A decade’s worth of superhero movies goes out with a big, stupid grin on its face.

One would hope that a film franchise with as much money poured into it as the DC Cinematic Universe would rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet here we are, limping towards the end of a slate of superhero flicks marred by terrible reviews (Shazam! 2), controversy (The Flash), or sheer too-little-too-late-ness (Blue Beetle). As the superhero genre continues to flag in a year of duds, DC’s set for a reinvention, a clean slate courtesy of former Marvel it-boy James Gunn and co-head Peter Safran. Before they can wipe the board and start all over with the label’s slate of classic capes, though, there’s a few rounds left in the last guy’s chamber to fire off. That’s what Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels like, easily the least objectionable of the DC films to come out in 2023. Problem is, that’s not saying much.

A sequel to Aquaman should have been a slam dunk: Director James Wan’s 2018 take on the King of Atlantis was a welcome breath of neon-soaked pop art in a franchise studded with Snyderesque dourness, leaning into the innate silliness of an underwater take on Flash Gordon. Jason Momoa is as effortless a casting as you could imagine for DC’s hardest-to-pin-down superhero, brimming with giddy frat-boy energy. At its best moments, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom leans into its star’s goofiness and even lets it infect some of the rest of the cast. But there’s no escaping the feeling of weariness, both for a cast and crew who are just repeating the novel beats of the first and an audience that’s just plain starved for something new.

Not that Arthur Curry and his undersea mateys don’t try their level best to entertain along the way: When we’re first reintroduced, in a Guardians of the Galaxy-level opening bit set to “Born to Be Wild,” we see Arthur struggling to juggle his newfound duties as King of Atlantis with his struggles as the father of a newborn. While he’s married to the first film’s love interest, Mera (Amber Heard), she’s barely seen and rarely used; one can’t help but wonder whether the recent controversies surrounding her necessitated putting that character on the back burner. Instead, Arthur feels like a single dad, hanging out with his laidback father (Temuera Morrison) whose wife, a suitably slumming-it Nicole Kidman, only dips out of the sea when there’s exposition to be had.

And exposition there is, plenty of it: You see, previous film’s secondary baddie Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is hunting for ancient Atlantean tech to take revenge on Aquaman for killing his dad and maiming him. He’s got a whole team behind him now, including reluctant scientist Steven Shin (Randall Park), the only character who undergoes any kind of radical character growth. They unearth an ancient evil in the form of a black trident that slowly possesses Manta, leading him to start burning the planet alive through a kind of crazy super-fossil-fuel that powers his new weapons. To stop him, Arthur reluctantly busts his brother, the previous film’s primary baddie, Orm (Patrick Wilson), out of sea jail, and the two must reconcile their differences if they’re to save both the surface world and their oceanic home.

From there, it’s one nonstop chase after another, which is both Lost Kingdom‘s greatest strength and weakness. The same wacky design work remains from the first, the varying kingdoms of Atlantis rendered with appropriately gauzy, if unconvincing, CGI. (The floaty hair and weird undersea voices still distract.) If an exposition scene is boring you, fear not; something will crash through the wall and force Arthur and Orm to run, chase, or bash something for five to ten minutes. There’s a modicum of inventiveness to the action at first, but it gets repetitive after a while; there’s only so many ways someone can toss a trident or catch it mid-air before it becomes boring.

Boring’s the operative word: Manta makes for a dull villain, all stock-still snarling and glowing green eyes, any personal stakes overridden by a demonic possession that leaves him little more than a blank heavy. The politics and worldbuilding of Atlantis continue to befuddle, from staid council meetings that go nowhere to a derivative undersea cantina complete with jellyfish jam band (and a cameo from Martin Short as a hedonistic fish crime lord). The first film had a lot more fun with these elements: unfortunately, Wan saw all the memes about the octopus playing the drums, and gave us a bit too much of what we want. Now we know that li’l guy’s name is Topo, and he even becomes Arthur’s little sidekick for long stretches of the movie. It’s cute, till he overstays his welcome, like a lot of the film’s overly-rushed pacing.

At least Momoa remains a hoot to watch onscreen, his star persona slowly morphing from ‘stone-faced lead’ to ‘just Jason Momoa.’ If you’ve seen Fast X, his coked-up villain turn there is basically a heel-turn version of Aquaman here, all giddy enthusiasm and laidback swagger; there’s nothing else on the page for him to work with. He’s a fixed point, a solved problem, someone who already has all the answers and just has to get there. Luckily, he gets to bounce off of Patrick Wilson’s Orm, now transformed from a gloomy villain to an uptight foil for Arthur’s gee-whiz energy. (It’s a dynamic ripped right from Thor: The Dark World, right down to Arthur calling Orm “Loki” as a joke. Does this mean the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists in the DCEU? If so, who plays Henry Wu in their version of WandaVision?) While we’ve seen this kind of enemies-turned-reluctant-allies vibe before, at least the pair have fun, and Wilson throws himself into the bickering back and forth between Orm and Arthur.

When the film slows down all its CG spectacle to just let those two bounce off each other, it becomes far more fun. But there’s no escaping the repetition of the fight scenes, the uninspiring nature of the script, and the punishing pacing of the thing.

Much like Arthur himself, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom wears itself thin by spinning too many plates: goofy sci-fi adventure, poignant family drama, sociopolitical thriller about global warming. At least they don’t make a show of connecting this film to the rest of the DCEU, or try to use this to put a cap on that vision of the universe as a whole. Time will tell whether Momoa’s take on Aquaman will survive Gunn and Safran’s reinvention. If it does, hopefully they’ll take what works (the wild production design of Atlantis) and ditch what doesn’t (about everything else).

Aquaman 2 swims into theaters December 22nd.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Trailer: