Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom

Ocean’s Razor

Aquaman And
The Lost Kingdom
Directed by James Wan
USA/UK/Canada/Australia/Iceland
2023 Warner Bros
UK Cinema Print

Okay, so I was kinda putting off seeing this one but I’ve finally got around to looking at Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom and, it plays much as the first one with me. I'd originally put off seeing the first film because the depiction of Aquaman looked closer to the modern day comics version of the character (although not really... I’ll pick up on that later) and it turned out to be a very entertaining, pulpy adventure movie. Bad word of mouth had put me off seeing this second one for a bit (the film was released over a week ago) but. once again, it turns out that the better a modern superhero movie is, the less the audience seems to like it. This year has been full of decent superhero movies (with the one dud being The Flash but, even that had some nice things about it, reviewed here) but none of them have really been making the kind of box office they should have been making. Heck, a few of them even ended up on my year’s best list and, while Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom doesn’t quite make the grade as far as that’s concerned, it’s a pretty fun romp of an entertainment.

Granted, there are a few jokes which might be looked on as in fairly bad taste, especially to someone of my generation but, ultimately a combination of fine performances from Jason Momoa as the title character and Wan regular Patrick Wilson as former villain Orm, now sprung from jail and forced to team up with his brother to save the world from the threat of Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), coupled with a story which is a good fit for the inevitable action sequences (although it gets kinda confusing by the end of the picture) gives this movie a good old fashioned theatrical serial kinda feel and, indeed, one of the director’s admitted influences was the 1980s Flash Gordon movie,which is itself informed from the original 1930s comic strip and the movie serial versions.

There is one other influence which I spotted as ‘a thing’ but didn’t honestly expect it to be anything more than a coincidence, until I looked up the IMDB trivia and found that the director is citing it as such. That’s the black, military style uniforms and helmets worn by Manta’s underwater army, which are very reminiscent of the costumes worn by the main protagonists of Mario Bava’s Planet Of The Vampires (itself an influential film, of course, to a certain other late 1970s movie which I’ll not delve into again here).

So, it’s a fast moving action piece and both Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman are back as Aquaman’s wife and mother, respectively. Now, after all the fuss in real life Hollywoodland with Amber Heard, I was expecting the film makers to jettison her character quickly into the running time and, indeed, there’s certainly an early sequence which keeps her hospitalised for a good deal of the movie... but she’s back in the heat of the action by the end of the film and I’m glad to say she’s not just treated as a throwaway character here. Dolph Lundgren and Temuera Morrison also do good stuff with their returning characters in this and so the film has a really good feel to it (although Willem Dafoe’s character seems to have died between movies, it has to be said).

And although this version of Aquaman is trying to be the modern iteration of the hero, I’m delighted to say that this is in appearance only. The ideas and creations of the world rendered in this underwater universe are pretty much clever and witty (for the most part), H2O fuelled versions of their ‘surface dweller’ counterparts, rather than giving us something totally alien in its nature... so, yeah, it’s really not a million miles from the golden and silver age stories of Aquaman from many decades ago that I used to read, for sure.

Rupert Gregson-Williams’ score to the movie is also pretty good, reminding me a lot of Lorne Balfe’s outstanding score for Black Adam at times but, alas, there is no proper CD release of this at time of writing. C’mon people, get this score out on the only format worth publishing it on!

Okay, so a short review but bottom line is that I had another, surprisingly, good time with Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom and... there is a mid-end credits scene which is a nice punchline to a gag earlier in the movie. But with that, this is also a heads up reminder that, due to the stupidity of those in charge of the DC movies at present, this will be the last of the DC Cinematic Universe films in this iteration... instead, all those beautifully connecting linking devices from various end credits have been jettisoned, along with the great actors involved, while a famous director has an experimental tinker and reboots everything. Probably the silliest thing you could do at the moment and, if there really is any rivalry between comic book companies DC and Marvel, one wonders if the person in question is really working covertly for Marvel because, with this braniac move, Marvel have ‘won’ for sure. It’s a shame the DCCU didn’t have the stamina of their nearest competitors but, there you go, these things happen I guess.

The Book Of Boba Fett

Duel Of The Fetts

The Book Of Boba Fett
Airdate: 29th Dec 2021 - 9th Feb 2022
Lucasfilm

Warning: Spoilers in this one.

