As someone who loved the original “Aquaman” movie, I was looking forward to the sequel, “Aquaman the Lost Kingdom.” Unfortunately, the sequel didn’t live up to the success of the original. 

Parts of the movie felt slow while other parts had an abundance of information packed into just a few minutes. The plot also felt clunky and repetitive and many plot points felt unexplained, leading to this movie’s lack of success.

The film picks up a few months after the end of the first film. Arthur Curry is now a parent and he is attempting to convince Atlantis to reveal itself to the surface. The main conflict of the film is Aquaman’s fight with the Black Mamba as he attempts to kill Aquaman to avenge his father’s death.

The movie focused on climate change as one of its major themes. Black Mamba’s energy source was a large producer of greenhouse gasses. But, the plot point felt out of place in the movie because it attempted to portray global warming as a phenomenon that was caused by one person rather than an issue for the whole world. This led the movie’s attempted activism to fall flat.

The scenery and visual effects in the movie, however, were some of the biggest highlights. The view of Atlantis was breathtaking and felt very real. The use of dreams and flashbacks was powerful and used different techniques to show emotion. 

Amidst the clunkiness of the plot, the film’s soundtrack still stood out. The directors used techniques to make it hard to tell if the music was done by the orchestra in the film or if it was part of the story. This made all the music feel important and helped me become immersed in the movie. In one particularly funny moment a sea creature plays fight music throughout an entire scene.

In contrast to the prequel which developed Aquaman’s relationships with other characters and showed the personalities of the characters, those relationships took a back seat in the new film and the movie was more focused on sci-fi battle scenes with excessive visual effects. At times it was difficult to tell who was fighting or what was going on. The film would have been enhanced by 

Nonetheless, Jason Momoa feels like the perfect actor for Aquaman. He elicited laughter through his wit during the battle scenes. His banter with his brother Orm, played by Patrick Wilson, fits perfectly into their scenes together and helps bond the brothers who fought in the prequel.

Overall, this movie was not as good as the original but still was engaging at some points. The film often focuses on foreshadowing future moments in the universe to set up future movies. This would be a great watch for fans of the characters or the universe but for everyone else, I would recommend finding another movie to watch.