As far as the actual story goes, the movie kinda falls flat. The script never cracks what being a hero means to Arthur, and so it is difficult to figure out what the conflict is that forces him to put this belief system on the line. It does not help that the movie plays out scenes of Arthur's childhood that never provide any backbone to his adult personality.
Playing the titular character, Jason Momoa has solidified in my mind as an accent piece - he’s fine at light comedy, and can do action, but as the lead of a potential franchise, his limitations are laid bare by a script that never figures out what his character is about.
The disconnect really solidified for me in the scenes where Arthur and his brother/enemy Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson) are reunited with their mother - who they believed had been executed by Orm’s father decades ago.
From a visual standpoint, the overtly cartoonish elements (mer-people, Xenomorph-like trench dwellers, an octopus playing drums) are really fun, and occasionally striking - the sequence of Arthur and Mira trying to escape their boat as the trench dwellers swarm over it is legitimately haunting.
Otherwise, the movie suffers a bit from too much green screen. Because the movie takes place underwater, that means a lot of CGI - so a lot of the action suffers from feeling weightless (no pun intended). This is fine when the action is below the surface, but during the film’s extended land-based action sequences, the lack of tactile reality really undermines the sense of danger.
The set piece of Arthur and erstwhile love interest Mera (Heard) running from Atlantean goons across the rooftops of a Sicilian town should feel far more visceral than it does, but there is never any doubt that Arthur and Mera will win.
I would have liked more grounding in Arthur’s upbringing, and what being a hero means to him. The movie pays some lip service to why he should return to Atlantis, but I never really had a sense of what he got out of being a hero. It did not help that one of the early scenes is based around Arthur saving his dad (Temeura Morrison) from a tidal wave, yet after he has done so he makes no move to help anybody else from the town nearby.
But if you take it as a pile of ridiculousness, Aquaman kind of works - Momoa gets introduced in slo-mo to a super manly guitar riff, a trope that is sadly not continued for the duration of the film; Julie Andrews voices a leviathan monster; wine gets weaponised into daggers.
A goofy movie about the ultimate surfer dude fighting monsters with a trident, Aquaman is fun in patches, although it might be a tad generic and dramatically undercooked to get you punching your fist in the air.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random.
The latest episode is out today - to get in the holiday spirit, we review John Gardner's Christmas-set thriller Win, Lose or Die (1989). Available wherever you get your podcasts.
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