This is a Dynamike Network podcast.
Welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate
the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters and stat-based battle simulations.
I'm Johnny DC. And I'm his twin brother Marvelous Joe. And happy day after Christmas, everyone.
It's Boxing Day. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, in Canada, you guys celebrate that. To all
the Canadians, and wherever else they celebrate that, Happy Boxing Day. In this episode...
We will be doing a review of the latest DC film to hit theaters. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Was it a worthwhile finale to the DCEU? No, it was not. Let's just say that it makes me
want to box James Wan on Boxing Day. I mean, no disrespect to James Wan. Like he did his
part. I feel like everyone else did not, though. We'll get into all of our thoughts around the
film later on in the episode before that. We're going to break down the comic book movie news
from the past week, including the news that Jonathan Majors has been fired from Marvel
as Kang, and that Matt Reeves' Arkham series is going to be set in James Gunn's DC Universe.
As always, we list our segment times in our episode description, so feel free to check
out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic. Our artificially intelligent
dual simulator, AJ-9K, has a quick message for our listeners, so listen up. Why hello there.
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Pip pip cheerio! Thanks AJ and IK, glad to see that you're functioning properly again since
the last episode you just went freaking crazy. Like what kind of AI all of a sudden wants
to create peace on Earth, right? Usually they want to take over the world like Skynet, like
worthless. No, no, forget we said that. Delete. Guys, don't forget to tune into the other shows
on the Dynomic Podcast Network including Max Destruction, which is on a quick break for
the Christmas holiday, along with Sun Joe World, which will return in January. Console Combat
had an episode that came out yesterday on Christmas Day where they found out who'd win in a fight
between Sumo Santa from Clayfighter and E. Honda from Streetfighter. It was a sumo clash, it
was awesome, go check it out, it's worth your time. Again, visit dynamicpodcast.com or click
the link in our show notes to listen to all the shows in the Dynamite Podcast Network.
But with that out of the way, quick to the no prize! The No Prize is an award Marvel used
to give out to fans. Our version, the Dynamic Dual No Prize, is a digital award we post on
Instagram and in our email newsletter for the person that we feel gave the best answer to
our question of the week. Last week we asked, what has been your most favorite Marvel or
DC related gift that you've received for the holidays? And either it wasn't a great question
or a lot of people have not received DC or Marvel related gifts because we only got one answer.
So The winner of this week's snow prize is Miggy Mattingian, who said, Hey, what's up, guys?
Miggy and my favorite DC holiday gift that I received was a Star Labs hoodie. I think you
mentioned in a patron, like bonus episode or maybe on the Discord server that you kind of
missed it when superhero merch was kind of like secret language between fans. And I kind of
felt that with this hoodie, because only like fans of the show, people who had seen the show
would get the reference and compliment me for it. So, yeah, thanks, guys. Yeah, of course,
Star Labs featured heavily in the Flash television series, of which Miggy was a huge fan. The
Flash is one of his favorite characters as well. And yeah, I've actually seen that hoodie. It's
a pretty cool hoodie. I like the logo that they came up with for Star Labs in that show. I
would want to own that hoodie. It's a dope gift. Yeah, when it comes to superhero merch, I do
like the type of stuff that's... more inside baseball, you know, like it's not outwardly
like a Spider-Man logo or something like that, but it might be like Oz Corp, the Daily Bugle
or something like that. That's how you separate the true fans from, you know, the people who
just know who Spider-Man is. Right, exactly. It's like the deeper the cut, the bigger the
fan. And I feel like Star Labs is a pretty deep cut. You know, there's probably a lot of people
out there that see Miggy wearing this hoodie and think that he's a scientist or something.
Which I think is hilarious, which also works, you know, as double purpose. Yep. But congrats,
Mickey, for winning this week's no prize. If you're the listener, want a shot at winning
your own no prize. Stay tuned to later on in this episode, we'll be asking another question
of the week. And as our schedule gets more regular outside of the holidays, hopefully we'll get
more of you guys to answer. And now that that's done, onto the news.
Alright, this past week we learned that Jonathan Majors has been fired by Marvel from his role
as Kang the Conqueror, which is huge news considering that the entire multiversal saga for the MCU
was basically surrounding his character and all the variants of Kang. So it's really unclear
what's going to happen from this point on. It's hard to know how to feel about this news because
on one hand, you know, as a fan of Marvel movies... You don't want to see any sort of break in
continuity, whether or not Marvel recasts the role or they choose to go with a different
villain as the main antagonist of this multiversal saga. On the other hand, Majors was found guilty
of two of the counts charged against him, including harassment and assault. He was found not guilty
on two other counts, but these charges were enough to basically force Marvel's hand to
avoid any bad press that might come their way by working with... a convicted criminal essentially.