After two seasons of The Mandalorian (reviewed here and here), some of which was enjoyable and some of which dragged considerably, I was pretty sure Disney has managed to dilute the Star Wars brand which they’d bought from George Lucas so much that, they really couldn't even get a halfway decent TV show out of it. I still believe that and I think the franchise stopped being special somewhere around the release of the first season of The Mandalorian and the cinematic release of Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (my review of that 'not so special' movie can be found here). However, I have to say that their latest series, The Book Of Boba Fett almost changed my mind on that... almost.

This one opened really strongly for the first four episodes and then... well it felt like it suddenly changed its brief somewhat and only regained some of what made those four episodes so good around about the seventh and final installment. One of the strengths of those first four is that they take place in two separate time zones... the first takes place not long after the sail barge battle in Star Wars Episode VI - Return Of The Jedi (reviewed here) and once again stars Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett. Which is a nice bit of symmetry as, in addition to making the role his own in his guest appearances in series two of The Mandalorian, he also of course, played Boba’s father, Djanga Fett, way back in Star Wars Episode II - Attack Of The Clones (reviewed by me here).

This finally shows us how Boba stopped himself from being digested by the Sarlac in Return Of The Jedi, how he gets taken prisoner by a tribe of Tusken Raiders and then earns their trust, respect and over time, becomes the honourary human member of the tribe, negotiating for their rights on Tatooine before seeing them slaughtered. He then goes searching for his armour (which we don't see him finding as, I think it was already a told part of the tale in The Mandalorian?). The other time sequence, crosscut with these flashbacks via Boba’s dreams as he floats in a Bacta tank in numerous sessions, recovering from his wounds, follows on directly from the post credits sequence from the last series of The Mandalorian, where he kills Bib Fortuna and takes over Jabba The Hutt’s palace. However, with the city of Mos Espa under his protection for their tributes, this inadvertently brings war from those who would use the city for running spice. So it’s down to Boba to try and hire some muscle to get some ‘back up’ for the final showdown.

And it’s all great... except, in episode five, The Return Of The Mandalorian, it all stops dead and we just get a continuation of that show and, yeah, that episode really drags. And it’s pretty much the same for episode six, where The Mandalorian (played again by Pedro Pascale) goes off to visit Grogu and Luke Skywalker before going back to Tatooine to help Fett in his private war. So, yeah, we get to see Grogu again, the far from convincing ‘younged up’ version of Mark Hamil’s Luke Skywalker and also Rosario Dawson returning as ‘that other Jedi’ but, yeah, it’s all a bit saccharine and full of myth building, which really doesn’t seem all that important and, honestly, pretty dull. We all agreed in this household that we could really have done without those two episodes.

When we finally get to the finale, the characters we grew to know, including Ming-Na Wen (from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, reviewed by me here) continuing on from her time in The Mandalorian as Boba’s personal bodyguard, are all back in it again properly and it’s an hour of shoot outs and giant beast punch ups (Boba has trained a new Rancor to replace the one Luke Skywalker killed in Jabba’s palace in Return Of The Jedi... it even gets its own King Kong moment) which are mostly satisfying and gives a nice dramatic ending to the series, although it does get a bit Mandalorian-centric in specific deus ex machina moments you just know are going to happen.

Overall, apart from those two clunkier episodes I talked about, it was pretty great. I especially thought the various Tusken Raider scenes were something special and, frankly, if it had been seven episodes of just Boba among the sand people, I would have been much happier. There are lots of famous guest directors and a fair few guest actors too such as Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and Bryce Dallas Howard but, there are also a few guest spots for legacy characters too, including one from The Clone Wars cartoon show which I haven’t seen (and don’t know if I’ll ever bother to getting around to).

The music is not so great in terms of fitting in with the Star Wars movies... although I did like the primitive opening theme tune. The shout backs to The Force Theme (well, Ben’s Theme in actual fact... let's get it right) and Yoda’s Theme felt a little out of place within the rest of the musical sound scape, to tell the truth... like they were plugged in rather than feeling like themes that could have grown from the whole... which I think says something about the style of the music being used. Star Wars has always been about trying to sound like John Williams and, while I understand the absolute necessity of getting away from that to keep the future of the franchise ticking over, I think abandoning that sound in the way they have here and in The Mandalorian... just further dilutes the brand, as far as I’m concerned anyway.

All in all, though, I quite liked The Book Of Boba Fett, much to my surprise and, yeah, I’d much rather see a second series of this one rather than going on another trip with The Mandalorian but, I don’t know what the plans are at the moment... everything seems to be in a state of flux over at Disney, at least on the public facing side, where the Star Wars franchise is concerned. But count me in for another series of this one, for sure.

