Aquaman

HEY WARNER BROTHERS! DC! This is what happens when you hire a competent director and give him the opportunity to do whatever the hell he wants. Yeah, it might not be perfect, but everyone owns it, and you get a pretty entertaining film. DO THIS MORE OFTEN!

Full disclosure. I really don't know if this movie changes anything. Justice League left me pretty sour on DC and with rumors of tectonic shifts where you waste an actor like Henry Cavill starting to take form, I'm still not sure I'm totally on board with whatever new plans DC has. But I'll still talk about this film, what works and what didn't work, and where I potentially see us going from here.

Aquaman picks up with the titular character introduced in Justice League, Arthur Curry (played by Jason Momoa). The movie begins with a bit of backstory on how Arthur's mother (played by Nicole Kidman) was the expected Queen of Atlantis and she fled an arranged marriage. She fell in love with Arthur's father (played by Temuera Morrison) and had Arthur. But when she realized that her going to surface puts her family at risk, she decides to go back to Atlantis.

Arthur is the same roadie-like bro from The Justice League, but they do a lot more development of him, especially going into what it was like for him to grow up without a mother in which he blames the Atlanteans for, as well as figuring out his powers with the help of his teacher Vulko (played by Willem Defoe). At the start of the movie, he's fighting bad guys, trying to save people, all pretty good examples of how how the Aquaman in this movie is starting off his career as a superhero, but unlike Superman in Batman v Superman, he's actually saving people and we get to see him fight bad guys instead of having a brief montage where we're asked, "DO WE NEED AN AQUAMAN".

Then an Atlantean Mera (played by Amber Heard) comes to Arthur to warn him that his half brother King Orm (played by Patrick Wilson) is planning to declare war on the surface world and the only way to stop him is for Arthur to challenge him for the throne. The best way to do that though is for Arthur to find a powerful ancient trident and unite the Kingdoms of the sea.

All the while Orm is trying to unite the Kingdoms of the Sea in order to take on the title of Ocean Master and declare war. He gets the support of Dolph Lundgren early on who is Mera's father. (He probably had a name but I just saw him as Merman Dolph Lundgren). And on top of that, Black Manta (played by Yaya-Abdul-Mateen II) is a pirate who has a personal grudge against Arthur. I actually really dug how they used Black Manta in this movie. He was a little overshadowed by the larger events of the film, but I think they build his character pretty well and could easily pull him back in for the sequel.

The main complaint I've heard about this movie is that it is a lot of movie. And they're not wrong, but I don't really see that as a bad thing. The movie is about 2 hours 20 minutes and it spaced out its events pretty well, especially for how epic this movie is trying to be. It's got a lot of elements to it, there's a little bit of Thor in the otherworldliness of Atlantis, there's a little bit of Black Panther Politics, and there's a little bit of treasure hunting from the Uncharted Franchise.  And to me it all worked because everyone knew what movie they were in, and they leaned into it the entire time, ESPECIALLY when it got super campy or ridiculous.

There are a lot of cool things in the movie and James Wan seems to knows his lore pretty well. But the thing I really appreciate about this film is that it doesn't shy away from the parts of this movie that are super ridiculous. It doesn't try and make this the super realistic or gritty Aquaman, and furthermore, the movie didn't try to Marvel-ize itself by inserting jokes in moments that are either supposed to be serious or epic and grand in scale. The movie knows its over the top and it leans into it, but not in a way where it's making fun of itself. Instead, it's a way where everyone is taking this shit seriously, regardless of the fact that Aquaman legitimately rides a sea horse into battle and it looks exactly like the cartoons. In fact it makes the cartoon kind of rad.

And that could not have been easy...

Is this going to go down as one of the greatest super hero movies of all time? No. There are for sure issues. It is cheesy, it is over the top ridiculous. There were times where I was rolling my eyes in some of the line deliveries and just how weird the movie gets at times.

I thought the character development was good on most ends but could have been done better in certain places.

The rivalry between Arthur and Orm was pretty cool. The scene to the left has some pretty good dialogue about how these two don't want to fight each other but they've grown up in different worlds and they're interests are in direct conflict. Patrick Wilson gave a great performance in this film and like everyone else, he knows exactly what movie he's in but he's going to own every minute of it.

I was thoroughly surprised on how well the character of Arthur Curry was done and I'm really glad that Jason Momoa is put at the helm of his own movie and he does a good job. This guy has come a long way from Khal Drogo and that really bad Conan movie and I thought he was awesome in this movie.

The relationship between Arthur and Mera was good and I did sense some actual chemistry between the two. The issue I think I have is that everything happened so fast between them and similarly, Mera wasn't exactly the most developed character she could have been.

I saw a reviewer that said he'd like to see Mera have a little bit more of an edge, like she has the ability to extract all the water from somebody and kill them from dehydration. I don't know if that's totally necessary for the film, but I think something like that would have made her a more interesting character. As she is, she's the call to action girl who's a badass so DC can say they have strong female characters, but she's restricted by plot narrative. If we took her character to its natural conclusion, she wouldn't need Arthur and she'd be challenging Orm herself. But because plot restricts her to a side kick character, there we are. I think if we're gonna constrict her like that, let's give her something a little more and make her a stronger character. Amber Heard did a good job and I think she did a good job, I just think there could have been more there.

The thing I liked about this movie was that it didn't back down from what Aquaman really is. I haven't read the comics so I don't know if this really captured the new Aquaman that everyone seems to love, but the movie embraced the silly but mythical subject matter they had in front of them.

And that's not as easy as they had it in Wonder Woman. Something about Amazons looking like Greek Warriors is just a little more digestable than Dolph Lundgren riding a seahorse or Patrick Wilson with a ridiculous helmet riding a shark.

But the movie does this mythology well and it pairs with some really great underwater action, some pretty decent visual effects (I'm not gonna say everything looked super realistic, but it worked) and a story that made me feel like I was watching something just as epic as it was ridiculous and over the top.

I do wish this movie changed my thoughts on the DCEU. It was a little bit different looking at trailers like Shazaam before this movie with this movie being at least a fun time. I don't think a total reboot is happening yet, but I'm still cautious. This movie gives no indication of any future DCEU products. On one hand, that's good. It keeps the story focused on Aquaman and doesn't Marvel-ize it. But I'm still just as confused on where we're going from here on out. The movie alludes to a sequel and I'd be totally down for that. But I'm not ready to say that Aquaman has saved the DCEU. I would say it's no longer in critical condition, but we'll have to wait and see how liked Shazaam is. This conversation could be totally different in April once that movie is out.

But what do you think of Aquaman? Did you like the camp? Did you like how cheesy and over the top it was? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!