Let’s be real, The DC film Universe
hasn’t been doing super well. Justice League and Suicide Squad were both lacking in pretty much ever regard, Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman were at best okay but flawed, and the only
undeniably good one has been Wonder Woman.
Let’s see if Aquaman follows Diana’s
example or falls into the pile. Let’s get to it.
 |
| Mamoa finally has a proper trident. That five pointed trident was driving me nuts. |
We open with a quick summary of the
making of Arthur Curry. His father, Thomas, was a simple lighthouse keeper
until the night in 1985 where he discovered a woman washed ashore. Said woman,
as it turns out, is Atlana, princess of the lost civilization of Atlantis. The
two are rocky at first, with Atlanna eating one of Thomas’ goldfish and
wrecking his TV by throwing her Quaddent into it. But, somehow these two crazy
kids make it work, and have a son that they dub Arthur. Things were pleasant,
for a time, until Atlantis’ commandos found her and demand that she returns to
her kingdom under the sea. She parts with her family with a heavy heart. As
Arthur grew up, he learned that he seemed to have a mental connection to all
beings of the sea, and spent his formative years training under his mother’s
trusted advisors Vulko. A lot of that was feed piecemeal throughout the movie,
but it seemed more efficient to info dump it here.
In the modern day, it’s been a year
since the Justice League battled Steppenwolf and his Paradeamon forces. Things
have more or less returned to normal. We open on a Russian Submarine being
attacked by a group of pirates. The group is lead by it’s Captain Jesse Kane
and his son David. They’re attack is interrupted by Arthur, who smashes into
the sub and beats the snot out of the entire crew. David tries to fight Aquaman
one on one, but it’s like when Aquaman tried to fight Superman in Justice League, there’s just no way this
ends well for him. He takes an RPG from Jesse, which causes the sub to sink.
Jesse Kane goes down with the boat, as he was pinned under a heavy torpedo and
Aquaman refused to help David save him.
Arthur returns to his father’s
lighthouse, and the two Currys go unwind at a bar. They get drunk, hangout with
some bikers and just have a wonderful time.
Under the sea, Arthur’s half
brother and current king of Atlantis, Orm, is meeting with King Nereus of the
Xebel tribe. Right, should probably explain this, Atlantis is the nation but
it’s separated into seven smaller tribes. There’s Atlantis, Xebel, The Brine,
the Fishermen, The Kingdom of the Trench, The Lost Tribe, and the Deserters.
Orm is angling to get Nereus to ally with him in a bid for Orm to become the
king of all of Atlantis, the Ocean Master. He needs at least four kingdoms to
side with him, and since the Deserters died out, the Lost tribe is Lost and the
Trenchers are a bunch of crazed cannibals, he needs all of the still
functioning kingdoms behind him. Their deal is interrupted by a sub attack.
Orm, Nereus and their forces beat it back and agree to work together.
 |
| It looks like someone spilled red wine on him. |
We’re later shown that this was in
fact the sub that Kane and his crew attacked. Orm hired them to steal a sub and
us it to fake an attack. David tries to refuse the payment to him in exchange
for a chance to fight Aquaman, but Orm dismisses him.
While trying to lug his drunken father
home, Arthur is approached by Mera, the Xebel princess. She’s trying, implied
not for the first time, to convince Arthur to come to Atlantis with her and
challenge Orm for the throne. Why? To stop the younger son of Atlanna from
starting a war with the surface world. Arthur tells her to piss off, as he’s
had no love for Atlantis since discovering his mother had been executed for
birthing him. Not going to lie, I side with Arthur on this one. He’s forced to
come with her, though, as Orm performs his opening attack, summoning an
enormous tidal wave that knocks out trash and aquatic weapons from the sea.
Mera helps Arthur save his dad from drowning, and the two head to Atlantis.
Under the sea, Mera takes Arthur to
a rendezvous with Vulkon on a sunken ship. They keep it in an air-bubble, to
keep the wildlife and most Atlantians out. Turns out, amphibious adaptation is
something that only the royal bloodlines got to keep. Vulko tells Arthur that
they’d recently uncovered an artifact that could lead them to the Trident of
Atlan, an ancient Atlantian artifact that is essentially their Excalibur. Super
magical and all you need to declare yourself the king of your nation. Their
plan is interrupted by an attack by some Atlantian commandos. Arthur is
captured, but Vulko and Mera escape unnoticed.
