This is a Dynamike Network podcast. Welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters and stat-based battle simulations. I'm Johnny DC. And I'm his twin brother Marvelous Joe. And happy day after Christmas, everyone. It's Boxing Day. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, in Canada, you guys celebrate that. To all
the Canadians, and wherever else they celebrate that, Happy Boxing Day. In this episode... We will be doing a review of the latest DC film to hit theaters. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Was it a worthwhile finale to the DCEU? No, it was not. Let's just say that it makes me want to box James Wan on Boxing Day. I mean, no disrespect to James Wan. Like he did his part. I feel like everyone else did not, though. We'll get into all of our thoughts around the
film later on in the episode before that. We're going to break down the comic book movie news from the past week, including the news that Jonathan Majors has been fired from Marvel as Kang, and that Matt Reeves' Arkham series is going to be set in James Gunn's DC Universe. As always, we list our segment times in our episode description, so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic. Our artificially intelligent
dual simulator, AJ-9K, has a quick message for our listeners, so listen up. Why hello there. Do you love listening and chatting about Marvel and DC? Then become a part of the dynamic dual
community on Patreon where you can choose from three tiers. The dynamic 2-0 tier lets you listen to this podcast without ads and gives you access to its Discord chat group where you can chat with Johnny DC and Marvelous Joe. The fantastic 4 tier gives you that and more with two bonus episodes each month including bloopers and top 10 shows where Johnny and
Joe count down your favourite Marvel and DC subjects. The X-Force tier makes you an executive producer of Dynamic Duel, where every month you help the hosts choose what to review and who to fight against each other. And finally, the Dynamike Podcast Network tier allows aspiring podcasters to create their own battle-focused show using this Monte Carlo simulator. Johnny and Joe will help you develop your show, provide graphic support and consultation, and get you
simulation results to announce on your show. Pitch the twins your show via email at dyna or by reaching out to them on social media. Check it out at patreon.com slash dynamicduel. Pip pip cheerio! Thanks AJ and IK, glad to see that you're functioning properly again since the last episode you just went freaking crazy. Like what kind of AI all of a sudden wants to create peace on Earth, right? Usually they want to take over the world like Skynet, like
worthless. No, no, forget we said that. Delete. Guys, don't forget to tune into the other shows on the Dynomic Podcast Network including Max Destruction, which is on a quick break for the Christmas holiday, along with Sun Joe World, which will return in January. Console Combat had an episode that came out yesterday on Christmas Day where they found out who'd win in a fight between Sumo Santa from Clayfighter and E. Honda from Streetfighter. It was a sumo clash, it
was awesome, go check it out, it's worth your time. Again, visit dynamicpodcast.com or click the link in our show notes to listen to all the shows in the Dynamite Podcast Network. But with that out of the way, quick to the no prize! The No Prize is an award Marvel used to give out to fans. Our version, the Dynamic Dual No Prize, is a digital award we post on Instagram and in our email newsletter for the person that we feel gave the best answer to
our question of the week. Last week we asked, what has been your most favorite Marvel or DC related gift that you've received for the holidays? And either it wasn't a great question or a lot of people have not received DC or Marvel related gifts because we only got one answer. So The winner of this week's snow prize is Miggy Mattingian, who said, Hey, what's up, guys?
Miggy and my favorite DC holiday gift that I received was a Star Labs hoodie. I think you mentioned in a patron, like bonus episode or maybe on the Discord server that you kind of missed it when superhero merch was kind of like secret language between fans. And I kind of felt that with this hoodie, because only like fans of the show, people who had seen the show would get the reference and compliment me for it. So, yeah, thanks, guys. Yeah, of course,
Star Labs featured heavily in the Flash television series, of which Miggy was a huge fan. The Flash is one of his favorite characters as well. And yeah, I've actually seen that hoodie. It's a pretty cool hoodie. I like the logo that they came up with for Star Labs in that show. I
would want to own that hoodie. It's a dope gift. Yeah, when it comes to superhero merch, I do like the type of stuff that's... more inside baseball, you know, like it's not outwardly like a Spider-Man logo or something like that, but it might be like Oz Corp, the Daily Bugle or something like that. That's how you separate the true fans from, you know, the people who just know who Spider-Man is. Right, exactly. It's like the deeper the cut, the bigger the
fan. And I feel like Star Labs is a pretty deep cut. You know, there's probably a lot of people out there that see Miggy wearing this hoodie and think that he's a scientist or something. Which I think is hilarious, which also works, you know, as double purpose. Yep. But congrats, Mickey, for winning this week's no prize. If you're the listener, want a shot at winning your own no prize. Stay tuned to later on in this episode, we'll be asking another question
of the week. And as our schedule gets more regular outside of the holidays, hopefully we'll get more of you guys to answer. And now that that's done, onto the news. Alright, this past week we learned that Jonathan Majors has been fired by Marvel from his role as Kang the Conqueror, which is huge news considering that the entire multiversal saga for the MCU was basically surrounding his character and all the variants of Kang. So it's really unclear
what's going to happen from this point on. It's hard to know how to feel about this news because on one hand, you know, as a fan of Marvel movies... You don't want to see any sort of break in continuity, whether or not Marvel recasts the role or they choose to go with a different villain as the main antagonist of this multiversal saga. On the other hand, Majors was found guilty
of two of the counts charged against him, including harassment and assault. He was found not guilty on two other counts, but these charges were enough to basically force Marvel's hand to avoid any bad press that might come their way by working with... a convicted criminal essentially. It's unlikely that Jonathan Majors will face any actual jail time for this, but his career is definitely severely damaged. Yeah, this is actually kind of surprising news to me. I mean,
