R.I.P., DC Extended Universe. I wouldn’t call theirs “a good run” through-and-through, but it had worthy moments. It’s a shame only a handful of us attended the farewell party in theaters, a.k.a. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. It’s also a shame this rather expensive, mostly underwater half-CG-cartoon sequel was only the year’s second-best DC film.

Previously on Aquaman: the half-Atlantean Arthur Curry a.k.a. Aquaman is the king of Atlantis! And he’s a superhero! And a Justice Leaguer! And sometimes a fall-down drunk! Five years later he and hydrokinetic longtime partner Mera (Amber Heard, who’s in this a lot more than clickbait rumormongers swore she’d be) are married and have a baby son, li’l Arthur Junior. Like many viewers, he loves his family but hates his job, now that he know what real kingly work entails. (Bureaucracy! Ombudsmanship! Deference to a reigning committee that paralyzes any attempts at actual leadership!) He’s still close to his parents (Temuera Morrison and Nicole Kidman) but misses his mentor Vulko, who’s Sir Not Appearing in This Film.

(About that: two months ago DC Comics released a “midquel” tie-in, the Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Special, that tells a few tales set between the two films. In one, Vulko takes a massive wound to save Aquaman’s life and ends up comatose in a water hospital, setting up Willem Dafoe’s absence here. Sometime between that script’s approval and this screenplay’s production, someone decided Vulko just needed to die…ostensibly heroically, but offscreen between films. They don’t even say his name here. What sins did Dafoe commit to merit the Poochie treatment?)

Anyway: what should be a warm-and-fuzzy return of our old friends from a pretty decent hero-spectacle gets off immediately on the wrong fin as we open with a coral-calcified Warner Brothers logo sunken to the bottom of the sea like the Titanic, an apt metaphor for their DCEU line. Within seconds we’re flung into an obligatory hero-fight opener punching and flinging henchmen to the tired, overused biker-grind of “Born to Be Wild”. A gear-shift to home-life whimsy features baby Artie peeing in Daddy’s face, albeit with a super-powered twist. As with quite a few current comics, DC’s target audience is sixtysomething Adam Sandler fans.

Much of Lost Kingdom‘s first half dwells in that same valley of low expectations. While Aquaman shows us his new normal, classic baddie Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) dourly launches his comeback vendetta with a fetch-quest for a new super-weapon, the Black Trident. It’s more than a green-magicked evil twin of Aquaman’s Trident of Neptune: it’s possessed by the spirit of its creator Kordax (Game of Thrones‘ Pilou Asbæk), evil dead king of a legendary underwater land called Necrus (hence the movie’s title). Kordax of course means to use Manta for his own sinister ends, but Manta seems cool with being an undead wizard’s toady as long as he gets to murder Aquaman for leaving his dear pirate dad to die in the first one. There’s also a diversion involving a vicious tentacled guardian kaiju until it abruptly stops guarding and disappears for the next ninety minutes, only to reappear fleetingly in the final act as if Manta had recruited it all along.

Phase II of the comeback sees the Manta/Kordax team (Mandax?) taking five short months to assemble an entire large-scale evil factory lair furnished with modern supervillain tech and Necrus relics, plus larger accessories such as a platoon of Jon Peters giant robot spiders uncleverly refurbished as giant robot octopi. Also aiding and abetting Our Villains is returning scientist-minion Dr. Shin (WandaVision‘s Randall Park), who’s too skittish for his punchlines to meet the comic-relief quota. His most impressive quality proves to be his plot-driven super-immunity to both massive explosions and accountability for his crimes. Park is just too darn affable to commit to full-on evil, and nobody can stay mad at him.

Together this mini-Legion of Doom has domination plans that rely on a top-secret fuel called orichalcum. In our world it’s an ancient metal alloy thought lost to the ages. Its chemical properties vary from one fictional world to the next. In Skyrim orcs use its ore to forge weapons and armor. In Kingdom Hearts it’s an ingredient for synthesizing cool magic items. Here, it’s hyper-toxic super-duper-coal, whose evil gaseous emissions are ten billion times worse than the worst real-life nonrenewable energy sources and will ravage all of Earth above and below the surface. Granted, pro-environmental themes are standard with every underwater hero — a passion Aquaman often shares with his brother-from-another-publisher Prince Namor of Different Atlantis. But the characters tag-team the exposition about this threatening, menacing substance with boilerplate cribbed from every anti-climate-change pamphlet ever and pound the real-world parallel into the audience’s skulls with heavier fists than Don’t Look Up‘s panic-stricken meathooks. And guess which nation is keeping all the orichalcum stockpiled where no one can get to it without planning a magical heist? Hint: it’s underwater and its name rhymes with “Fat Mantis”.

So Our Heroes have to save not just Atlantis, but the whole world — from its pretty blue skies to its Stygian trenches — plus foil the whole “revenge” thing that is Manta’s singular, thin-as-yellowing-newsprint trait. Much of the first half is by-the-numbers, rife with large-scale skirmishes between CG hordes rendered into visual gobbledygook, a motion-smoothing mess of crisscrossing action-flurries (even on a fake IMAX screen, as our family saw). Then to my surprise, a true film rarity occurred: the second half got better. The battles whip out more surprises and are 40% more lucid. The jokes get funnier. Abdul-Mateen’s monologues get more convincing and less Silver Age grrr-argh fist-shaking. I’ve no idea which of the four credited writers to thank for the rewrites (including director James Wan and Momoa himself), but things definitely improved, as if the runes on the Trident of Neptune came to stand for “hope”.