It's unlikely that Jonathan Majors will face any actual jail time for this, but his career
is definitely severely damaged. Yeah, this is actually kind of surprising news to me. I mean,
I could have seen Disney go either way with this. I thought that because he was acquitted
of the major charges, that they would probably just try and keep him on board and ignore what
had happened. But I guess Disney is in such a rough place culturally and politically right
now. that they really just didn't want to run the risk of more bad press as it were. Yeah,
I mean, they're not DC. They're not going to keep Ezra Miller around if he was working for
them, you know? Was Ezra Miller convicted? I don't know. All I know is that dude's crazy.
Oh yeah, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor. But again, I mean, Jonathan Majors also got two
misdemeanors. So they're misdemeanors. They're not felonies. You know, they could still vote.
But they can't play king. The next time we were supposed to see King of the Conqueror was going
to be in the next Avengers movie, which was gonna be called The King Dynasty. That movie
has since been retitled to just Avengers 5. It's unclear what Marvel is going to choose
to do with the character. I say recast. I mean, so many Marvel roles have been recast. I don't
understand why I see so many people online saying just do away completely with the character.
I think a lot of that has to do with just the dislike of the general direction for the MCU
currently, but I kind of feel like to correct that you need a character like Kang. Yeah,
I mean you have a point there, but I just think it would be bad optics for another actor. I
don't think you'd be able to find another actor who would want to replace Jonathan Majors in
the role, considering that this whole thing is fairly controversial. You know, it's hard
for I think another actor to appear like they're taking advantage of someone I don't believe
that. I think if you spin it in a way where it's like, hey, Jonathan Majors did something
wrong, not Kenny the Conqueror, who's still a really cool character, and now this actor
is going to play that really cool character. I mean, it's not like DC is going to have a
hard time recasting the Flash. It's not like an actor is not going to want to play the Flash
because of Ezra Miller. I don't get that connection. Well, I mean, that role is probably going to
be recast anyway, since DC is going into a new universe. I don't know. It's hard to say. If
Marvel decided to not recast and instead focus on a new villain, the only other villain I
could think that they could use for this multiversal saga would be Doctor Doom, because he is the
one that patched together Battleworld in the 2015 Secret Invasion. I guess you could also
go with the Beyonder, since the Beyonder was the villain of the original Secret Wars story.
It's just like a lot of story to scrap. Like I guess you could make the argument that Loki
acting as the new Loom. that he resets the timeline and maybe like erases all version of Kang,
I find that hard to believe. I just don't think you could scrap everything. Fair enough. So
I guess with that in mind, that brings us to our question of the week.
Which actor would you choose to recast Kang in the MCU, and why? Yeah, I'm sure any new
actor that comes into that role, if they do recast, would be rationalized as simply a variant
of the Kang character. So, at least it would be an easy explanation. But record your answer
at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner of the
screen, which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail. Your message could be up to 30 seconds
long. And don't forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast. We'll pick
our favorite answer and award that person a dynamic duel no prize that will post to Instagram
and our email newsletter. Be sure to answer before December 30th. In DC News, we learned
that Matt Reeves' Batman Arkham series that's in development will be set in James Gunn's
and Peter Safran's DC universe. Of course, the Arkham series was originally going to focus
on the Gotham City Police Department. But I guess Warner Brothers scrapped the idea and
Matt Reeves pitched an Arkham series instead, which James Gunn and Peter Safran greenlit.
According to Gunn on social media, the Arkham series was always planned to be set in the
DCU and not part of any else world's universe that Matt Reeves is working on. This is huge
news because we initially believed that Matt Reeves was establishing a series set within
his Batman universe which stars Robert Pattinson. Apparently, he will be developing Batman characters
for two different universes, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It is strange considering
like the Penguin show that's coming out next year is not going to be in the DCU, but that's
spearheaded by Matt Reeves, who's also spearheading this DCU Batman project. Right, exactly. So
essentially, he's going to be coming up with like two different versions of the Riddler,
two different versions of the Joker and the Penguin and everything else. I was really hoping
when I first heard this news that this may be James Gunn's way of just really trying to get
Matt Reeves' Batman into the DCU. And that still may be the case because maybe Matt Reeves won't
like having to develop two different versions of these Batman characters. But I guess we'll
see. It could be fun considering that Matt Reeves' Batman movie takes place in a much more grounded
reality of DC. So he works on these hyper realistic versions as well as these more comic accurate
versions which I assume the DCU is going to be a little bit more comic accurate and fantastical
and not so grounded in reality. It sounds like a fun challenge honestly. It sounds confusing
because like how many different jokers are there going to be now? I mean I guess that was inevitable
if James Gunn was going to develop his own version regardless but the fact that it's Matt Reeves
doing versions for both universes just really kind of bothers me. I don't understand why
James Gunn would give Matt Reeves that much say over a fairly integral part of the Batman
character, his rogues as it were, when Matt Reeves is already doing his own thing. Like
does that make sense to you? No, but nothing DC does ever make sense to me, so. Okay. I'm
not surprised. They just make a lot of weird decisions, you know? It's weird. Again, I'm
hoping this is some sort of brilliant manipulation on behalf of James Gunn to get Maybe I should
be working in this new universe because it's so cool and my Batman could be there. But then
you would have to have Robert Pattinson be a bad dad in the Brave and the Bold movie, which
I'm fine with, honestly, like he's traveling the world. He's meeting all these ladies. He's
got lots of money. Maybe he knocks one of them up. You never know. But like, is he old enough
to have a kid as old as Damien Wayne? As long as he and Talia were both 18, sure.
