If you are looking to watch a movie with amazing scenery, great story telling, well developed characters, and an ending that will have you just as emotional as the “Titanic”, and will leave you coming for more, than you should go watch “Avenger: Infinity War”.
The film “Aquaman” is not even close to being a subpar movie to come from the DC Universe. Every time I think DC will do it for me, they find a new way to let me down worse than your classmates in a group project.
Spoilers ahead in this quick summary, in true DC fashion, we get the entire plot of the movie subconsciously told us in the first ten minutes of the film. But, aside from that, it starts with Arthur’s parent’s backstory. Arthur’s mom is Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), Queen of Atlantis and his father is Thomas (Temuera Morrison), a lighthouse keeper and how they fell in love and had a baby to prove that the land and the sea can coexist (No idea how he got a fish pregnant, but we’ll move on for the sake of this summary). Atlantis’ king sends for Atlanna and face punishment for leaving.
She remorsefully leaves behind Arthur and Thomas. Fast forwarding, Arthur learns of his ability to communicate with the sea at a young age and is trained by Vulko (Willem Dafoe) to master his skills. Now we are in present time, where Arthur is battling pirates on a submarine ship. He kills the father of a pirate David Hyde (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who now wants revenge. Back in Atlantis, Orm or Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson), is making his play with the other kings to start a war with land which many of them are apprehensive about.
To further his bid, he has a ship attack them and he “pretends” to save them. After the fight he meets up with Mera, daughter of King Nereus of Xebel, who eventually gets him into some shit with Atlantis who already doesn’t like him because of his mixed breed of human and Atlantian. He faces off against his brother Orm, who is beating the living hell out of him. Mera saves him and they escape Atlan. They end up searching for the Trident of Atlan, which determines the true King of Atlan. They travel the world, come across Hyde who has transformed himself into Black Mamta and has been ordered by Orm to kill him and Mera.
Hyde gets his ass kicked and washes up on shore somewhere. Skipping through some pointless things, Arthur and Mera make it to the trenches part of the ocean where his mother was killed, and get attacked by some creatures. They survive and find out his mother was alive all along (eye roll to DC). Arthur finds the Trident, faces his brother again and wins. He becomes the true king of the Ocean. In the ending credits, Black Manta is found by a crazy doctor who too seeks to find Aquaman.
In a nutshell, this movie wasn’t good, but then again, this is the DC Universe we are talking about so there should have never been any high hopes to begin with.
On the positive note, DC did a really great job with the special effects and the scenery. Atlan was done really well and the colors were very vibrant. The character choices were decent, Jason Momoa was born to play Aquaman. He did a fantastic job, it wasn’t his fault DC sucks at making their movies. And the positive review for this movie stops here.
Now for DC highlighting moment, the fuck ups of the movie. The music was loud and overbearing and was played every time an emotion moment was trying to be established. The fight scenes were less than realistic and the camera shots during the fight scenes were an abomination. It’s never a good look when a movie looks like it has CGI in it, but DC never lets you forget they have it, especially when a man was crushed by a boulder, Arthur lifted it, and the man ran away unharmed, just sloppy at that point.
The emotional attachment to the character’s weren’t there. What I really didn’t like was how the villains were being portrayed. DC has a weird way of getting you interested in the villain then completely destroying your interest by the end of the film. Black Manta could have been the wildcard but at the end was an afterthought.
Having two villians is never a good idea, especially when their evil levels is on the same level, they could have at least made Orm seem more villainy with a laugh or something. It was practically dreadful how the villians were treated. It was also very cheap of them to make Mera and Arthur have a romantic relationship. It didn’t feel organic, just forced, like the audiences’ attention span on this movie.
In conclusion, DC does not look promising in creating a movie that would be considered on the level of Marvel films. The next DC movie, “Shazam” looks like another let down, but DC lets us down continuously year after year, so why have the expectation.
