Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom

[Andrew NDB]

I saw Aquaman 2. Damn. That was not a good movie, by any stretch of the imagination. This was a brain-dead script with back-to-back contrivances and cardboard characters. Black Manta's arc is that he was possessed for the whole movie, basically? With his big black submarine where a captain pilots it with a big wheel (huh?) and he has his big throne. It's all just really dumb and surface level nothing. We want to melt all the polar icecaps to do what, exactly? I also don't think the rumors about an earlier version of the movie having Aquaman's baby getting killed were true now. The movie just isn't built to have that make any sense or carry any weight. Unless it was like, Black Manta originally killed him at the lighthouse and, like, took some blood with him and then they did reshoots with Randall Park and the baby in the ice kingdom, but even then it wouldn't "boost" anything beyond making Aquaman much more enraged in going after Black Manta, which they didn't do.

I can definitely see where they potentially trimmed Mera's material but I don't think they were too drastic. Like, it would have been a couple lines here, a couple lines there, and she was definitely more in the opening that they definitely reedited to be a narrated montage. I don't think what they cut would have helped much.

Originally Posted by IMJ

I think the lack of interest is a little related to Amber Hurd and largely related to the impending reboot of the entire DCU. Seems like audiences now need the connectivity instead of being able to take a movie on it's own merits.

Which is why Captain Marvel 1 was such a success. Marvel and the lefties took note and went, "Ahh, nice! The female audience we've been hoping for has materialized at last!" (which probably opened the gates for a lot of Marvel's recent flops) when that was never the case. It was largely just people wanting to see clues to what might be in the next Avengers movie, or just to be introduced to a character who might have a key role in Endgame.