Sure, okay. So this seems like it's gonna be good news for fans of the upcoming DCU and
not necessarily great news for fans of Reeves take on the Batman universe. I think it's honestly
a win-win for everybody because you know whether you liked Matt Reeves' version of the Batman
or not, you'll still get the villains for that version of Batman and Matt Reeves' genius in
the DCU as well because the guy is a genius. Yeah, he's pretty good. He's alright. You know
it in your heart to be true. But yeah, I guess we'll see what happens with the Batman projects.
We'll keep you guys updated as to any news that we hear for the Batman series or anything coming
from Matt Reeves and DC.
But I think that does it for all the news for this episode. Now let's move on to the main
event, where we review the latest DC film to hit theaters, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the latest and final film of the DC Extended Universe. I think.
You know, after the Flash things are a little bit grey now, but the film of course stars
Jason Momoa and was directed by James Wan and is the sequel to the billion dollar grossing
2018 film Aquaman, which is the highest grossing DC film of all time worldwide. And that film
was good. I think it's one of the best DC films ever, from a filmmaking perspective at the
very least. The film looked gorgeous, and the mythic worldbuilding done by James Wan was
phenomenal. When we learned that a sequel was planned for a December 2022 release, I was
pretty excited. But then we got the Amber Heard drama and the sudden purchase of Warner Bros.
by Discovery. The new CEO said he wanted to reboot DC. James Gunn took over DC Studios.
and suddenly the Aquaman sequel lost quite a bit of its luster. The film was pushed back
a year due to COVID setbacks, and after the Flash arrived in theaters, essentially allowing
for a fresh start to DC's new cinematic universe, Aquaman 2 became my least anticipated DC film,
maybe ever. Like, I would have been perfectly fine if the film was shelved as a tax write-off
like Batgirl. That all changed however when we got the first trailer only three months
ago and I was reminded of how awesome the visuals and the world that James Wan created are. I
got pretty hyped, but did the film live up to the hype? It unfortunately did not. We didn't
need this film, things should have ended with the Flash, and I'm kinda just ready to forget
this film even exists. It was mediocre times for Superhero Movie going You know, it reminded
me a lot of Ant-Man and the Wasp quantumania in that the film was almost essentially computer
animated. There were so many visual effects shots. The humor didn't always stick like quantumania
and the story was a little lackluster. I think 2023's Marvel and DC films were bookended by
some of the more generic offerings that DC Marvel have put out. Which is a huge shame. If you
haven't seen Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom yet. Honestly, I wouldn't bother. Like maybe not
even when this hits streaming. Not because the film is terrible, because the third act is
actually pretty good, but because it's ultimately pointless and has very little redeeming value
outside of CG spectacle. And even that is sometimes amongst the worst I've seen in a long time.
If you still want to see the film, definitely skip this review though because there will
be spoilers. Now the film picks up a few years after the events of the first film, where Aquaman
defeated his brother Orm, the King of Atlantis, to prevent him from amassing an army to destroy
the surface world. As Aquaman learned about the world of Atlantis, he also developed a
romantic relationship with Orm's former fiance, Princess Mera. And between the two films, they
had a baby, Arthur Jr. And this is in keeping with the comics. Aquaman is pretty unique in
the comics in that he matured a lot faster than other heroes. Like he was the first superhero
to have a wedding, the first to have a baby, the first to suffer the loss of a child, and
the first hero to get separated as a result. It's pretty heavy stuff, and while the loss
of his family didn't drive him in the same way it did the Punisher, it still deeply affected
him and it took decades for him and Mara to reunite. Yeah, the comic book version of Aquaman
is pretty deep It's interesting that you say that he was one of the first characters to
kind of mature in his I guess life story And of all the DC superheroes, it's ironic because
Jason Momoa's version of the Aquaman character is Essentially a manchild. Oh, yeah, I'll definitely
be getting to that. Absolutely You're on the nose there. It just served to remind me again
while watching this movie that this doesn't really feel like Aquaman that I know. It's
very much Jason Momoa's take on the character. Or just Jason Momoa. Like not even a take on
a character. It's just Jason Momoa. Now it had been rumored that Aquaman 2 tested horribly
at test screenings, in part because Black Manta killed Arthur Jr. just like in the comics.
