 After 10 strong, arguably perfect years, the DCEU has come to an end on being sarcastic. There were some decent films in the bunch though. I think a lot of people jumped off the train when it was announced DCEU was gonna step in with James Gunn and we were gonna reboot everything. But there are some hangers on. There are some people that just love Aquaman so much. They have to be their day one for the movie. Well, I was there and I'm gonna give you my thoughts right now. Let's dive in because of the water. We're gonna be doing a spoiler-free review today but before I get into it why don't you do me a favor and hit the subscribe button. Only if you like movie conversation, you like honest opinions, you like a little lighthearted humor thrown in the mix. I'd appreciate the subscription and a like and a notification on the bell. Okay, let's get into it. Aquaman 2. It's a James Wan joint just like the last one. Here's the deal. I'm not a big fan of the Aquaman 1. The character's fine. I like Jason Momoa as Aquaman. I think he brought a little edge to the table. He brought his strongness, his coolness. Apparently they have a deal with Guinness in this film because he's crushing Guinness beer cans like it's his job outside of being the king of Atlantis. It's a little obnoxious early on in the first 10 minutes. I'm just thinking brought to you by Guinness. Okay, fine. Can we get past it now? Can we get that paycheck and move on? This movie, I enjoyed more than the first one. Keep in mind I didn't enjoy the first one very much. That movie's two hours and 20-some minutes long. It feels like 15 different movies because James Wan didn't think he was gonna be back for another one. So he thought let me do a horror film. Let me do a rom-com. Let me do a buddy road trip adventure. Let me do an epic big battle at the end. He did everything and some of it worked really well. And this time he does a bunch of stuff again, but it does feel more consistent. It does have a tone that overall fits. There's no pit bulls Africa busting out during a desert scene. This one's a lot more consistent. What's inconsistent are again the effects. Sometimes the thing looks beautiful. Some of the shots are stripped, you know, ripped right out of a comic book, ripped right out of a larger-than-life movie. And other times it looks like unrendered PS2 footage. I shit you not. There was a moment where he and his brother are walking through some sort of a water portal and the guards and everything around them looked unrendered. It looked unfinished. And I know Warner Brothers not doing great for cash right now and I know they're trying to move past the DCEU. So it wouldn't even surprise me if this movie was unfinished when they released it. They thought, ah, we got to hit the deadline. We got to hit it out on Christmas times. Push it out. Who cares? Story-wise, it's dumb. Aquaman's taking on climate change. That's fine. It makes sense. It's kind of topical. It works well with the underwater adventure because things are heating up, so it's affecting the algae, it's affecting the ice caps, and what comes with it is bad stuff. There's some bad stuff at play. Who else is back from the first one besides Momoa? Well, we have his brother. This is going to be a road trip adventure of sorts. He's going to be spending a lot of time with the guy. I don't know his name. Oren Tom Garrett. I can't remember. I can't be bothered to remember. He was the bad guy in the first, one of a couple. The other bad guy's back as well. Manta. He, Black Manta's back. And he's less ridiculous this time, I guess. I still find the costume be completely ridiculous. It looks dumb as crap. This time around, it's used a little better. The whole concept of a regular guy shooting a giant laser beam out of his dumb head is pretty dumb on paper because there's just so many things that could go wrong from a practicality standpoint. He's not Cyclops. He wasn't born this way. He is going to get some more powers, though, that's going to make him an actual threat this time and less of a joke. And I do like the idea of him being this regular guy who's so obsessed about revenge that he's going to go to the ends of the earth. He's going to hire a crew. He's going to put all this money that he somehow has into all this stuff. I'm not sure how he's affording any of this expedition, but who cares, really? At the end of the day, nothing really adds up in this film. Aquaman's also a father. Early on, we find out he has a baby, kind of make him a little bit more humanized, I suppose, with Mara. She is back. I know Amber Heard is a touchy subject for some. People are boycotting the film because of the Johnny Depp fiasco with her and the court stuff, and I don't care about any of that. People have their personal lives. People have a lot of problems in their lives. If we're going to boycott things based on actors being garbage people, there's not going to be a lot of movies left to watch. And imagine that. Every movie that comes out, there are hundreds of people that touch the film, from the editors, to the grips, to the camera people, to the screenwriters, to the producers. In that pool of people, there's probably a dozen just awful trash individuals that have some really bad skeletons in their closet. We can't. We have to separate, folks. We have to separate. I beg you. I plead with you to just move past it. Anyway, she sucks in this anyways. Amber Heard's never been an actress where I'm like, oh man, what a great performance here. And this time is, she just feels out of place. I will say impressive cleavage. That's pretty much all I'm taking away from the character, is very nice cleavage on display whenever she's there. As for Momoa, he seems less, I don't know, something's wrong with him in this one. I don't know if it's the look, because he seems