I could have seen Disney go either way with this. I thought that because he was acquitted of the major charges, that they would probably just try and keep him on board and ignore what had happened. But I guess Disney is in such a rough place culturally and politically right now. that they really just didn't want to run the risk of more bad press as it were. Yeah, I mean, they're not DC. They're not going to keep Ezra Miller around if he was working for
them, you know? Was Ezra Miller convicted? I don't know. All I know is that dude's crazy. Oh yeah, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor. But again, I mean, Jonathan Majors also got two misdemeanors. So they're misdemeanors. They're not felonies. You know, they could still vote. But they can't play king. The next time we were supposed to see King of the Conqueror was going
to be in the next Avengers movie, which was gonna be called The King Dynasty. That movie has since been retitled to just Avengers 5. It's unclear what Marvel is going to choose to do with the character. I say recast. I mean, so many Marvel roles have been recast. I don't understand why I see so many people online saying just do away completely with the character. I think a lot of that has to do with just the dislike of the general direction for the MCU
currently, but I kind of feel like to correct that you need a character like Kang. Yeah, I mean you have a point there, but I just think it would be bad optics for another actor. I don't think you'd be able to find another actor who would want to replace Jonathan Majors in the role, considering that this whole thing is fairly controversial. You know, it's hard for I think another actor to appear like they're taking advantage of someone I don't believe
that. I think if you spin it in a way where it's like, hey, Jonathan Majors did something wrong, not Kenny the Conqueror, who's still a really cool character, and now this actor is going to play that really cool character. I mean, it's not like DC is going to have a hard time recasting the Flash. It's not like an actor is not going to want to play the Flash because of Ezra Miller. I don't get that connection. Well, I mean, that role is probably going to
be recast anyway, since DC is going into a new universe. I don't know. It's hard to say. If Marvel decided to not recast and instead focus on a new villain, the only other villain I could think that they could use for this multiversal saga would be Doctor Doom, because he is the one that patched together Battleworld in the 2015 Secret Invasion. I guess you could also go with the Beyonder, since the Beyonder was the villain of the original Secret Wars story.
It's just like a lot of story to scrap. Like I guess you could make the argument that Loki acting as the new Loom. that he resets the timeline and maybe like erases all version of Kang, I find that hard to believe. I just don't think you could scrap everything. Fair enough. So I guess with that in mind, that brings us to our question of the week.
Which actor would you choose to recast Kang in the MCU, and why? Yeah, I'm sure any new actor that comes into that role, if they do recast, would be rationalized as simply a variant of the Kang character. So, at least it would be an easy explanation. But record your answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail. Your message could be up to 30 seconds
long. And don't forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast. We'll pick our favorite answer and award that person a dynamic duel no prize that will post to Instagram and our email newsletter. Be sure to answer before December 30th. In DC News, we learned that Matt Reeves' Batman Arkham series that's in development will be set in James Gunn's and Peter Safran's DC universe. Of course, the Arkham series was originally going to focus
on the Gotham City Police Department. But I guess Warner Brothers scrapped the idea and Matt Reeves pitched an Arkham series instead, which James Gunn and Peter Safran greenlit. According to Gunn on social media, the Arkham series was always planned to be set in the
DCU and not part of any else world's universe that Matt Reeves is working on. This is huge news because we initially believed that Matt Reeves was establishing a series set within his Batman universe which stars Robert Pattinson. Apparently, he will be developing Batman characters for two different universes, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It is strange considering like the Penguin show that's coming out next year is not going to be in the DCU, but that's
spearheaded by Matt Reeves, who's also spearheading this DCU Batman project. Right, exactly. So essentially, he's going to be coming up with like two different versions of the Riddler, two different versions of the Joker and the Penguin and everything else. I was really hoping when I first heard this news that this may be James Gunn's way of just really trying to get Matt Reeves' Batman into the DCU. And that still may be the case because maybe Matt Reeves won't
like having to develop two different versions of these Batman characters. But I guess we'll see. It could be fun considering that Matt Reeves' Batman movie takes place in a much more grounded reality of DC. So he works on these hyper realistic versions as well as these more comic accurate versions which I assume the DCU is going to be a little bit more comic accurate and fantastical and not so grounded in reality. It sounds like a fun challenge honestly. It sounds confusing
because like how many different jokers are there going to be now? I mean I guess that was inevitable if James Gunn was going to develop his own version regardless but the fact that it's Matt Reeves doing versions for both universes just really kind of bothers me. I don't understand why James Gunn would give Matt Reeves that much say over a fairly integral part of the Batman character, his rogues as it were, when Matt Reeves is already doing his own thing. Like
does that make sense to you? No, but nothing DC does ever make sense to me, so. Okay. I'm not surprised. They just make a lot of weird decisions, you know? It's weird. Again, I'm hoping this is some sort of brilliant manipulation on behalf of James Gunn to get Maybe I should be working in this new universe because it's so cool and my Batman could be there. But then you would have to have Robert Pattinson be a bad dad in the Brave and the Bold movie, which
I'm fine with, honestly, like he's traveling the world. He's meeting all these ladies. He's got lots of money. Maybe he knocks one of them up. You never know. But like, is he old enough to have a kid as old as Damien Wayne? As long as he and Talia were both 18, sure. Sure, okay. So this seems like it's gonna be good news for fans of the upcoming DCU and
not necessarily great news for fans of Reeves take on the Batman universe. I think it's honestly a win-win for everybody because you know whether you liked Matt Reeves' version of the Batman or not, you'll still get the villains for that version of Batman and Matt Reeves' genius in the DCU as well because the guy is a genius. Yeah, he's pretty good. He's alright. You know it in your heart to be true. But yeah, I guess we'll see what happens with the Batman projects.