Like people walked out of test screenings, which is unheard of. But I could kind of see where
they're coming from now. One of the things I was most interested in going into the film
was to see if the filmmakers had the balls to put Aquaman through such an emotionally heavy
and dark ordeal like suffering the loss of a child. I thought I saw a way they could have
done it in a similar way to the movie Gladiator that could have suited the narrative and the
film. But now it's become painfully obvious that Jason Momoa is no Russell Crowe. Like
tonally, I'd say Jason Momoa ruined the film. I understand it's hard to take a character
like Aquaman seriously, but damn, you have to at least try. I think Momoa probably assumed
that the reason the first film made so much money was because people enjoyed seeing Jason
Momoa play Jason Momoa, who comes across as somewhat of a jokester. But no, we just want
to see Aquaman as a badass, and it's not badass to have your baby piss in your mouth. or make
unfunny jokes every five seconds. Yeah, actually, my favorite moments with Jason Momoa as the
character of Aquaman are his more serious moments where he's acting like the character that I
know from the comics, where he's very straight faced. Like in the first movie, we got some
great character moments where he's seemingly transitioning from his man child self into
someone you would believe as a king of this entire kingdom. But there was almost like a
reversion or a lack. of follow through in his character arc from the first film where we
don't really see that noble king. But like there are brief spurts here, but like he's falling
asleep during meetings and stuff like that. It's all really played for gags. And it's not
that funny. No, the only thing he didn't do in this movie is like fart, but he may as well
have. Now the film was intentionally supposed to be message heavy. like showing the power
of brotherhood and cooperation and warning against the dangers of climate change and global warming.
But because the movie doesn't take itself seriously, it's really hard to take its messages seriously.
This film was originally supposed to go head-to-head against Avatar the Way of Water, and when Warner
Brothers flinched and pushed the release date, I was kind of pissed, like, ah, come on! No
one cares about Avatar anymore. The first Aquaman improved to what the first Avatar film did
visually. Anyway, we could take him on. And holy shit, was I wrong. Aquaman 2 was embarrassing
enough without having to compare it to Avatar 2. But what's really heartbreaking was that
there was this potential there for that to not be the case. Like, I was expecting this film
to be like Avatar meets Taken meets Lord of the Rings. but instead I got Thor Love and
Thunder meets Jumanji meets the Saturday morning Captain Planet cartoon. And the thing is, the
film is so tonally inconsistent and it comes across as so heavily edited and reworked that
I'm guessing there's a better version of the movie out there, but I honestly don't care
enough to hashtag release the wand cut. That was a great description of this movie. Chris
Hemsworth, despite the terrible quality of Thor 11th Thunder. He actually has comedic timing
and comedic instincts. I don't think Jason Momoa has the same thing going for him. I would somewhat
agree. I think he has a little bit there, but it needs to be under the right circumstances,
which makes me nervous for a potential Lobo project. Oh, I'm not worried about Lobo at
all. I think he would nail it because he basically is Lobo, even when he's Aquaman. You know,
you see, we still see him doing donuts in the dirt with the motorcycle, despite the fact
that I've never seen Aquaman ride a motorcycle in the books. I'm trying to think. No, yeah,
I think that'd be really dumb if I saw him ever do that. Now I'm trashing the film, but just
because I was disappointed in it doesn't mean it was all bad. The film, as the trailers promised,
was gorgeous, despite some really embarrassing CG in some spots. For the most part, it was
good. And you know, once Arthur and Orm meet Dr. Shin, the movie starts getting good. Because
that's when we finally understand the stakes of the film. That the entity controlling Black
Manta, Kordax, and the Oricalcum are global threats. And we circle back to Arthur Jr. who
gets kidnapped by Black Manta, which I thought was going to happen much earlier in the film.
The problem is that by the time the movie gets good, it's like two-thirds over, and ultimately
it's too little too late. Yeah, I actually thought the plot was pretty interesting once it was
revealed that the Oro Kalkom, and I swear to God, if I ever hear that word again, it'll
be too soon. But basically it was causing global warming to melt the polar ice caps to free
the lost kingdom and Kordax. Right, exactly. The visuals, while the CGI may not have always
been spot on, the design of everything is exceptional. Like seeing Kordax with his Sauron like get
up, use his black magic on his Citadel and stuff like that. Just the fact that the seventh kingdom
was even based in Antarctica and had like this entirely different world feel to the other
seven kingdoms, which we've seen in the previous movie. It's all fantastic. Oh yeah, it's so
well imagined. It's kind of a shame that it's not going to continue. Honestly, that's like
what's heartbreaking in regards to Aquaman with the DCU ending is that are we ever going to
see this world again? I like the sunken city with all the pirates, like how that's like
the underground in the oceanic world. That was cool. I did love how this film traversed the
globe in the way that the first film was a globe trotting adventure. Like we got to see the
desert, we got to see the jungle, we got to see, you know, the sunken city and Antarctica.
It was pretty cool. The desert characters were really cool in that they learned how to survive
away from water by hydrating with blood. Like that's pretty hardcore. That's super hardcore.
And those creatures that they were riding were super freaking disgusting. But like in the
best way possible. Ultimately, I think these visuals and these designs are like 90% of why
I enjoyed this film. Oh, you enjoyed it? I mean, it wasn't great. It definitely wasn't terrible,
though. It was really hard for me to enjoy it. I invited my father-in-law to see it with me.