The Mandalorian Series 2

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian Series 2
2020 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Eight episodes.

Warning: Loads of big spoilers.

Well... I’ve been holding off from writing this review for a week or so* because... Series 2 of The Mandalorian was okay. And that’s all. And that’s pretty much the problem here. When I was a kid and later a teenager, Star Wars was a hallmark for something really special (even the two not so good movies, Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith). If there was a new piece of the franchise coming then it was something to be looked forward to. It was something to set your sights on to get you through the year. And then George Lucas sold it to Disney. For, I’m sure, the best of intentions actually but, well, here we are.

The Disney treadmill got under way with a good start on The Force Awakens but then managed to turn out the somewhat ‘out of synch in terms of continuity’ Rogue One and the disastrous The Last Jedi (which looked really great but completely managed to screw the franchise up completely). When we got to the Star Wars film which did capture a lot of the things which made the originals special without being too ‘in awe’ of the lineage, Solo, the film under performed at the box office... something I personally believe was solely to do with stepped up bad timing and the lack of studio recognition as to how badly people thought previous release was (The Last Jedi). The last movie, The Rise Of Skywalker was pretty good but it spent most of it’s time trying to take away the bad taste of The Last Jedi to the point where it just seemed to jump the shark a little and swerve in a bit of the wrong direction.

And then there’s The Mandalorian. The first season followed it’s old TV western formula and managed to have some really good episodes, tempered with some less than stellar ones. Series Two is, I have to say, more consistent in its tone but, alas, somewhat straddles the line between great and terrible and seems, I dunno, just a little bland and mediocre. It’s a nice thing to watch and that’s no bad thing... but it’s not a great thing to watch, I’m sad to say.

The two main highlights which actually got me bothering to tune into this thing again were the return of two key characters from the main film franchise... Bobba Fett and Luke Skywalker. Alas, although Bobba Fett was played by the actor Temuera Morrison, the person who played Bobba’s father Jango Fett in the aforementioned Attack Of The Clones, he doesn’t make too much of an impact here. Granted, he elevates a couple of the episodes with his presence but ultimately, doesn’t serve much purpose other than to draw the audience interest from the original movies and to have a post credits sequence at the end of the last episode where he sets up a new Bobba Fett TV show.

His sudden reappearance from the dead is never really explained (I think it might have been already explained in some cartoons) and, due to some fast thinking from the writers in terms of the way the story goes in the last episode, he never gets to meet Luke Skywalker so Luke can kick his backside for what he did to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. I’m guessing that would have taken too long out of an episode to write in and so, yeah, they don’t even try to cater for that confrontation.

And as for Luke Skywalker... well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark Hamill but this is the worst return of the jedi I could have imagined. They keep his black hood up when he’s lightsabering to death a new squad of battle droids which, frankly, look like they’ve been cribbed from Hammerstein wearing his old war head from The A.B.C Warriors strip in 2000AD comic. Presumably this is to give the effects team less CGI because, when he does reveal his face, they’ve used that technique which is sometimes successful and sometimes not, of making people look like they did decades ago. Alas, here it just looked as fake as the CGI generated Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia from Rogue One. Also, despite ‘The Child’ being an obvious Force user, Luke just seemed somewhat out of place in the world of The Mandalorian, truth be told. At least that’s how it felt to me.

Pedro Pascal and his semi-regular companions were all on top form again but even special guest appearances such as Rosario Dawson and Katee Sackhoff, two very fine actresses, didn’t really distract from the ‘lack of special’. It was a nice and somewhat entertaining show, for sure but... yeah, it feels like Star Wars has really lost its magic since the Disney deal and I do believe that they are going to disprove the old adage “nothing succeeds like excess” next year with a whole host of Star Wars TV shows and another movie which, I suspect, will dilute the brand down even more. I’m trying to stay positive here because Star Wars has been in my life since I was nine years old, when I first saw the original movie in cinemas at the tail end of 1977 but, yeah, it feels like its almost becoming a chore to watch, in some ways. And now that The Child, aka Grogu, looks like he’s departed the series for good (possibly to be slaughtered by Kylo Wren in a decade or so after the setting of this show), it seems to me that the powers that control the current version of the Star Wars universe may be pushing their luck a bit if they are thinking of continuing this for a third season. I guess we’ll see what happens but, believe me, I am sorry I couldn’t be more positive about this latest show. But it just feels like more counterfeit Star Wars to me.

*At time of writing, last year sometime. Sorry, if I could get more excited about it I’d have got it up sooner.