Best of all, which is a phrase I have never used to describe Patrick Wilson, Lost Kingdom reveals its true calling when Wan takes a risk and leans into him hard. In his darkest hour Our Hero turns in desperate need to his half-brother Orm, the last person he’d ever want as an ally. The Convict Formerly Known as Ocean Master has been languishing in water prison ever since Arthur defeated him and acceded to the throne, yet let him live. The requisite jailbreak and subsequent team-up invigorates the adventure with a dose of Odd Couple chemistry from the sibling rivalry between Arthur the musclebound do-gooder party-bro and Orm the deposed ruler and anti-human bigot. They have a lot to hash out, but they agree on the most important hot-button topic: squabbling over the throne will be pointless if there’s no longer an Atlantis for anyone to rule.

Wilson is a perfectly irritable and irritating opposite to Arthur, ambiguously on board as the erstwhile Big Bad whose warfare spurred mass casualties and whose surface-dweller genocide plans were on the drawing board, but who, like, isn’t totally Chaotic Evil. As the two macho men join forces in classic enemy-of-my-enemy fashion, they’re amusing and in sync as they learn Very Special Lessons about brotherhood, redemption, forgiveness, and the dangers of unearthing world-ruling magic artifacts. (These people learned nothing from Indiana Jones.) I’m not even annoyed that their shtick is practically an homage to Thor and Loki. No one pretends otherwise — Arthur’s nonstop super-quippy nicknaming list for Orm even includes calling him “Loki”.

That buddy-bro tour isn’t the film’s only resemblance to Thor: The Dark World. It also isn’t the only pop-culture remixing in evidence. Blockbuster-flick fans will feel echoes of Black Panther‘s ending, note how the hero’s journey courses through not one but two Mordors, laugh at size-5X Skull Island bugs, and wonder why Rupert Gregson-Williams’ score keeps randomly wormholing into Tangerine Dream discotheque throwbacks. Regardless, Wan and company eventually rein in DC’s grimdark side, chart a firmer course through and away from the dumber bits, and find room for big bold fun. It’s hard to be mean toward a shameless popcorn flick that gives us giant dancing sea life, a tactical octopus riding a seahorse, a complete monopoly on cinematic trident duels (including a Final Boss Battle finishing move that’s familiar and yet not a move ever performed with a trident), actual scenes of Aquaman’s trademark Fish Whisperer superpower, the satisfaction of letting nearly all its good guys have big-hero fight-scene moments (yes, even Johnny Depp’s ex), and almost no direct references to the Snyderverse whatsoever unless you count the presence of Gotham TV news.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is an uneven ride and ignores serious questions about whether its villains will or should be held responsible for their transgressions, but I suppose it’s unfair to keep nitpicking a universe on its deathbed. It’s predictably inferior to the first Aquaman, but it made better use of its compromised resources than some other films in its bloodline.

Speaking of which: while we’re at this point anyway, behold what could’ve been a separate MCC listicle but won’t be because I don’t feel like writing new capsule summaries about each of them. Midlife Crisis Crossover presents a very special buried lede:

Every DC Extended Universe Film, Ranked!

Please note the following list doesn’t include the four-hour Justice League Snyder Cut, which I haven’t seen because we don’t have Max yet. I’m uninterested in ranking two different versions of the same film anyway, no matter how radically different they might be. Counting them as two separate films implies they relay two separate series of events that are all in continuity. I therefore choose to count the first version for which WB studio execs implied with a straight face, “Yes, this is a finished art product that we absolutely stand behind 100%.”

Anyway: onward!

1. The Suicide Squad
2. Birds of Prey
3. Wonder Woman
4. Blue Beetle
5. Aquaman
6. Shazam!
7. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
8. Suicide Squad
9. Man of Steel
10. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
11. Justice League
12. Wonder Woman 1984
13. The Flash
14. Black Adam
15. Shazam! Fury of the Gods

…so that’s finished. Yes, I know you disagree. That’s how these things work.

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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Other returnees blessed with increased screen time include Dolph Lundgren’s neighborly King Nereus, affording him far more physical action than Creed II did; and the voice of John Rhys-Davies, whose cameo in the first one is noticeably expanded, complete with fight scenes and entire punchlines. (Admittedly, until the credits rolled I thought it was Matt Berry doing a Rhys-Davies impression.)

Newcomers include Vincent Regan (Luther: The Fallen Sun, Netflix’s One Piece) as an ancient king in flashback; and special guest Martin Short voicing a seedy underwaterworld club owner whose introductory theme song (!!) resembles the Goblin King’s theme from Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road.

How about those end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene during the Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom end credits. For those who tuned out prematurely and really want to know, and didn’t already click elsewhere…

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[…insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship…]

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…in a coda to his epilogue that came before the end credits, Orm continues enjoying his very first burger at a surface-world seaside restaurant when a cockroach crawls across the other side of the table. Remembering his first roach-tasting back at Devil’s Deep, he grabs it, nestles it between the burger and the bun, and takes a big bite. His thin smile never fades as he continues chewing.

Fitting, I suppose, that we close with one last apt metaphor for the DCEU line.