He's former military and I thought it'd be like a cool like bro film to go see. And I was super
embarrassed. It was two Saturday morning cartoons for him, right? Absolutely. Yeah. But let's
move on to the character breakdown, starting with Arthur Curry slash Aquaman played by Jason
Momoa. As I mentioned earlier, I feel like he ruined the movie in the same way that I feel
like Chris Hemsworth ruined Thor, Love and Thunder by trying to be a comedian. Thor is not supposed
to be a funny character. Neither is Aquaman. I'm really tired of actors playing roles that
they don't understand. And yeah, I'm going to make the case that Jason Momoa doesn't understand
Aquaman. Because, like we mentioned earlier, he plays him like Lobo, so maybe ultimately
it's best he's rumored to be playing that role in James Gunn's new DCU. In the first film,
Aquaman's arc was that he was worthy to be king because he was able to make tough decisions.
But it turned out that upon being king, he really wasn't able to make decisions to improve the
kingdom due to the bureaucracy of Atlantis' High Council, who antagonized him for not understanding
Atlantean ways and culture. When sickness spreads among his people, however, and Black Mantis
steals or a calcum from Atlantis, polluting the planet, Arthur realizes that he needs his
brother's help to stop him. Even though Arthur proved to be less kingly and less mature than
Orm, he proved to be the bigger and better man by surmounting and helping Orm overcome Kordax's
temptations of power. Arthur's ultimate destiny has always been to unite the underwater and
surface worlds and at the very end of the film he was finally able to start that process by
revealing Atlantis's existence to the world, though again how anyone is supposed to take
him seriously with that weird mic drop at the end is beyond me. The whole Iron Man callback
was literally the worst fucking joke in any DC film ever. I hated it when he was like,
I'm the king of Atlantis and I'm Aquaman. I was like, what the fuck? What is this? My reaction
exactly. I bet you world leaders were like, oh, no.
Right. That's what I'm saying. The coolest thing for Aquaman, I would say, in this film was
his stealth suit. I actually really liked the way they did that. And I loved that Toppo also
had essentially the same ability. We did not get enough Toppo and Storm in this movie. Yeah.
When you saw his fish speak. power at the end of the first film, he almost seems like unstoppable
in the water, right? So I was kind of hoping that he would use it more within the course
of this film, but he only really used it a few times. Although I did like how he got all the
undersea mammals to use their echolocation to destroy Black Manta's ship. Oh yeah, like the
sonar waves. That was a really cool way to use his power for sure. Moving on to Ocean Master,
aka Orm, he was played by Patrick Wilson. Watching this made me wish Patrick Wilson was originally
cast as Aquaman because he not only looks the part of the character from the comics to a
T, but also because he took his role seriously. I mean, he took part in quite a bit of the
jokes, but even when he's running with his arms behind his back because, you know, he doesn't
know how to run on land, or he's eating a cockroach, like he still played it as if it was Orm, not
Patrick Wilson. I think Jason Mowa's presence actually brought down Patrick Wilson's performance
because whenever they were on screen together, it became apparent that Patrick Wilson was
acting because Jason Momoa wasn't, if that makes sense. The two just had like zero bromance
chemistry, which is a problem for the film because that was sort of supposed to be the core of
it, their relationship, and the entire second act was supposed to be a buddy comedy. Yeah,
that was my big takeaway from the film as well. They were honestly acting in different films.
It felt that way. Yeah, absolutely. And some of that awkwardness, I feel like, was actually
reflected in the score. Because when they tried to be silly with that relationship, the score
did like a cartoonish thing such as when Aquaman knocked over that big statue to create a bridge.
That scene played out way worse than I thought it would from the trailers. And I don't know
why, it was just so cringe-worthy. The whole fucking jungle island thing was so cringe-inducing.
I didn't get the joke regarding the cockroaches. Actually, I did find that funny because you
could just see me doing that to my younger brothers. But he told him that it was like the shrimp
of the land, right? Right. But the joke is that surface dwellers don't actually eat cockroaches.
And so he like tricked him into doing it, but he never told him that it was a joke. Like
he never followed through with the gag. So it was just strange. Honestly, if I got you to
eat a cockroach, I wouldn't tell you. that like you're not supposed to eat it. I'd be telling
everyone else that I got you to eat a cockroach. And so we didn't see that either. We should
have seen Alcon be like, I seriously got Oram to eat a cockroach. We should have definitely.
Now, Oram's arc in the film is really one in which he comes to terms that what he did in
the first film was wrong and that in the end, Arthur really is better for Atlantis. He realizes
over the course of the film, as Arthur continues to surprise him, that there is an honor and
nobility in Arthur's viewpoint and gracious actions, and Orm is moved essentially. Part
of me wanted to take issue with the fact that Orm became a good guy and I kept waiting for
him to turn bad, but that ended up not happening. I thought that would have been a great turn.
But given the fact that you have stated that Ocean Master actually has done good things
in the books like relinquish the throne when he realized that it rightfully belonged to
Arthur Curry. That kind of helped sell the idea of Oram being a good guy. To me. No, for me
as well. Yeah. In the comics, in the new 52 version of Oram, he's not necessarily a bad
guy. There is sort of like a rivalry, but there's also like a respect between the characters
of Aquaman and Ocean Master as well. And so, yeah, I thought it worked in the movie also.
