Too Little, Too Late

Like its predecessor, it’s big, loud, dumb-yet-fun, generic action entertainment. Just maybe a little less of all that than last time around, but compensated for by being juuuuuuust a tiny little bit more noticeably derivative (#sarcasm). At one point Captain Quint and his War-Rocket-Ajax-Except-It’s-A-Submarine crew use some Squiddy Sentinels to break in to Talokan after Aquaman rescues his brother from the Soldier Mummies in Hamunaptra and brings him to underwater Jabba’s Palace so they can find out how to get to undersea Minas Morgul before Evil Iron Man, under the influence of Fish Sauron because he wields The-One-Ring-Except-It’s-A-Trident, does. No, there was nothing not fun about typing that sentence. Now, where was I… 

The CG creature and set designs are cool, but, also just like in the first one, there’s entirely too much of it, so after awhile it all just became an assault of visual noise that left me (once again) wondering, “wait… what even happened in the finale?” literally minutes after the credits rolled. Momoa’s fun, Amber Heard is a waste of space, Yahya Abdul-Mateen is great, I still can’t understand a literal word that comes out of Dolph Lundgren’s mouth, Randall Park was good (if not underwritten), and Patrick Wilson is the MVP here for classing up the joint.

Anyway, rest in pieces, DCEU. This was a one-hopper that got you to first base uncontested, but, alas, the game was already over.

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