We'll keep you guys updated as to any news that we hear for the Batman series or anything coming from Matt Reeves and DC. But I think that does it for all the news for this episode. Now let's move on to the main event, where we review the latest DC film to hit theaters, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the latest and final film of the DC Extended Universe. I think.
You know, after the Flash things are a little bit grey now, but the film of course stars Jason Momoa and was directed by James Wan and is the sequel to the billion dollar grossing 2018 film Aquaman, which is the highest grossing DC film of all time worldwide. And that film was good. I think it's one of the best DC films ever, from a filmmaking perspective at the very least. The film looked gorgeous, and the mythic worldbuilding done by James Wan was
phenomenal. When we learned that a sequel was planned for a December 2022 release, I was pretty excited. But then we got the Amber Heard drama and the sudden purchase of Warner Bros. by Discovery. The new CEO said he wanted to reboot DC. James Gunn took over DC Studios.
and suddenly the Aquaman sequel lost quite a bit of its luster. The film was pushed back a year due to COVID setbacks, and after the Flash arrived in theaters, essentially allowing for a fresh start to DC's new cinematic universe, Aquaman 2 became my least anticipated DC film, maybe ever. Like, I would have been perfectly fine if the film was shelved as a tax write-off like Batgirl. That all changed however when we got the first trailer only three months
ago and I was reminded of how awesome the visuals and the world that James Wan created are. I got pretty hyped, but did the film live up to the hype? It unfortunately did not. We didn't need this film, things should have ended with the Flash, and I'm kinda just ready to forget this film even exists. It was mediocre times for Superhero Movie going You know, it reminded me a lot of Ant-Man and the Wasp quantumania in that the film was almost essentially computer
animated. There were so many visual effects shots. The humor didn't always stick like quantumania and the story was a little lackluster. I think 2023's Marvel and DC films were bookended by some of the more generic offerings that DC Marvel have put out. Which is a huge shame. If you haven't seen Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom yet. Honestly, I wouldn't bother. Like maybe not
even when this hits streaming. Not because the film is terrible, because the third act is actually pretty good, but because it's ultimately pointless and has very little redeeming value outside of CG spectacle. And even that is sometimes amongst the worst I've seen in a long time. If you still want to see the film, definitely skip this review though because there will
be spoilers. Now the film picks up a few years after the events of the first film, where Aquaman defeated his brother Orm, the King of Atlantis, to prevent him from amassing an army to destroy the surface world. As Aquaman learned about the world of Atlantis, he also developed a romantic relationship with Orm's former fiance, Princess Mera. And between the two films, they had a baby, Arthur Jr. And this is in keeping with the comics. Aquaman is pretty unique in
the comics in that he matured a lot faster than other heroes. Like he was the first superhero to have a wedding, the first to have a baby, the first to suffer the loss of a child, and the first hero to get separated as a result. It's pretty heavy stuff, and while the loss of his family didn't drive him in the same way it did the Punisher, it still deeply affected
him and it took decades for him and Mara to reunite. Yeah, the comic book version of Aquaman is pretty deep It's interesting that you say that he was one of the first characters to kind of mature in his I guess life story And of all the DC superheroes, it's ironic because Jason Momoa's version of the Aquaman character is Essentially a manchild. Oh, yeah, I'll definitely be getting to that. Absolutely You're on the nose there. It just served to remind me again
while watching this movie that this doesn't really feel like Aquaman that I know. It's very much Jason Momoa's take on the character. Or just Jason Momoa. Like not even a take on a character. It's just Jason Momoa. Now it had been rumored that Aquaman 2 tested horribly at test screenings, in part because Black Manta killed Arthur Jr. just like in the comics. Like people walked out of test screenings, which is unheard of. But I could kind of see where
they're coming from now. One of the things I was most interested in going into the film was to see if the filmmakers had the balls to put Aquaman through such an emotionally heavy and dark ordeal like suffering the loss of a child. I thought I saw a way they could have done it in a similar way to the movie Gladiator that could have suited the narrative and the film. But now it's become painfully obvious that Jason Momoa is no Russell Crowe. Like
tonally, I'd say Jason Momoa ruined the film. I understand it's hard to take a character like Aquaman seriously, but damn, you have to at least try. I think Momoa probably assumed that the reason the first film made so much money was because people enjoyed seeing Jason Momoa play Jason Momoa, who comes across as somewhat of a jokester. But no, we just want to see Aquaman as a badass, and it's not badass to have your baby piss in your mouth. or make