Moving on to David Kane, AKA Black Manta. He was played by Yaya Abdul-Mateen the second.
Black Manta is a fantastic character and I thought Yaya did a fantastic job in the role because
he's really able to capture the rage of the character. Like very few villains are as dedicated
as Black Manta in the comics to so completely destroying a hero and his family. And that
also helps that he looks really badass. I do have to say though it's kind of unfortunate
that Black Manta loses some agency doing Cordax's bidding in this film rather than going full
force against Aquaman. I say kind of because I did actually like the dead king Cordax in
this film and giving Black Manta a reason to kill Arthur Jr. other than he just really hates
Aquaman was a more stomachable decision at the very least. I did think it was somewhat baller
of him at the end, however, to essentially kill himself maybe rather than accept Aquaman's
help because that felt very in character for Black Manta. Yeah, that was his best character
moment. Unfortunately, it was probably his last character moment. Yeah, yeah, I think it was.
You're right. We talked about the design of this film. I thought his new gear was incredibly
well designed. You know, everything from the suit to the octopods. It was fantastic. I liked
seeing his beams in action that first seen when he's going up against Mira and he like blasts
her and like everything around him. Those are some deadly lasers. Oh, yeah. Like you could
see how they were burning people. Definitely deadly. So Aquaman, Ocean Master, and Black
Manta are really the three central characters of the film. I do want to touch briefly on
Dr. Shin and Mara, though. Starting with Dr. Shin, he was played by Randall Park, who's
a great comedic actor. He was the only truly funny character in the film, and at times when
I don't think he was even trying to be. I mean, I only see him as Jimmy Woo from the Marvel
movies. Nah. This was just Jimmy Woo pretending to be a scientist or something. I was happy
with the amount of screen time that they gave Randall Park here. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
You know, the first film, Dr. Shin was a minor character, simply trying to prove Atlantis'
existence to the world and allied himself with Black Manta to do so. Like you said, he got
much more screen time here and he got more than he bargained for with the emergence of Cortex.
But he has a crisis of conscience warning Aquaman of Black Manta's new power and even saving
Arthur Jr. from being killed. So it was nice to see him sort of have that heroic streak
to him. Moving on to Mera, she was played by Amber Heard. She had a slightly bigger role
in the film than I thought she would, you know, based on her own words in court that she was
essentially erased from the movie, which wasn't the case, though there may be quite a bit left
on the cutting-groom floor. I didn't think her performance was terrible. Her involvement in
the film's story was a big question to many due to some reports that her relationship with
Jason Momoa and James Wan wasn't great, but I'm glad she got the screen time that she did
because Mera should be a big part of Arthur's world, especially when it comes to Arthur Jr.
It's always cool to see her use her powers too. She has a musical power set. I mean, in this
film it was used as Deus Ex Machina on multiple occasions, which was kind of unfortunate. I
actually would have preferred to see Toppo get just one surprise Deo 6 Machina if you're going
to do Deo 6 Machina because you know, you could be invisible and just kind of like spring into
action and be like, ta-da, I'm here. That would have been awesome. I did like the call out
that Nicole Kidman's Atlanta gave the character in reference to the previous film where we
saw Toppo playing the drums. Yeah. She was like running down his credentials and she's like,
he's also really good at multiple instruments. Nicole Kidman looked so weird in this movie.
She had a CGI face, did she not? Did she? I don't think she did. That's how it looked to
me on the screen that I saw. It looked like maybe she had gotten too much Botox and couldn't
really move her face enough. And so they had to move it using special effects. It very much
looked like how Henry Cavill did in the Jostas League movie. Oh, geez. I did not see that
at all. She had a very small role in the movie. She only had like a few lines. So maybe I just
wasn't paying too much attention to her. But I mean, I believe it. Let's move on to the
story highlights.
Several years after defeating and imprisoning his half-brother Orm, Arthur has become the
new king of Atlantis and struggles with the bureaucracy, preferring to spend time on land
with his family, including his infant son Junior, who displays the ability to communicate with
fish. Aquaman's nemesis Black Manta, meanwhile, searches the world for Atlantean technology
to repair his power suit and get revenge on the hero for killing his father. With the help
of Dr. Steven Shin, Black Manta finds the lost Atlantean kingdom of Necrus in the Antarctic,
where they're attacked by an underwater monster and Black Manta becomes possessed by a broken
Black Trident. Now I'm not sure why they gave Junior fish speaking powers, because it never
came up in the film again. Like they should have used it again at least once. Yeah, that
actually would have been cool to have him save the day by calling in a fleet of whales or
something. Right? Yeah, absolutely. They could have totally done that. And I actually thought
they were going to once they sort of set that up at the beginning of the movie. I actually
really liked these opening Antarctica scenes because they were a good showcase for James
Bond's horror background. Yeah, that tentacle monster was pretty frightening. Yeah, and the
way it just like dragged people into the darkness. It was pretty cool. Within the next five months,
global warming has increased rapidly, diluting the ocean saltwater and resulting in algae
blooms. that's causing sickness to spread in the underwater kingdoms. Although Arthur wants
to reveal Atlantis to the surface world so that their scientists can work together to solve
the climate crisis, the city's high council refuses to let him. Meanwhile, Black Manta,
now equipped with new Atlantean technology, is caught trying to steal a highly toxic fuel
source known as or a calcum from Atlantis. Mera and many other Atlanteans are badly injured.
in Black Manta's escape. Do you know if Orocalcum is from the comics? It is actually, but it's
also from ancient myths about Atlantis as well. It's supposed to be a medal though, I believe.
Interesting. Upon realizing that Black Manta is using the Orocalcum to pollute the Earth's
atmosphere and raise temperatures, Arthur decides his brother Orm can help him find Black Manta,
to his mother Atlantis and Mira's father Nerus' objections. With the help of a stealth suit
and a cephalopod named Toppo, Arthur successfully breaks Orm out of his desert prison. Which
was a pretty cool scene. It was a convincing special effect that they used on Patrick Wilson,
going from his skinny mode into his ripped mode. See, I didn't really like that. I mean, I thought
the special effect was fine, but I don't understand how just upon touching water, all of a sudden
he gets ripped. Well, he was like super dehydrated, right? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I just
thought it was a convincing special effect. Yeah, definitely convincing. As was Toppo.
I want a Toppo in real life. How was Toppo surviving on land? Because he's fucking Toppo, dude.
You can do whatever he wants. All right. OK. How dare you question him. We need to do a
Christmas duel episode with Toppo. That's all I'm saying. It's a great idea. Yeah. Orb suggests
that they visit the Sunken Citadel, a seedy underwater pirate colony ruled by Kingfish,
who may know Black Manta's whereabouts. After a tussle with Kingfish's shark soldiers, Arthur
learns that Black Manta may be on a volcanic island in the South Pacific. After swimming
to the island, Arthur sends Toppo back to Atlantis for help while he and Orm navigate the mutated
jungle, dodging carnivorous plants and giant insects to get to Black Manta's volcano base.
I was super surprised when I saw that Kingfish was voiced by Martin Short. Yeah, I didn't
see that until the credits either. I have no idea who Kingfish is. Apparently he's a character
in the comics. I initially thought that the character was a stand in for King Shark, which
I thought would have been actually really cool if they had done that. But upon doing further
research, I guess that wasn't the case. I always liked the Jules Verne-esque journey to the
center of the earth aspect that the Aquaman films have. We saw that in the first movie
where they actually did go to the center of the earth. And then we saw it with this island
in this film where you have like these giant insect creatures and dangerous flora and stuff
like that. It is a pretty neat aspect of these films. Yeah, it kind of feels like James Wan
can do whatever he wants in these movies. He just comes up with these brilliant ways of
doing them. Like Oric Alcom mutating the environment, that's a pretty cool idea to create some conflict.
And it also creates greater stakes for the film and the danger that Oric Alcom presents. There
was another joke during this part of the film that I really did not appreciate and that was
when Aquaman referred to Orm as Loki and I'm like shut the hell up What are you doing? He's
trying to be like Tony Stark giving everybody nicknames like how Iron Man did in the Avengers
movie the first one But like do Marvel movies exist in the DCEU they must and that's stupid
Well, I mean apparently DC heroes exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because there have
been a number of references to Batman and Superman Oh, that's right. Okay, unless angry about
it now Now, uneasy with Black Manta's actions and using the volcano to spew Orakelkem into
the atmosphere, Dr. Shin begs Aquaman and Orm to rescue him from Manta just before Black
Manta attacks them. During the battle, Orm takes hold of Black Manta's trident, which gives
him visions of the past. After Atlantis comes to the brothers' rescue and bombs the island,
destroying the volcano, Orm reveals that the trident is possessed by Kordax. the ancient
Atlantean king of Necros, who used orichalcum and black magic to pollute the earth and corrupt
and mutate his people into monsters. Cordax was defeated by his brother Atlin, the king
of Atlantis, who used blood magic to seal his brother and the kingdom of Necros in ice forever.
Black Manta, they learn, is being used by Cordax to melt the ice caps and free the lost kingdom.
into the villain Cordax, who they also made Atlan's brother. I thought that was genius.
I got to give a big shout out to listener Corey Wooten, who years ago, when we learned that
Pelo Aspect was going to be in the Aquaman sequel, we asked listeners as a question of the week
who they thought he was playing. And Corey Wooten, if you listen to our Falcon and the Winter
Soldier review episode, stated that he thought he was playing Cordax. And he was right. Yeah
Cory bro, you gotta hook me up with the next Powerball numbers. Please. Realizing Cordex
can only be freed from the Blood Magic Ice Prison with the blood of Atlantean royalty, Aquaman
and his family rush to his father's lighthouse, only to find his father Tom dying and Junior
kidnapped. While Tom recovers, Arthur rallies his kingdom to rescue his son, chasing Black
Manta to Antarctica, where Cordex's forces have been unleashed and do battle with the Atlanteans.
