The most accurate word I can think of to describe Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom is annoying. Where the first film was hardly a masterpiece of the genre I thought it was over the top in all the right ways and because of that I actually mostly enjoyed it. This movie just doubles down on the insanity in all the worst ways and I ended up finding it borderline insufferable.
For the first 15 minutes or so I thought I could enjoy it in a so bad it's good sort of way but it's too stupid to even enjoy in that way. The script just makes so many errors on the most basic level that if you think about any thing about this story for more than a minute it just collapses. Nothing that gets set up pays off in any meaningful way and most of the resolutions fell totally flat. It can't decide on a tone, it drags majorly and most of the humour made me cringe in all the worst ways.
The performances really suffer as a result cause they're pretty poor across the board. I've liked Jason Momoa as this character but he's just too campy in this movie to take anything he's doing seriously, even actors of Yahya Abdul-Manteen II and Nicole Kidman's calibre deliver their lines in the flattest way possible but with the material they're given I can hardly blame that on them. I'm happy that Willem Dafoe was spared from this mess at least.
The finale is the most bog standard CGI noise of a climax that we've seen so many times before that I was just totally bored watching it, at least the first film had some sense of spectacle to it. There's the odd fun action scene but the pretty dreadful visual effects just constantly took me out of it. The villain is terrible after a decent set up in the first film with the most generic motivations possible.
The Lost Kingdom ends the DCEU with the biggest thud imaginable. It's been up and down since the beginning but it deserved a better conclusion than the soulless slog that this movie turned out to be. This might be the worst movie they ever made because at least Justice League had a happy conclusion with the Snyder Cut. There's nothing in this movie you haven't seen 100 times before and I've never been more ready for a total reboot of this universe.