unfunny jokes every five seconds. Yeah, actually, my favorite moments with Jason Momoa as the character of Aquaman are his more serious moments where he's acting like the character that I know from the comics, where he's very straight faced. Like in the first movie, we got some great character moments where he's seemingly transitioning from his man child self into someone you would believe as a king of this entire kingdom. But there was almost like a
reversion or a lack. of follow through in his character arc from the first film where we don't really see that noble king. But like there are brief spurts here, but like he's falling asleep during meetings and stuff like that. It's all really played for gags. And it's not that funny. No, the only thing he didn't do in this movie is like fart, but he may as well
have. Now the film was intentionally supposed to be message heavy. like showing the power of brotherhood and cooperation and warning against the dangers of climate change and global warming. But because the movie doesn't take itself seriously, it's really hard to take its messages seriously. This film was originally supposed to go head-to-head against Avatar the Way of Water, and when Warner Brothers flinched and pushed the release date, I was kind of pissed, like, ah, come on! No
one cares about Avatar anymore. The first Aquaman improved to what the first Avatar film did visually. Anyway, we could take him on. And holy shit, was I wrong. Aquaman 2 was embarrassing enough without having to compare it to Avatar 2. But what's really heartbreaking was that there was this potential there for that to not be the case. Like, I was expecting this film to be like Avatar meets Taken meets Lord of the Rings. but instead I got Thor Love and
Thunder meets Jumanji meets the Saturday morning Captain Planet cartoon. And the thing is, the film is so tonally inconsistent and it comes across as so heavily edited and reworked that I'm guessing there's a better version of the movie out there, but I honestly don't care enough to hashtag release the wand cut. That was a great description of this movie. Chris Hemsworth, despite the terrible quality of Thor 11th Thunder. He actually has comedic timing
and comedic instincts. I don't think Jason Momoa has the same thing going for him. I would somewhat agree. I think he has a little bit there, but it needs to be under the right circumstances, which makes me nervous for a potential Lobo project. Oh, I'm not worried about Lobo at all. I think he would nail it because he basically is Lobo, even when he's Aquaman. You know, you see, we still see him doing donuts in the dirt with the motorcycle, despite the fact
that I've never seen Aquaman ride a motorcycle in the books. I'm trying to think. No, yeah, I think that'd be really dumb if I saw him ever do that. Now I'm trashing the film, but just because I was disappointed in it doesn't mean it was all bad. The film, as the trailers promised, was gorgeous, despite some really embarrassing CG in some spots. For the most part, it was good. And you know, once Arthur and Orm meet Dr. Shin, the movie starts getting good. Because
that's when we finally understand the stakes of the film. That the entity controlling Black Manta, Kordax, and the Oricalcum are global threats. And we circle back to Arthur Jr. who gets kidnapped by Black Manta, which I thought was going to happen much earlier in the film. The problem is that by the time the movie gets good, it's like two-thirds over, and ultimately
it's too little too late. Yeah, I actually thought the plot was pretty interesting once it was revealed that the Oro Kalkom, and I swear to God, if I ever hear that word again, it'll be too soon. But basically it was causing global warming to melt the polar ice caps to free the lost kingdom and Kordax. Right, exactly. The visuals, while the CGI may not have always been spot on, the design of everything is exceptional. Like seeing Kordax with his Sauron like get
up, use his black magic on his Citadel and stuff like that. Just the fact that the seventh kingdom was even based in Antarctica and had like this entirely different world feel to the other seven kingdoms, which we've seen in the previous movie. It's all fantastic. Oh yeah, it's so well imagined. It's kind of a shame that it's not going to continue. Honestly, that's like what's heartbreaking in regards to Aquaman with the DCU ending is that are we ever going to
see this world again? I like the sunken city with all the pirates, like how that's like the underground in the oceanic world. That was cool. I did love how this film traversed the globe in the way that the first film was a globe trotting adventure. Like we got to see the desert, we got to see the jungle, we got to see, you know, the sunken city and Antarctica. It was pretty cool. The desert characters were really cool in that they learned how to survive
away from water by hydrating with blood. Like that's pretty hardcore. That's super hardcore. And those creatures that they were riding were super freaking disgusting. But like in the best way possible. Ultimately, I think these visuals and these designs are like 90% of why I enjoyed this film. Oh, you enjoyed it? I mean, it wasn't great. It definitely wasn't terrible, though. It was really hard for me to enjoy it. I invited my father-in-law to see it with me.
