DCEU Review Series
Aquaman
2018
Director: James Wan
Aquaman received fairly positive reviews from fans and critics. The character gets a lot of pop culture flack for being the water guy on the team. His powers are silly. He talks to fish. The majority of the Earth is water. He would come in handy for water-based emergencies. Nonstop water emergencies would get redundant though.
The film starts with a flashback to Aquaman’s mom washing up on shore and falling in love with a human lighthouse keeper (Jengo/Boba Fett from Star Wars). Lighthouse keepers aren’t even a thing anymore. It’s all automated, even in the late 70s/early 80s when this flashback takes place. She builds a little family but has to head back to Atlantis because of…reasons.
After the lame backstory sequence, we actually get a fairly entertaining submarine action sequence. We’re introduced to one of the big-bad’s Black Manta. Black Manta and friends were hired to take out a submarine by the true villain of the film. Aquaman’s evil brother or something. Aquaman leaves Black Manta’s father Jesse Kane to die. If he saved the guy a lot of drama would have been avoided. A non DCEU version of Superman would have saved him, Batman and Wonder Woman would have saved him.
In Aquaman’s defense, Jesse Kane hit him with a grenade launcher while in a Nuclear submarine. Aquaman was fighting Black Manta and winning and Jesse Kane jumped in the fight. So Aquaman tosses a metal poll into his arm and pins it through another hunk of metal on the sinking submarine. He wasn’t busting out of that, though the film wants you to think with the help of Black Manta he could have busted out. Jesse Kane launches another grenade at Aquaman while leaving and then a torpedo lands on him totally trapping his ass. Black Manta asks for his help and Aquaman is like, you’re douchbags, I’m not helping you, then leaves. Jesse Kane tells Black Manta to book before he dies too. Thus, Aquaman’s most known villain is born. A little compassion goes a long way in life folks.
Then we’re at Atlantis and everyone is wet so their hair floats around with annoying CGI. All the people float around with annoying CGI and a weird blue/green heugh to it. It’s super distracting. There’s some drama with Atlantis.
Then Amber “the Turd” Herd shows up and asks Aquaman to come back to Atlantis and claim the throne because his mother Nicole Kidman was queen of Atlantis. Atlantis is trying to start a war with the surface world. Amber Turd wants Aquaman to stop it. Willem Defoe shows up in flashbacks and we learn he’s the dude who trained Aquaman. The flashbacks are a waste of time and pointless. If the film just focused on the main plot you’d have an interesting story worth following.
Sadly Aquaman isn’t too familiar to the general movie going audience so we get a lot of back story explaining him and his powers. The kingdom of Atlantis is supposed to be this visually stunning place. It’s really quite lame and derivative. Too much CGI ruins films, and this film has a ton.
We’re treated to a master class is acting skills. Willem Defoe, Jason Mamoa, Amber Turd are standing around having a conversation. Defoe knocks his performance out of the park, Mamoa is a base hit at best, and Amber shits the bed. Defoe adds the right level of intensity to the lines. Mamoa plays it too cool for school. Amber is just trying to prove to people she knows how to read.
What probably makes this film next to impossible to film is how wet everyone needs to be. Filming consistently wet actors is near impossible. Film shoots can run 12 hours or more. So there is some staffer constantly hosing actors down in the dry scenes. No one should be wet that long. They were all likely terribly sick during the entire production.
Then we get a derivative ceremonial battle between Aquaman and his douchebag brother for control of Atlantis. The fight itself is pretty cool, just unoriginal and boring with how the film built up to it. Somehow Aquaman loses the fight, not really sure how. Amber Turd’s most illogical line “are you waiting for an invitation? get it!” That’s basically an invitation. This one isn’t really her fault. She didn’t write it. She sure couldn’t act it though. The film is loaded with these bad one liners.
The film then becomes a poorly made Indiana Jones adventure while they try to find the ultimate trident to cure bad breath or something. Aquaman recommending peeing on a device that needs water to work and Amber Turd’s face of disgust is pure irony. We get cutaways to Black Manta making his famous suit. Don’t forget we have to establish the required love story in these films. That’s done during the boring middle parts building up to the next action sequence.
Black Manta shows up in full costume and we get another cool action sequence and as the film is progressing these fight scenes are getting better. It’s a shame the story surrounding it isn’t particularly riveting. Black Manta finds a way to hurt Aquaman with Atlantian technology. The stakes of the battle are pretty high at this point. Another spot of irony is Amber Turd destroying an entire wine collection to fight off some bad guys.
Eventually Aquaman (magically cured from his deadly fight with Black Manta) and Amber Turd are on a boat fighting sea monsters, it’s a pretty cool sequence. Aquaman meets his mom Nicole Kidman. It gets pretty sappy for a while. It’s one of those movies, you can’t gloss over the emotion of meeting long lost parents. The only solution is not making a movie with such a hackneyed trope. Then he fights/argues with a giant squid-crab to get the McGuffin trident. This is just annoying. It’s a two-hour movie. You can cut this and be fine. Grab the stick and move on.
Then all the underwater people are in ridiculously shiny costumes about to go to war with one another. Aquaman shows up in his ridiculous costume and ability to talk to fish. The full reveal of squid-crab looks like the 1998 Godzilla and Alien via an “If They Mated” sketch from Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Aquaman has the big fight with his brother, he wins. He refuses to kill his brother, Nicole Kidman comes back, bam! Family reunion. The premise of the story, everyone just needs a mother. Jengo Fett and Nicole Kidman get back together. Aquaman takes over Atlantis. Black Mantis lives. The end.
The action was good, the story is bad. The acting is mostly bad. The dialog is even worse. He’s less of a nag than Wonder Woman. Therefore, Aquaman beats Wonder Woman as the best movie in the DCEU up to this point. It’s not a film that I’d recommend to anyone for any reason. None of the DCEU films are watchable at this point. This is at least something you can almost sit through and enjoy.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
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