I waited a lil while after this was released so I could watch this back home with a couple of little sea monkeys (by which I mean, the little cousins). Afterwards, they told me that while they enjoyed it, I shoulda taken them to see Spider-verse instead. Whoops. Big cousin fail.
My disdain for the DCEU has been no secret. Although I have come to realize that most of hte problem lies with Zack Snyder. Wonder Woman, which he had no involvement in was a stunning film. Justice League which he had some involvement in was fine. His movies are crap. So I had some cautious expectations about Aquaman, being helmed by James Wan.
I also had the utmost faith in star Jason Momoa. Aquaman has been the butt of many jokes throughout the the life of DC Comics (and the whole Entourage thing did not help matters at all). But here you’ve got Momoa, Khal effing Drogo, one of the toughest and most bad ass men to have walked the earth. He’s pratically daring you to make fun of him. But the thing is, he’s not a dumb meathead. He’s a big goofball. He knows that Aquaman is silly and he tackles the role with a gleam of mischief in his eye. That humor and willingness to make fun of himself (because lets face it, this is cheesy) first carries the film. Wan carries that tone throughout the film, making it much more fun than anything else in this otherwise unnecessarily dark comic universe has seen.
The film itself mostly played out like typical superhero stuff. I’ll admit, I was actually rather proud of the little cousins for pointing out plotholes afterwards, tho I was surprisingly more forgiving during the film. What makes a superhero film special is the way it differentiates itself from the others. This one does so in two ways, the humor which we’ve talked about, and the visuals of fighting underwater. I thought it looked pretty cool. It also helped that the film color palate of blues and sea greens basically hovered around my absolute favorite end of the rainbow.
So maybe we would have been a bit better off with Spider-verse. I still like the direction this one is taking the mega franchise, showing that there is still some potential to save this universe. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have fun watching.
Aquaman – \m/ \m/ \m/