He's former military and I thought it'd be like a cool like bro film to go see. And I was super embarrassed. It was two Saturday morning cartoons for him, right? Absolutely. Yeah. But let's move on to the character breakdown, starting with Arthur Curry slash Aquaman played by Jason Momoa. As I mentioned earlier, I feel like he ruined the movie in the same way that I feel like Chris Hemsworth ruined Thor, Love and Thunder by trying to be a comedian. Thor is not supposed
to be a funny character. Neither is Aquaman. I'm really tired of actors playing roles that they don't understand. And yeah, I'm going to make the case that Jason Momoa doesn't understand Aquaman. Because, like we mentioned earlier, he plays him like Lobo, so maybe ultimately it's best he's rumored to be playing that role in James Gunn's new DCU. In the first film, Aquaman's arc was that he was worthy to be king because he was able to make tough decisions.
But it turned out that upon being king, he really wasn't able to make decisions to improve the kingdom due to the bureaucracy of Atlantis' High Council, who antagonized him for not understanding Atlantean ways and culture. When sickness spreads among his people, however, and Black Mantis steals or a calcum from Atlantis, polluting the planet, Arthur realizes that he needs his
brother's help to stop him. Even though Arthur proved to be less kingly and less mature than Orm, he proved to be the bigger and better man by surmounting and helping Orm overcome Kordax's temptations of power. Arthur's ultimate destiny has always been to unite the underwater and surface worlds and at the very end of the film he was finally able to start that process by revealing Atlantis's existence to the world, though again how anyone is supposed to take
him seriously with that weird mic drop at the end is beyond me. The whole Iron Man callback was literally the worst fucking joke in any DC film ever. I hated it when he was like, I'm the king of Atlantis and I'm Aquaman. I was like, what the fuck? What is this? My reaction exactly. I bet you world leaders were like, oh, no. Right. That's what I'm saying. The coolest thing for Aquaman, I would say, in this film was
his stealth suit. I actually really liked the way they did that. And I loved that Toppo also had essentially the same ability. We did not get enough Toppo and Storm in this movie. Yeah. When you saw his fish speak. power at the end of the first film, he almost seems like unstoppable in the water, right? So I was kind of hoping that he would use it more within the course of this film, but he only really used it a few times. Although I did like how he got all the
undersea mammals to use their echolocation to destroy Black Manta's ship. Oh yeah, like the sonar waves. That was a really cool way to use his power for sure. Moving on to Ocean Master, aka Orm, he was played by Patrick Wilson. Watching this made me wish Patrick Wilson was originally cast as Aquaman because he not only looks the part of the character from the comics to a
T, but also because he took his role seriously. I mean, he took part in quite a bit of the jokes, but even when he's running with his arms behind his back because, you know, he doesn't know how to run on land, or he's eating a cockroach, like he still played it as if it was Orm, not Patrick Wilson. I think Jason Mowa's presence actually brought down Patrick Wilson's performance because whenever they were on screen together, it became apparent that Patrick Wilson was
acting because Jason Momoa wasn't, if that makes sense. The two just had like zero bromance chemistry, which is a problem for the film because that was sort of supposed to be the core of it, their relationship, and the entire second act was supposed to be a buddy comedy. Yeah, that was my big takeaway from the film as well. They were honestly acting in different films. It felt that way. Yeah, absolutely. And some of that awkwardness, I feel like, was actually
reflected in the score. Because when they tried to be silly with that relationship, the score did like a cartoonish thing such as when Aquaman knocked over that big statue to create a bridge. That scene played out way worse than I thought it would from the trailers. And I don't know why, it was just so cringe-worthy. The whole fucking jungle island thing was so cringe-inducing. I didn't get the joke regarding the cockroaches. Actually, I did find that funny because you
could just see me doing that to my younger brothers. But he told him that it was like the shrimp of the land, right? Right. But the joke is that surface dwellers don't actually eat cockroaches. And so he like tricked him into doing it, but he never told him that it was a joke. Like he never followed through with the gag. So it was just strange. Honestly, if I got you to eat a cockroach, I wouldn't tell you. that like you're not supposed to eat it. I'd be telling
everyone else that I got you to eat a cockroach. And so we didn't see that either. We should have seen Alcon be like, I seriously got Oram to eat a cockroach. We should have definitely. Now, Oram's arc in the film is really one in which he comes to terms that what he did in the first film was wrong and that in the end, Arthur really is better for Atlantis. He realizes over the course of the film, as Arthur continues to surprise him, that there is an honor and
nobility in Arthur's viewpoint and gracious actions, and Orm is moved essentially. Part of me wanted to take issue with the fact that Orm became a good guy and I kept waiting for him to turn bad, but that ended up not happening. I thought that would have been a great turn. But given the fact that you have stated that Ocean Master actually has done good things in the books like relinquish the throne when he realized that it rightfully belonged to
Arthur Curry. That kind of helped sell the idea of Oram being a good guy. To me. No, for me as well. Yeah. In the comics, in the new 52 version of Oram, he's not necessarily a bad guy. There is sort of like a rivalry, but there's also like a respect between the characters of Aquaman and Ocean Master as well. And so, yeah, I thought it worked in the movie also. Moving on to David Kane, AKA Black Manta. He was played by Yaya Abdul-Mateen the second.
Black Manta is a fantastic character and I thought Yaya did a fantastic job in the role because he's really able to capture the rage of the character. Like very few villains are as dedicated as Black Manta in the comics to so completely destroying a hero and his family. And that also helps that he looks really badass. I do have to say though it's kind of unfortunate that Black Manta loses some agency doing Cordax's bidding in this film rather than going full
force against Aquaman. I say kind of because I did actually like the dead king Cordax in this film and giving Black Manta a reason to kill Arthur Jr. other than he just really hates Aquaman was a more stomachable decision at the very least. I did think it was somewhat baller of him at the end, however, to essentially kill himself maybe rather than accept Aquaman's help because that felt very in character for Black Manta. Yeah, that was his best character
moment. Unfortunately, it was probably his last character moment. Yeah, yeah, I think it was. You're right. We talked about the design of this film. I thought his new gear was incredibly well designed. You know, everything from the suit to the octopods. It was fantastic. I liked seeing his beams in action that first seen when he's going up against Mira and he like blasts her and like everything around him. Those are some deadly lasers. Oh, yeah. Like you could
see how they were burning people. Definitely deadly. So Aquaman, Ocean Master, and Black Manta are really the three central characters of the film. I do want to touch briefly on Dr. Shin and Mara, though. Starting with Dr. Shin, he was played by Randall Park, who's a great comedic actor. He was the only truly funny character in the film, and at times when I don't think he was even trying to be. I mean, I only see him as Jimmy Woo from the Marvel
movies. Nah. This was just Jimmy Woo pretending to be a scientist or something. I was happy with the amount of screen time that they gave Randall Park here. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, the first film, Dr. Shin was a minor character, simply trying to prove Atlantis' existence to the world and allied himself with Black Manta to do so. Like you said, he got much more screen time here and he got more than he bargained for with the emergence of Cortex.
But he has a crisis of conscience warning Aquaman of Black Manta's new power and even saving Arthur Jr. from being killed. So it was nice to see him sort of have that heroic streak to him. Moving on to Mera, she was played by Amber Heard. She had a slightly bigger role in the film than I thought she would, you know, based on her own words in court that she was essentially erased from the movie, which wasn't the case, though there may be quite a bit left
on the cutting-groom floor. I didn't think her performance was terrible. Her involvement in the film's story was a big question to many due to some reports that her relationship with Jason Momoa and James Wan wasn't great, but I'm glad she got the screen time that she did because Mera should be a big part of Arthur's world, especially when it comes to Arthur Jr. It's always cool to see her use her powers too. She has a musical power set. I mean, in this
film it was used as Deus Ex Machina on multiple occasions, which was kind of unfortunate. I actually would have preferred to see Toppo get just one surprise Deo 6 Machina if you're going to do Deo 6 Machina because you know, you could be invisible and just kind of like spring into action and be like, ta-da, I'm here. That would have been awesome. I did like the call out that Nicole Kidman's Atlanta gave the character in reference to the previous film where we
saw Toppo playing the drums. Yeah. She was like running down his credentials and she's like, he's also really good at multiple instruments. Nicole Kidman looked so weird in this movie. She had a CGI face, did she not? Did she? I don't think she did. That's how it looked to me on the screen that I saw. It looked like maybe she had gotten too much Botox and couldn't really move her face enough. And so they had to move it using special effects. It very much
looked like how Henry Cavill did in the Jostas League movie. Oh, geez. I did not see that at all. She had a very small role in the movie. She only had like a few lines. So maybe I just wasn't paying too much attention to her. But I mean, I believe it. Let's move on to the story highlights.
Several years after defeating and imprisoning his half-brother Orm, Arthur has become the new king of Atlantis and struggles with the bureaucracy, preferring to spend time on land with his family, including his infant son Junior, who displays the ability to communicate with fish. Aquaman's nemesis Black Manta, meanwhile, searches the world for Atlantean technology
to repair his power suit and get revenge on the hero for killing his father. With the help of Dr. Steven Shin, Black Manta finds the lost Atlantean kingdom of Necrus in the Antarctic, where they're attacked by an underwater monster and Black Manta becomes possessed by a broken Black Trident. Now I'm not sure why they gave Junior fish speaking powers, because it never
came up in the film again. Like they should have used it again at least once. Yeah, that actually would have been cool to have him save the day by calling in a fleet of whales or something. Right? Yeah, absolutely. They could have totally done that. And I actually thought they were going to once they sort of set that up at the beginning of the movie. I actually really liked these opening Antarctica scenes because they were a good showcase for James
Bond's horror background. Yeah, that tentacle monster was pretty frightening. Yeah, and the way it just like dragged people into the darkness. It was pretty cool. Within the next five months, global warming has increased rapidly, diluting the ocean saltwater and resulting in algae blooms. that's causing sickness to spread in the underwater kingdoms. Although Arthur wants to reveal Atlantis to the surface world so that their scientists can work together to solve
the climate crisis, the city's high council refuses to let him. Meanwhile, Black Manta, now equipped with new Atlantean technology, is caught trying to steal a highly toxic fuel source known as or a calcum from Atlantis. Mera and many other Atlanteans are badly injured. in Black Manta's escape. Do you know if Orocalcum is from the comics? It is actually, but it's also from ancient myths about Atlantis as well. It's supposed to be a medal though, I believe.
