Aquaman
A lot has been said about the direction DC is going with their 'universe'. I have no idea where they intend to take it now, but I'm glad I got to see James Wan have fun with Aquaman. The only way I can tell people to prepare for this movie is to have fun and embrace how cheesy the film is. It's an adventure movie with a guy who talks to fish. You're going to hear weird names like King Orm, King Nereus, Vulko and weird phrases like Ocean Master. Embrace these things and Aquaman will be a fun, entertaining movie for you. It's not without its faults, but Aquaman is the best movie DC has made for their universe.
A man finds a woman washed ashore, he brings her into his lighthouse and soon discovers she is not from his world. That doesn't stop them from falling in love and having a child. This is forbidden though and soon people from her world come looking for her. In an effort to save her son and the man she loves, she disappears back into the water. Years later that son grows up to become Aquaman. Now he must go to Atlantis and claim the throne before his half-brother brings a war to the surface.
There are some character aspects from the Justice League movies that crawl their way into Aquaman, but those are just small bits of character dialogue that I didn't care for. Aquaman's bad-ass surfer-boy attitude is one that doesn't necessarily jive with me. But it is toned down a bit here and instead the film focuses on his reluctance to help the people that took his mother away from him. Momoa looks good on the screen, he fills the frame nicely, bringing a menacing vibe with muscles. His entrance scene involves an attack in a sub and it introduces us to the damage this guy can do. It's also the first of many shots involving him with his back to the audience and looking over his shoulder. That is just one of many cheesy aspects this film throws at us. This is where he makes his first big enemy, a guy who would later become Black Manta. Nice to see a villain who is actually tangible. The costume looks goofy, but cool. He's real, compared to the play-dough things we got in Justice League, yuck.
An impressive cast; Willem Dafoe, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren with voice work from Djimon Hounsou, John Rhys-Davies and Julie Andrews. They all do a decent job trying to spit out funny dialogue while underwater.
The film feels like an Indian Jones type adventure flick. Aquaman and Meera, a role that could have been played by any good looking actress, must find a special Trident, one that will unite the 7 underwater kingdoms and make the wielder of it the true King of the Ocean. To get it, they must find clues, decipher them and journey from one location to the next. In doing this, Wan gives us an exciting chase sequence in Italy and a horror-esque scene that could have been from his earlier works.
Wan channels his Fast & Furious style here, giving us insane spectacle with a wink towards the audience. He knows this is a comic book movie, he disregards Snyder's realistic and dark tone for something light and fun. It follows more in line with Wonder Woman than Batman V Superman. Maybe DC should take note that the two most successful movies in their franchise are these two movies.
Wan is able to get creative here with the look of Atlantis and unique creature designs. As I said earlier, he's actually able to dive back in his horror roots for one scary sequence involving creatures gone mad. There are moments in this movie that look like comic book panels and Wan pays particular attention to scale. There are creatures in this movie that are enormous and you feel that scale perfectly. The final act becomes an all out war between underwater sea creatures and I didn't mind it, but I feel that others might complain about the "CGI-Mess" that explodes on the screen.
Aquaman isn't perfect,but it does try to be. It's exactly what I expected.
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The length was not a problem for me at all but LVT does dally around the points he wants to make.