a bit heavier this time around, probably from all the Guinness that he's drinking. Maybe his heart's not in it anymore, because in the back of his mind, he's like, this is probably my last ride. The ride's over. I don't know. And I have to believe that they recycled that stupid about 15 times. He sounds like Goofy. Every time he jumps off a cliff, he hits a statue, he beats up some dudes, there's that sound effect. It's awful. They need to stop using it. That said, the movie wasn't awful. Two hours is still too long for a movie like this. I want it shorter. If you give me a 90 minute, even a 110 minute film, I can feel complete. There is still downtime in this that has no real purpose. We could have cut an action scene or two and not miss the step. There are a lot of explosions. Shit is blowing up 24-7. If you're going to this for an action movie, you'll be pretty happy, I think. There is some really great action. There's some fantastic spectacle. I said it in my out of theater reaction, but this really does feel like Lord of the Rings for kids. It feels like children's Lord of the Rings. It's light. It's pumpy. It's light. It's poppy. It's pulpy is the word I was looking for. I combined poppy and pulpy into pompy. It's pompy. We'll say that as well. It's pompy. And overall, it's just kind of a shit show. Some stuff looks great. Some stuff looks terrible. Some of the dialogue is just really bad. At one point, Arthur Curry goes, yeah, he's back again. Mantis back, but he's stronger now and he has more powers. He's going to be tougher to defeat. It's just so dumb. It's the most stock dialogue you could possibly get. Nothing inspiring here. So keep it short. Keep it tight. Keep it sweet. We can move on. My son, who's 11, did not see this and I regret not taking him to be honest with you. Movies cost a lot of money now and I'm really getting sick of taking my kids to movies that suck. I think he would have had a great time. And I really do think Aquaman 2, the sweet spot as far as age goes is probably 8 to 15 year old boys. That's really the target audience for this one. This feels like a movie catered to younger kids and that's fine. I mean, the Marvels came out by the MCU side of things. I had a good time with that. It was an hour and 45. It's a fast food meal. You get in, you get out. You didn't feel like you wasted your whole day away with it. If you're going to make dumb crap with a lot of explosions and one-liners and it's colorful and fun and just silly, keep it short. Keep it simple. The Marvels did that. Aquaman 2 almost does that as well. It's a little longer than it needs to be, but otherwise I don't have any major gripes with it. I didn't go into this expecting some really profound great film because I saw the first one and it wasn't that at all. So this, I think, does a better job of at least going in one direction. Now the direction might not be what some people wanted. For instance, me, when I saw the first movie, James Wan obviously has a lot of horror movies under his belt. He's really good at that. The scene in the trench where Curry and Mara dive over the boat and we get that wide-angle shot of all those creatures swimming after him into the deep dark black sea. It looks so good and that flair is lighting him up. That's fantastic. I would have loved to see a James Wan horror style Aquaman movie, but he put it in the first one in that little section. Here he has not given us that. There is a kind of slow build first act with a couple of intriguing things that end up going to just dumb bill. It always starts out with a mystery that's like, ooh, what's in here and how do we unlock this and what's this going to lead to? Well, ultimately always leads to the same thing. A guy getting superpowers and then he's tougher to beat. That's really what it comes down to. He attempts to do some stuff with the story or I guess not him. He did. He did co-write it. I'm looking at. Oh, interesting. Jason Momoa has a writing credit on this as well, along with David Leslie Johnson, Mick Goldrick. That's one person. That's a long name. A lot of writers on this apparently and you can kind of tell because there's a bunch of ideas at play. Some of them seem pretty one dimensional. Some are definitely not fleshed out enough. And at the end of the day, you have a pretty okay to kind of stupid movie that you'll forget about probably in a week and whatever. It was entertaining enough for me. I do not recommend you rush out and see this or even see it in theaters if you did not like the first movie at all. If you were like half on board and you want something a little faster, Aquaman 2 delivers that. It is quicker. I do like the chemistry with the brothers enough. That worked well. A lot of good spectacle. Some really great action in the third act. I should say the third act. There's some freaking sweet one-on-one fights, especially at the weigh-in. I was like, okay, this is cool. This is visceral. This is great. And yeah, I don't really have anything else to say. I think I talked enough. Aquaman 2, fine. You could have ended worse on the DCEU. You could have ended worse. This is just a fizzle out and that's good enough. All right. Let me know your thoughts on this movie. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did it just disappoint you all around? Or are you like me and you thought, yeah, okay, fine. Villain was whatever. Okay, yeah. Kind of, I didn't like the setup for Black Manta to begin with, so it's not like I had any high expectations from that character. But overall, not terrible. Just a watchable disposable thing. Let me know. Put it in the comments. Please like the video if you in fact like the video and the ramblings and the rants and the whatever I'm doing here. Subscribe again. I beg you. 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