Up until the Multiverse Saga came along and led to a huge downturn in consistency, the status of Thor: The Dark World as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes looked near-insurmountable.
After all, the tepid second solo outing for Chris Hemsworth’s God of Thunder had spent eight whole years at the bottom of the barrel, and the franchise knocked out another 17 features in that period before Eternals came along, which was itself dislodged as the worst-reviewed entry in MCU history by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Unfortunately, the recently-released first trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has led many to directly compare it with The Dark World, which could be an ominous intonation seeing as the DCEU has already suffered three momentous box office bombs this year after Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle all lived to disappoint.
It’s easy to see why parallels would be drawn when the story focuses on a charismatic long-haired superhero following up a solidly successful origin story, who then ends up partnering with his untrustworthy half-brother in an effort to derail the plans of a villain who threatens to weaponize a long-forgotten realm as part of their master plan. That would make Black Manta the Malekith in this instance, which is among the harshest of insults that can be thrown at anybody.
Aquaman: The Dark World isn’t what anybody wants to see, especially when the underwater epic marks the final film in the DCEU, so we can only hope James Wan avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual predecessor to send the struggling sandbox out with a bang to put a tidy bow on an otherwise-dismal year.