Aquaman

Like a lot of members of Gen X, I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons. Among those cartoons, back in the day, was The Superfriends, which heavily featured the expected slate of DC comic book characters. Superman. Batman. Wonder Woman. And… Aquaman.

Compared to the rest of them, Aquaman was always a little lame. (Not as useless as more recent jokes would make you believe, but he was nowhere near as cool as any of the Big Three.) It wasn’t until the 90s or so that he got kind of bad ass in the comics… once he had his hand cut off and grew a beard. And it wasn’t until that one season of Entourage, that the thought of anyone being able to do a good Aquaman movie even seemed possible.

I’ve really always been a bigger fan of Namor, the Sub-Mariner, from Marvel. He hasn’t hit the screen yet, but Auqaman did just hit Amazon as a rental. So I watched that.

Of the more recent (post-Nolan/Bale-Batman) DCEU movies, I’ve seen two in theaters. Both of them left me feeling like I’d wasted my money. Even renting two others left me feeling a bit… annoyed. So far, only Wonder Woman has delivered something mostly worthy of the title character.

But, now that I’ve seen Aquaman, I can say that the DCEU has two movies worth watching. One more like this and, maybe, I’ll consider going to the theater to see one again.

The Plot

Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is the son of a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) and the queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman). Yeah, they’re an unlikely pair. He was battening down the hatches as a storm was rolling in and she washed up on on shore, injured from fighting her way out of an arranged marriage. He brought her inside and patched her up. She threw her trident through his TV and ate one of his goldfish.

Needless to say, they fell in love, had a kid, and all was well… for a little while. She was taken back to Atlantis by force, leaving Arthur and his dad safe, but heartbroken.

We know he helped save the world n Justice League (which I really can’t recommend at all). And that he loves to party (you could say he drinks like a fish).

It’s no surprise he wants nothing to do with Atlantis.

Until the surface world is threatened by his half-brother (Patrick Wilson) who’s begun to forcibly unite the undersea kingdoms to declare war on all of air-breathing humanity. That’s when he gets pulled into an Indiana-Jones-like hunt for an ancient Atlantean artifact that will give him the power to take his rightful place as king and save everyone from being ruled by a tyrant.

Along the way, hilarity ensues.

“I could have just peed on it.”

This is not a good movie.

It’s a pretty movie. It’s a fun movie. It’s got some great action in it. But it’s not good.

For something set underwater, it has little to no actual depth. Not for the plot and certainly not for the characters. If you look just barely beyond the giant sea dragons and sharks with laser beams on their heads (yes, they have those), there’s nothing at all original about this story. You’ve seen it a hundred times before and you know just about everything that’s going to happen.

However, it’s a damn fun ride, so strap on you SCUBA gear and dive in.

If I were still 12-year-old me, I’d probably really love this movie for it’s scenery chewing campy feel. Back when 12-year-old me was around, there really weren’t any “serious” super hero films. The closest we got around then was 1989’s Batman… and even that was, well, not exactly serious. (Sure, there was Superman: The Movie, and The Incredible Hulk on TV… but those were the exception to the rule of the time and, really, did not at all stick to the “kind of serious” formula as they iterated through movies on the big screen and small.)

I’ve spent the past decade or so soaking in the Marvel movies. The MCU has managed to add nuance into the mix along with the spectacle. Sure, they often use the same re-tread plots… but they do so in smaller chunks, mix them together a bit, and then throw a sub-genre bend or two into the mix. There’s more craft involved.

Aquaman is only creative in the surface dressing of things. Jason Momoa, for as cool as he makes Arthur Curry, is really mostly playing himself and letting his natural charisma shine through. Also his inner 12-year-old. Best illustrated when he and Mera (Amber Heard, who is just as awesome as Momoa in the film) uses her water-control ability to ball up a bit of his sweat and uses it to activate some very old and dry Atlantean tech. Our hero’s response? “I could have just peed on it.”

At least he matures a bit through the film. But that’s what’s required of the stock plot. So, no real surprise.

The Verdict

Despite all the shortcomings of plot, character, and dialog, the movie still delivers a solidly fun ride. It’s, by far, the brightest and lightest of the DCEU movies so far. It has a solid cast who aren’t terribly wasted by the script (they aren’t terribly challenged, either). And the action is really good.

Aquaman actually has the best complex action sequence I’ve seen so far in a DC movie. The fight and chase in Italy is pretty amazing. A lot of that has to do with the way directory James Wan switches between Arthur’s and Mera’s parallel fights. The transitions are near flawless and possibly the second most unique thing about the film as a whole (second only to the wonderful creature designs).

I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that most of the time I was watching an animated film. There’s so much post-production processing and CGI on screen that even the actual live actors sometimes fall into the leading edge of the uncanny valley you get in even really good computer animation.

So, definitely give this one a shot. It’s nothing that will get your brain going, but you’ll laugh (even if it is for the wrong reason sometimes) and have some fun for couple of hours.