Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

4. Almost The Entire Cast Is Wasted

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom touts a large ensemble cast, and yet does almost nothing worthwhile with anyone involved. Temuera Morrison gets a few brief moments to drop sage wisdom as Arthur's father Tom, but Nicole Kidman is basically just Basil Exposition as Arthur's mother Atlanna.

Patrick Wilson looks appropriately beefy as a rejuvenated Orm, but his banter with Arthur mostly feels forced and lacking in, well, everything.

Randall Park meanwhile has a surprisingly large role as Dr. Shin - who first appeared in the previous film's mid-credits scene - but the script doesn't even begin to take advantage of his comedic chops.

And then there's Amber Heard, who as reported earlier in the year has a seriously sized-down role as Mera.

Though she's technically "in" many scenes, it's clear that her presence on-screen has been largely cleaved away to occasional reaction shots for the most part, with Mera additionally spending half the movie benched following a near-death encounter with Black Manta.

And to top it all off, Willem Dafoe's Nuidis Vulko is conspicuously absent, with numerous references being made to his random off-screen death between movies. Boo.

Even accepting this as the paycheck movie that it blatantly is for most of the cast, this is a seriously criminal squandering of a talented ensemble.