2023-12-20 16:56:05
DC certificate
Chose rare, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was not screened to French journalists ahead of its release, like other recent Warner blockbusters. “Are films that are not shown to the press necessarily rubbish?”wondered an article from 20 Minutes including some revealing testimonies. In any case, it is difficult not to conclude that distributors know very well what they have in their hands. They can barely push back the deadline, praying that the Parisian critics aren’t brave enough to go to a public preview or that the pushover influencers are louder than them.
A strategy which can work, the studios having succeeded for several years in passing off their promotion as information, but which betrays a general panic at Warner. It is clear that producers and distributors of DCEU films are still in the middle of a damage control operation, ensuring with less and less success that the people who talk about the saga are devoid of the slightest critical spirit.
Nobody is fooled. Like Shazam 2 et The Flash, Aquaman 2 was born in total industrial chaos, burning tens of millions of dollars through rewrites, various and varied postponements, messy reshoots, disastrous test screenings and other changes in direction or strategy of the studio. Like Shazam 2 et The Flash, it bears the stigma of post-production being pure and simple butcheryadding then removing cameos from Batmen for example from the montage.
Aquaman 2 is therefore less of a real blockbuster thana kind of underwater Frankenstein’s monster, the approximate result of dozens of artistic and economic compromises. At this point, the firm’s executives are just gritting their teeth and buttocks in the hope that this final opus does not suffer the same fate as its peers. After all, it follows the biggest hit in the DCEU and it remains directed by James Wan, even if his style is barely discernible behind the gaping wounds left by the catastrophic management of the franchise.
Everyone is impatiently awaiting the overhaul organized by Peter Safran and James Gunn, who would have supervised the last wave of reshoots. Whatever we think of the director of The Suicide Squadhe will not be able to do worse, unless he entrusts the realization of the next Batman to a lemur. And even.
Let Momoa dance
However, on paper, it was indeed the least risky project. With a budget of at least 205 million dollars (or approximately 14 Godzilla Minus One), he only had to reproduce the winning recipe of the fun first film: a pulp approach, a simple storyline, underwater kaijus and horror overtones. But if the general plot is very childish, to the point of recycling the same villains – this time with green eyes – and playing an eco-card that would make Don’t Look up for the latest IPCC report, the narrative and visual division plunges everything into permanent confusionespecially during a more than laborious exposure.
Aquaman 2 is torn between Wan’s desire for colorful pop entertainment and the imperatives of the studio, mistreating most of its protagonists without managing to offer a show worthy of the name. Or even watchable without getting seasick. Besides Jason Momoa, who rehashes his act as a gruff metalhead daddy, each secondary character is only a vague silhouette, the prize of the figuration probably going to Amber Heard, in the crosshairs internet communities and therefore reduced to the function of a laying hen who comes to save her husband’s loaves when the pseudo-scenario requires it.
An under-characterization which could have left room for a generous spectacle if Wan had been able to follow through with his ideas and his references, ranging from space opera (the pirates’ lair) to adventure cinema (the volcano), in through an explicit quote from Planet of the Vampires (the ship of the wicked). Unfortunately, its almost Lovecraftian desires and themes are also crushed by a scattered narration and strawberry cutting. And it’s not the stunted action sequences, culminating in two illegible digital sequence shots, that will compete with the stupid, if generous, bravura bits of Aquaman first of the name.
Aquaman from B to Z
Bad screenplay, non-existent characterization, generic music, cheap show… But what is it all about? Aquaman 2 ? Polygons. Ugly. The rhyme has resonated all year in Hollywood: convoluted production means lack of preparation, tight deadlines, and disgusting special effects. James Wan’s modesty would make it easier if half of the feature film did not take place underwater and therefore in 100% digital environments. The approximations of certain shots may well save the abstruse dialogues in spite of themselves (Dolph Lundgren’s crown is funnier than all of the film’s jokes), the whole thing is mind-bogglingly ugly.
This overload of sloppy CGI should have sutured the recomposed corpse ofAquaman 2, but only manages to spoil the last traces of the uninhibited spectacle dear to the director. Weighed down by Warner’s improvisations and a poor technical bill, his fun little B series turns into a big misshapen Z series.
More Neil Breen than James Cameron
Shazam 2 barely concealed its Skittles ad, Aquaman 2 features huge product placement for Guinness (because alcohol is cool, kids). An indication of what the studio pundits are now fueled by, probably. James Gunn and his gang should step in before they go crack, even if all the damage they’ve done to the genre this year doesn’t guarantee it a bright future. What if this was the ultimate sign that it was better to move on rather than put a part back in the machine?
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