Meanwhile, Dr. Shin hides Junior from Black Manta, but both are caught. I thought the movie
really wussed out by not killing Aquaman's dad. I mean, they didn't kill Aqua Baby, and we
probably figured that was gonna happen, but if they weren't gonna kill Aqua Baby, they
should have at least killed Aqua Dad. They should have, because there's precedent for that in
the comic as well. Both Aquaman and Black Manta essentially killed each other's fathers. So
why the hell not kill Tom? They really wussed out, I agree. Aquaman stops Black Manta before
Junior's blood can be spilled on the altar in front of the frozen Cordax. The two battle,
and Arthur disarms Black Manta of the Trident, only for Orm to get ahold of it and become
possessed by Cordax, successfully drawing Arthur's blood on the altar. As Cordax becomes free,
Arthur and Orm struggle for control of the Black Trident, with their bond as brothers, helping
them overcome Cordax's influence, and Arthur manages to kill Cordax, with Atlan's trident.
It makes you wonder why if Orm had the trident, why didn't he just prick his finger over the
altar? He has royal blood too, he could have easily undone the curse being possessed by
Kordax. He didn't really need Arthur's blood. Well I think Arthur would have tried to stop
him, so there was a tussle that was going to result regardless. Fair enough. After Black
Mantis seemingly falls to his death rather than be saved by Arthur, join their allies on a
glacier, where Arthur gives Orm his freedom rather than imprisoning him once again. To
help deal with the damaged atmosphere, Arthur reveals the existence of Atlantis to the UN
and the public. In the mid-credits scene, Orm enjoys a cheeseburger and a cockroach. Which
is a hell of a way to end the DCEU. I mean, it was funny, I laughed, but also like I was
kind of hoping there would be a little bit more after the credits. Yeah, something more substantial.
Right, right. Just to say like, hey, this is all done, but get ready for something new.
I don't know. Yeah, I think the Flash actually did a better job at that. I believe initially
the Flash was supposed to come out after Aquaman, according to the original release schedule.
And it's a shame that it didn't stay that way. It's a huge shame. These release dates should
have been flipped, I feel. I actually think they would have gotten more money out of both
of them if that had been the case. Because it really would have felt like The Flash was this
event film that you had to see because it was setting up something new. Yeah, instead we
got a Flash movie that didn't really serve as a transition and an Aquaman movie that was
kind of pointless. Exactly. It's hard for me to say that things are pointless just because
I think films should stand on their own regardless of if they're part of a cinematic universe
or not. but this film really doesn't do that either in the sense that it has very little
redeemable value on its own. I think despite a worthwhile final act, the scenic CG-heavy
film's attempts at silly humor and serious themes make for a tonally inconsistent finale to the
DCEU. And I think that's the film's biggest sin is that it's tonally inconsistent. I think
a director's main job is tone, and James Wan kind of failed on that here. I'm giving the
film 3 out of 5 stars, which is a 60% rating so it's borderline between a fresh and rotten
tomato. I've decided to not recommend this film, so it is getting a rotten rating from me. I
think it's right between Thor Love and Thunder and Shazam Fury of the Gods, which at least
was tonally consistent. I agree with the 3 star rating. I could also understand why you would
not recommend the film. largely due to its place within the DCEU, where it came chronologically
in that release order. We've seen a lot of superhero films recently make the mistake of going too
comedic with things, whether it's Thor 11th Under or like Modok from the Ant-Man movie.
I hope it's a trend that does not continue into 2024, because I think it results in a lapse
of cinematic quality that exacerbates the current issue that we're seeing of superhero fatigue.
2023 is the year that fatigue really started to set in. And I think films like Aquaman,
The Lost Kingdom are partially to blame. This movie is not helping the genre, and both Marvel
and DC need to do a course correction for the future. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. And luckily,
we know that DC is next year. We're going to be getting Joker, Folly, I do. But I think
that's the only live action DC film we're getting. So, yeah, we won't be seeing too much DC within
the next 365 days. Good, finally, geez. Fuck you. I wish we were seeing less Marvel. I freaking
hate watching these movies now. But that does it for this review guys. Let us know what you
thought about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom by writing to us at dyna or by visiting us on
Instagram or X. You can find links to all of our accounts by checking out our show notes
or visiting our website at dynamicduel.com. And on our site, you can also find a link to
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the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser, or on our website. In our next episode, we
will be doing our end of the year annual Brothers Awards, where we look back at everything Marvel
and DC had to offer in terms of television and film in 2023. Yeah, those episodes are always
a lot of fun. They're a great way to summarize our thoughts about what came out for the entire
year. Look forward to that. But that does it for this episode. We want to give a big thanks
to our executive producers, Ken Johnson. John Sturowski, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Balcombe,
Miggy Matagian, Brandon Estergard, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yeaton, Nick Abonto, Austin Wazilowski,
AJ Dunkerley, Scott Camacho, Adam Spies, and Andrew Schunk for helping make this podcast
possible. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away, true believers.