Movie Review: Aquaman [2018]

Aquaman (2018)

One of the projects I hope I will complete for this blog eventually is reviewing all the superhero movies, so let's try and catch up with some of the ones that's relatively recent. Released late in 2018, Aquaman is the first movie to be released after DCEU's lukewarmly-received Justice League movie. With the DCEU's projects mostly being received with lukewarm to negative response with the sole exception of Wonder Woman, it's actually quite interesting if this movie -- particularly starring the memetic-loser-in-popular-media Aquaman, is ever going to work, or if DC is just doomed to making crappy, mediocre movies all around. 

And... and thank god they cast Jason Momoa in the role, because he's perfect for the 90's angry sea warlord Aquaman. Aquaman was pretty neat in the Justice League movie, the surly dick of the team, and this movie finally tries to explore just who Aquaman is, and how all of this fancy Atlantis politics work. And as a combination of Aquaman's re-discovery of his heritage and origin story, it actually works pretty neatly. Aquaman is shown to be aware of his backstory (although we see a flashback nonetheless), but has been actively ignoring his Atlantean heritage because that same society ended up causing his mother's (Nicole Kidman) death by execution. 

Aquaman ends up playing out somewhat similarly to Thor or Wonder Woman, but in reverse. Instead of a being from a fantastical, god-like society figuring out how to interact with the normal world, this time, in order to save Atlantis, Arthur Curry ends up being dragged by Mera (Amber Heard) and his old mentor Vulko (Willem DaFoe) to challenge the throne and Arthur's power-mad brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) to stop all-out war from breaking out. I won't really go too much into details, but while some parts of the movie's exposition did seem rushed, Aquaman does work as a cliff's notes reimagination of his long, comic-book mythos. 

And unlike the super-dark-and-serious tone set by Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League, Aquaman... it goes on for full-on camp. It's perhaps not quite as successful as Thor: Ragnarok, but in the midst of introducing all of these wacky, colourful Atlantis civilizations -- we get the horrifying abyssal Deep Ones of the Trench, mermaids, people riding seahorses, fish-men, a gigantic crab-people society -- we also get names like Ocean Master thrown around unapologetically, and a huge segment of the movie involves Aquaman hunting for the plot device that is the royal Trident of one of the ancient Atlantean kings. 

The whole "journey across the world and see how our culture has been embodied into humanity's" segment of the movie is just a fun if inconsequential romp, and we do get the pretty neat villain Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen). I really thought that Manta was utterly wasted in this movie, though. Introduced as sort of a villain who became obsessed with Aquaman after Aquaman essentially told the pirate to "save yourself", causing in the death of Manta's father, he ended up becoming a hitman for Orm's faction in the Atlantean society. The costume looks great, and the action scenes of him fighting Aquaman and Mera in that Italian town is neat... but he's thrown off a cliff and quite literally forgotten for the rest of the movie. I genuinely thought he was going to be somewhat relevant in the final act, but nope, he's just ignored. Speaking of villains... Orm/Ocean Master is... he's smarmy and a flat villain, but he does that relatively well. I don't have much to say about him.

The sequence where Aquaman and Mera end up on the treacherous oceans and fight the horrid creatures of the Trench is perhaps my favourite, at least before they swim into the water and get into a huge CGI-fest, but maybe that's because I like monsters in general? I thought having Aquaman's mother Atlanna survive in a Journey to the Center of the Earth hidden world style was utterly bizarre, and the way that Aquaman got the trident from the massive CGI kaiju Karathen (voiced by Julie Andrews of all people) is... it's kinda just there. We get a huge war as Aquaman commands Karathen and the rest of the fishies in the ocean, before fighting and winning against Ocean Master one-on-one. 

And while a lot of the movie is just action scene to action scene to huge pretty settings to huge CGI monster fight (and there is a huge, long CGI fight with monsters and submarines in the climax), it's definitely entertaining and a solid, fun romp. Sure, not all of the characters really worked out -- Orm in particular is solid, but too one-dimensional -- and the third act is a pretty simple superhero action movie climax, but the movie's ultimately a pretty solid and wacky adventure. At least it's not boring or dull, the way that a lot of the DCEU movies are. Perhaps the movie would've flowed better if it wasn't too ambitious in the scale of its CGI and action scenes, but eh. I did enjoy it, and it's a pretty solid blockbuster flick.