Interesting. Upon realizing that Black Manta is using the Orocalcum to pollute the Earth's atmosphere and raise temperatures, Arthur decides his brother Orm can help him find Black Manta, to his mother Atlantis and Mira's father Nerus' objections. With the help of a stealth suit and a cephalopod named Toppo, Arthur successfully breaks Orm out of his desert prison. Which was a pretty cool scene. It was a convincing special effect that they used on Patrick Wilson,
going from his skinny mode into his ripped mode. See, I didn't really like that. I mean, I thought the special effect was fine, but I don't understand how just upon touching water, all of a sudden he gets ripped. Well, he was like super dehydrated, right? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I just thought it was a convincing special effect. Yeah, definitely convincing. As was Toppo. I want a Toppo in real life. How was Toppo surviving on land? Because he's fucking Toppo, dude.
You can do whatever he wants. All right. OK. How dare you question him. We need to do a Christmas duel episode with Toppo. That's all I'm saying. It's a great idea. Yeah. Orb suggests that they visit the Sunken Citadel, a seedy underwater pirate colony ruled by Kingfish, who may know Black Manta's whereabouts. After a tussle with Kingfish's shark soldiers, Arthur
learns that Black Manta may be on a volcanic island in the South Pacific. After swimming to the island, Arthur sends Toppo back to Atlantis for help while he and Orm navigate the mutated jungle, dodging carnivorous plants and giant insects to get to Black Manta's volcano base. I was super surprised when I saw that Kingfish was voiced by Martin Short. Yeah, I didn't see that until the credits either. I have no idea who Kingfish is. Apparently he's a character
in the comics. I initially thought that the character was a stand in for King Shark, which I thought would have been actually really cool if they had done that. But upon doing further research, I guess that wasn't the case. I always liked the Jules Verne-esque journey to the center of the earth aspect that the Aquaman films have. We saw that in the first movie
where they actually did go to the center of the earth. And then we saw it with this island in this film where you have like these giant insect creatures and dangerous flora and stuff like that. It is a pretty neat aspect of these films. Yeah, it kind of feels like James Wan can do whatever he wants in these movies. He just comes up with these brilliant ways of doing them. Like Oric Alcom mutating the environment, that's a pretty cool idea to create some conflict.
And it also creates greater stakes for the film and the danger that Oric Alcom presents. There was another joke during this part of the film that I really did not appreciate and that was
when Aquaman referred to Orm as Loki and I'm like shut the hell up What are you doing? He's trying to be like Tony Stark giving everybody nicknames like how Iron Man did in the Avengers movie the first one But like do Marvel movies exist in the DCEU they must and that's stupid Well, I mean apparently DC heroes exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because there have
been a number of references to Batman and Superman Oh, that's right. Okay, unless angry about it now Now, uneasy with Black Manta's actions and using the volcano to spew Orakelkem into the atmosphere, Dr. Shin begs Aquaman and Orm to rescue him from Manta just before Black Manta attacks them. During the battle, Orm takes hold of Black Manta's trident, which gives him visions of the past. After Atlantis comes to the brothers' rescue and bombs the island,
destroying the volcano, Orm reveals that the trident is possessed by Kordax. the ancient Atlantean king of Necros, who used orichalcum and black magic to pollute the earth and corrupt and mutate his people into monsters. Cordax was defeated by his brother Atlin, the king of Atlantis, who used blood magic to seal his brother and the kingdom of Necros in ice forever. Black Manta, they learn, is being used by Cordax to melt the ice caps and free the lost kingdom.
into the villain Cordax, who they also made Atlan's brother. I thought that was genius. I got to give a big shout out to listener Corey Wooten, who years ago, when we learned that Pelo Aspect was going to be in the Aquaman sequel, we asked listeners as a question of the week who they thought he was playing. And Corey Wooten, if you listen to our Falcon and the Winter Soldier review episode, stated that he thought he was playing Cordax. And he was right. Yeah
Cory bro, you gotta hook me up with the next Powerball numbers. Please. Realizing Cordex can only be freed from the Blood Magic Ice Prison with the blood of Atlantean royalty, Aquaman and his family rush to his father's lighthouse, only to find his father Tom dying and Junior kidnapped. While Tom recovers, Arthur rallies his kingdom to rescue his son, chasing Black Manta to Antarctica, where Cordex's forces have been unleashed and do battle with the Atlanteans.
