Aquaman movie thoughts and review
Aquaman was a movie. I didn’t think it was a particularly great movie, but certain parts were kind of fun. Before going any further I do want to warn of SPOILERS just in case anyone really wants to see it.
The Positives:
The first 30 minutes or so was great. It felt like a real origin story to the hero and not some combination of origin and anything else. The comedy was good here, and I really enjoyed the look and transition between all the shots. Also Jason Momoa was great for the character.
The Everything Else:
There was way too much exposition in this movie. At some point it seemed that they decided not to do an origin film, but still give everyone information so it became a mess of people talking about stuff I didn’t care about.
Towards the beginning of the film the villain wanted to get Atlantis to go to war with the land, but for the audience to understand they decided to explain how basically all of Atlantis split into like 7(?) different kingdoms, while showing us them, and how to go to war they need to get approval from all kingdoms and then they listed each one out individually, and listed two missing kingdoms, and then listed the names of each ruler of each kingdom, and it was just a mess of dialogue. Then the female lead, Mera, came to get Aquaman, and then she said all of this to him as well. Who cares.
I think it was a weird way to have a time limit on the heroes, but because they never really had a sense of location or urgency, it was pointless and confusing.
Another way they overdid exposition was have news broadcasts tell us what happened. Atlantis basically flooded cities by the coast, and for some reason they needed to explain that by news articles.
Speaking of: Every time they changed location, they did have the setting displayed in one of the corners, but it was just: SOMEWHERE IN __________ OCEAN. That explains nothing and is definitely not necessary.
Back again in a superhero movie since the original Spider-Man movies, Willem Dafoe plays Vulko (I had to look it up again), a trainer for Aquaman that really only did stuff in flashbacks when he was teaching Arthur stuff about the ocean and his powers.
Besides the multiple flashbacks, he really didn’t do much. Sure he explained stuff to the heroes, but nothing else. I also could not tell his opinions on certain parts in the movie because Willem Dafoe’s acting was very neutral. With dialogue he said he was sad, but I definitely couldn’t tell with how he acted.
Near the end of the movie, the main villain, Orm, suddenly knew about Dafoe helping Aquaman, or maybe he always knew. Either way, it was a very sudden thing and he was instantly taken away to some other room in a submarine that really didn’t affect much because he was “rescued” moments later.
There was a moment towards the middle of the movie where Aquaman and Orm fought in what was called “The Ring of Fire”. It was an ultimately pointless battle because Aquaman lost, and they escaped the battle while the battle was still going on. It was basically action with more action that did not give the heroes time to reflect on what happened. Aquaman was a jerk, and continued to be one without ever feeling sorry for himself.
Black Manta was the second villain in this movie. Somewhat created by Aquaman when he didn’t save Black Manta’s father, he decided to go on a revenge quest to kill him.
I didn’t really care about this guy. He was really boring in the movie, and I think the movie wanted us to feel sorry for him? He kidnapped and killed people on a submarine before Aquaman saved them so it was really hard for me to care about the emotions about this villain.
There was a whole big battle with him and Aquaman in Italy, and while Aquaman won, he basically threw Black Manta off into the ocean where we never saw him again until the after-credits scene when it basically introduced him again for a sequel. The whole Italy fight was not important and Black Manta could have been used for another film. Stick with one villain.
The comedy in this movie was definitely misplaced. During the Italy battle there were fish-people that needed water to breathe, and they broke a helmet and the action basically stopped to make us watch him dunk his own head in a toilet bowl.
Like many bad movies, the final battle ended up to be a giant CGI fight that was very confusing, and underwater, and no one could tell who was who. In a battle that had people riding sharks and giant ancient seahorses, it was really weird that Mera rode a normal killer whale. I honestly could not tell what was going on for most of this part so I really can’t say much about it.
Overall, it was not a very good movie. Watch it when it’s out digitally or on DVD, but it really makes no sense. It felt like they were trying to do too much, and each change of scene felt like someone different was writing it. If you actually enjoy Aquaman, you can probably skip this movie.
Kristopher K. Online 