind of discarded plastic bag which is going to choke the last remaining vaquita porpoise.”
Matt Singer from ScreenCrush wasn’t a fan, “This is the way the DC Extended Universe ends. Not with a bang but with an Aquaman.”
David Ehrlich from indieWire also wasn’t impressed, “The Lost Kingdom becomes more and more formulaic as it digs into its mythos, as if the movie were caught between being its own thing and being nothing at all.”
Johnny Oleksinski from the New York Post surmised, “You can tell from every second of the sequel just how disinterested DC Studios is in this film and in the future of this character.”
David Fear from Rolling Stone said the movie is, “A tonal mess, dogged by VFX that range from “video-game cut scene” to “last-minute rush job,” complicated yet curiously thin storytelling, and endlessly aggressive rib-nudging.”
Brian Lowry from CNN.com said Lost Kingdom is, “Lacking the sense of discovery and world-building that powered the original, director James Wan settles for a sort-of misguided buddy comedy. Whatever the intent, this doesn’t feel like the answer to lift superhero movies out of their slump.”
William Bibbiani from TheWrap said, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a hacked up mess, and that’s not just the editing, but boy is it also the editing. The film tediously recycles the plot of the original, with two characters switching places and another one cut out so haphazardly that it’s genuinely embarrassing and hurts the whole film. Plus it’s an uncleaned fish tank of visual noise, with laughable dialogue and a plot that makes less sense than usual.”
Amy Nicholson from the Wall Street Journal said, “This sequel has an excuse — nay, a financial imperative! — to get even wetter and weirder. Yet, plot-wise, we’re given much of the same.”
REELated:
Of course, not everyone hated the movie, they didn’t particularly love it, but they gave it relatively “good,” if not “mid” reviews:
Alissa Wilkinson from the New York Times declared: “The movie is clever enough, and plenty scary, and there is a sufficient number of jokes to keep the whole thing from getting too self-important”
Mark Kennedy from the Associated Press tried to stay positive, “DC, which has suffered its woes with The Flash, Blue Beetle and Shazam: Fury of the Gods in 2023 — gets a chance to end the year on a high. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom might not be all that but it keeps its trident high even as the sea reclaims its hero.”
Brian Truitt from USA Today had this to say, “The movie doesn’t sink nor swim: It’s aggressively fine, floating along as a breezy-enough outing – and a brotherly one, at that – without any particularly spectacular strokes.”
Matt Zoller Seitz from RogerEbert.com observed, “This is a fun movie, but not anywhere near a great one. It lacks the go-for-broke bigness of the original, with its flagrantly melodramatic family dynamics and knowingly ludicrous spectacle (like the seahorses that whinnied and the sharks that roared). There’s a cluttered too-muchness to the production. You may get the sense that there was chaos behind the scenes, and stuff that was staged and shot with the intention of having it play out full-length had to get pulverized and reconstituted in the editing to make the totality work for audiences and exhibitors.”
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is directed by James Wan from a screenplay written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, and stars Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman alongside Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, and Nicole Kidman.
Watch the trailer here:
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