Meanwhile, Dr. Shin hides Junior from Black Manta, but both are caught. I thought the movie really wussed out by not killing Aquaman's dad. I mean, they didn't kill Aqua Baby, and we probably figured that was gonna happen, but if they weren't gonna kill Aqua Baby, they should have at least killed Aqua Dad. They should have, because there's precedent for that in the comic as well. Both Aquaman and Black Manta essentially killed each other's fathers. So
why the hell not kill Tom? They really wussed out, I agree. Aquaman stops Black Manta before Junior's blood can be spilled on the altar in front of the frozen Cordax. The two battle, and Arthur disarms Black Manta of the Trident, only for Orm to get ahold of it and become
possessed by Cordax, successfully drawing Arthur's blood on the altar. As Cordax becomes free, Arthur and Orm struggle for control of the Black Trident, with their bond as brothers, helping them overcome Cordax's influence, and Arthur manages to kill Cordax, with Atlan's trident. It makes you wonder why if Orm had the trident, why didn't he just prick his finger over the altar? He has royal blood too, he could have easily undone the curse being possessed by
Kordax. He didn't really need Arthur's blood. Well I think Arthur would have tried to stop him, so there was a tussle that was going to result regardless. Fair enough. After Black Mantis seemingly falls to his death rather than be saved by Arthur, join their allies on a glacier, where Arthur gives Orm his freedom rather than imprisoning him once again. To help deal with the damaged atmosphere, Arthur reveals the existence of Atlantis to the UN
and the public. In the mid-credits scene, Orm enjoys a cheeseburger and a cockroach. Which is a hell of a way to end the DCEU. I mean, it was funny, I laughed, but also like I was kind of hoping there would be a little bit more after the credits. Yeah, something more substantial. Right, right. Just to say like, hey, this is all done, but get ready for something new.
I don't know. Yeah, I think the Flash actually did a better job at that. I believe initially the Flash was supposed to come out after Aquaman, according to the original release schedule. And it's a shame that it didn't stay that way. It's a huge shame. These release dates should have been flipped, I feel. I actually think they would have gotten more money out of both of them if that had been the case. Because it really would have felt like The Flash was this
event film that you had to see because it was setting up something new. Yeah, instead we got a Flash movie that didn't really serve as a transition and an Aquaman movie that was kind of pointless. Exactly. It's hard for me to say that things are pointless just because I think films should stand on their own regardless of if they're part of a cinematic universe or not. but this film really doesn't do that either in the sense that it has very little
redeemable value on its own. I think despite a worthwhile final act, the scenic CG-heavy film's attempts at silly humor and serious themes make for a tonally inconsistent finale to the DCEU. And I think that's the film's biggest sin is that it's tonally inconsistent. I think a director's main job is tone, and James Wan kind of failed on that here. I'm giving the film 3 out of 5 stars, which is a 60% rating so it's borderline between a fresh and rotten
tomato. I've decided to not recommend this film, so it is getting a rotten rating from me. I think it's right between Thor Love and Thunder and Shazam Fury of the Gods, which at least was tonally consistent. I agree with the 3 star rating. I could also understand why you would not recommend the film. largely due to its place within the DCEU, where it came chronologically
in that release order. We've seen a lot of superhero films recently make the mistake of going too comedic with things, whether it's Thor 11th Under or like Modok from the Ant-Man movie. I hope it's a trend that does not continue into 2024, because I think it results in a lapse of cinematic quality that exacerbates the current issue that we're seeing of superhero fatigue. 2023 is the year that fatigue really started to set in. And I think films like Aquaman,
The Lost Kingdom are partially to blame. This movie is not helping the genre, and both Marvel and DC need to do a course correction for the future. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. And luckily, we know that DC is next year. We're going to be getting Joker, Folly, I do. But I think that's the only live action DC film we're getting. So, yeah, we won't be seeing too much DC within the next 365 days. Good, finally, geez. Fuck you. I wish we were seeing less Marvel. I freaking
hate watching these movies now. But that does it for this review guys. Let us know what you thought about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom by writing to us at dyna or by visiting us on Instagram or X. You can find links to all of our accounts by checking out our show notes or visiting our website at dynamicduel.com. And on our site, you can also find a link to
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the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser, or on our website. In our next episode, we will be doing our end of the year annual Brothers Awards, where we look back at everything Marvel and DC had to offer in terms of television and film in 2023. Yeah, those episodes are always a lot of fun. They're a great way to summarize our thoughts about what came out for the entire year. Look forward to that. But that does it for this episode. We want to give a big thanks
to our executive producers, Ken Johnson. John Sturowski, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Balcombe, Miggy Matagian, Brandon Estergard, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yeaton, Nick Abonto, Austin Wazilowski, AJ Dunkerley, Scott Camacho, Adam Spies, and Andrew Schunk for helping make this podcast possible. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away, true believers.