Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

For all its head-scratching choices, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom should probably be renamed something along the lines of Awkwardman and the Lost Opportunity — and it’s difficult to know precisely where things went awry.

While not as big of a regression as the Iron Man series saw between its first and second movies, much of what made 2018’s Aquaman a fun “Thor of the sea” adventure is absent from this follow-up, a victim of poor writing, director James Wan’s Malignant-rooted cold streak, and misguided attempts to sideline maligned co-star Amber Heard.

After a humorous introduction that catches us up with Atlantis king Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), his wife Mera (Heard), and their son, Arthur Jr., Lost Kingdom takes a weird leap from villainous Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park) exploring the arctic to them wielding ancient technology — from where? Great question! — and Black Manta secretly communicating with some ancient evil entity.

The wonky set-up dilutes the impact of an already middling adversary, but provides an excuse for Arthur to team up with his imprisoned half brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) to stop this more powerful baddie. As the siblings attempt to set their differences aside, Momoa and Wilson (aided by comic-relief intelligent octopus Topo) showcase amusing odd-couple chemistry — one of the few extended stretches in which David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s screenplay doesn’t feels compromised by outside forces.

Other than Momoa’s charismatic performance and scattered action thrills, few aspects of Lost Kingdom prove consistent, and their attempted synthesis yields plentiful friction. A good deal of the ineptitude is rooted in what appears to be a concerted effort to make Heard look bad, using takes at odds with her confident, composed turn in Aquaman, most notably an embarrassing scream of anguish when her son is in peril.

But there’s also the numerous reshoots and new DC honcho James Gunn’s meddling to consider, all of which render this sequel a compromised, patched-together attempt that barely resembles its single-minded predecessor and sends the DCEU out with a whimper.

Grade: C-minus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Warner Bros.)