Directed by James Wan
Produced by Peter Safran & Rob Cowan
Screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick & Will Beall
Story by Geoff Johns & James Wan & Will Beall
Based on Aquaman by Paul Norris Mort Weisinger
Starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman
Music by Rupert Gregson-Williams
There’s a reason I didn’t get around to watching Aquaman until now.
Best way to explain it is that along about five or ten years ago, I was asked to review a book. The book was really bad, as it turned out. The protagonist had a superpower: he could turn pieces of cloth into butterflies or something. The big reveal at the end is that he could turn pieces of black cloth into bats, which he does, and it scares the antagonist into shooting himself with his own sword. I took the book out back, buried it, and complained to my editor about how I hate supposed superheroes with Aquaman powers.
“Aquaman powers?” my editor carefully repeated, while googling nursing homes.
“Yeah. You know what his power is? He talks to fishes. Makes him absolutely useless on land. The comics people had incredibly contrived plot devices just to give him even the faintest patina of relevance. The more they tried, the sillier the character looked.”
Needless to say, no review was written, and my editor probably quietly resolved to himself to never give me Moby Dick to review. It was obvious I hated characters who talk to fishes. Yes, I know, but you have to understand: he’s an EDITOR.
Then I saw the verts and trailers for the movie. Yeah, they sexed him up, gave him muscles, tats, a beard and a bare chest. “Oh great,” I thought. “They’re still trying to take Blub-blub and make him relevant. Bet he still has those stupid sonic rings projecting from his forehead while he carps to the cod.”
OK, my image of Aquaman is some 50+ years out of date. It was the leaden age of comics, when grown men said things like “Holy Schmoly!” and Superman was able to utterly disguise himself from the top reporters in the country by putting on a pair of glasses that didn’t even have lenses. Poor old Aquax couldn’t even go back in time by flying around the world backwards! But they played up his being a king, giving him some physical and Machiavellian muscles to flex. He was still absurd, but less lame.
They upgraded him, made him less of an Arthur Dent lost at sea. So maybe the movie would not be all that bad.
It isn’t all that bad. In fact, it’s pretty damned good.
It’s not a great plot line, the story has lots of plot holes and inconsistencies, and the best single bit of acting is done by a goat who watches as Aquaman and his companion jump out of a DC-3, a couple of miles above the Sahara. That goat has a spit-take that would make Jon Stewart swoon. The strongly favored method of advancing the plot is by having sudden large explosions occur, screenswipes by C4.
As for the roles, well, let’s just say that for Nicole Kidman and Willem DeFoe, these are not capstones.
But here’s the thing: the movie doesn’t try to be relevant or have much meaning other then the fact that lust for power can turn anyone into a Trump. It revels in goofiness, adding a lot of very good CGI to make it a pretty engrossing action flick, and then tossed in a fair old bit of humor.
So: CGI the hell out of it for awesome underwater settings, throw in enough explosions to double the stock of DuPont, get someone who won’t look like Walter Mitty in seaweed to play the title character, and add a startled goat. It works out.
Hell, there’s far worse ways to spend 2½ hours.
This one, at least, is fun, and entertaining.