Arthur is brought before his
brother literally in chains. Orm mocks his half-breed half-brother into
challenging him into a trial by combat. The deal is that if Arthur wins, he’s
king of Atlantis and can do whatever he wants. If Orm wins, same thing. Their
battle is in an undersea area encircled by rivers of Lava. Despite never having
fought underwater like this, Arthur puts in a valiant effort but is ultimately
defeated by his brother. Who shatters his Arthur’s Quaddrant, a gift of their
mothers, with his Trident, a gift from Orm’s father. There’s probably some
symbolism in that. Arthur would have been killed, but he was saved by Mera, who
zooms in in her sub, and escapes with Arthur. After faking their deaths, by
crashing the sub into a lava pit, they agree to work together to find the Trident.
Mera and Arthur first travel to the
Sahara and the ruins of the Deserter tribe’s capital. They’re able to power up
some old tech and see a message from King Atlan, who points them to Sicily.
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| I really want to know why he decided a helmet was better then a gun, other then because Black Manta has a death beam helmet. |
Orm, who realizes that his brother is
still alive, but isn’t able to move against him and Mera directly, hires David
Kane to do it for him. He outfits the pirate with some Atlantian tech,
including battle armor and a plasma death ray. David immediately takes the
plasma ray and reworks it into his iconic helmet. Really wish I could have seen
his thought process in turning a gun into a helmet that shoots Cyclops
eyebeams.
Arthur and Mera make it to Sicily
and find the next clue to the Trident. They use an old school bottle they found
in the Deserter Capital combined with an old Statue to find their heading. They’re
attacked by the newly dubbed Black Manta and a crew of Atlantian commandos.
Arthur and Manta battle while Mera fights the commandos. She makes short work out
of the goons after getting to a source of liquids, a winery, and kills all but
one of them. The last guy’s reverse-scuba suit was damaged and he had his head
in a toilet at the time. Arthur has a harder time with Manta, being severely
injured by the plasma beam and Manta’s Atlantian steel blade. They finally
knock him off a cliff after destroying his jets, to his apparent death.
After Mera patches him up a little,
the two head to the Trench, the final stop on their quest. The Trench is filled
with Trenchers, Atlantians that had regressed into a pack of cannibalistic monsters
that attack anything that moves. They fight there way through several hundred
of the monsters, into an underwater typhoon that leads them to the Hidden Sea.
To everyone’s shock, they find Queen Atlanna. She’d apparently survived the Trenchers
by diving into the same wormhole-sea-storm thing, and lived the last few
decades there. Why? Because the only way out is with the Trident, and,
apparently, she isn’t worthy to grab it. Arthur goes in and faces off against
he Kraken. I mean the Karathen. It’s a very similar monster, if I’m being
honest. He intitially is kicked around by the Karathen, but is able to push the
beast back using his aquatic lifeform attuned telepathy. He claims the Trident.
Which is good, because while he was
away, Orm had conquered the Fishermen, arrested Vulko for secretly helping
Arthur, and prepared an all-out assault on the kingdom of the Brine. Aquaman
will need his allies and the Trident to force back Orm’s desires to be the
Ocean Master and conquer the world.
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| So he is justified for hating the Surface for ruining the ocean He is not justified in hating Arthur, as his only crime was mama loved him more. Just saying. |
Okay, so the good first. Jason
Mamoa is probably the best part of this movie. He’s a somewhat anti-social
version of Aquaman, who’d much rather swim around and occasionally help people
then be the actual king of the sea. He’s angry at his mother’s death and blames
all of Atlantis for it. I like Amber Heard as Mera. Sure, she seems stuck as
the “I-hate-him-but-secretly-wanna-bang-him” love interest. But then, she’s
also shown to be insanely powerful in her own right, using her power over water
on more than one occasion to save Aquaman’s ass. Patrick Wilson was good as Orm.
His background was actually very similar to the Orm of Justice League: Throne of Atlantis. In both, Orm is the less-loved
(at least in his own mind) younger son of Queen Atlanna that orchestrates a war
between the surface and Atlantis. The big difference is he’s motivated to kill
Arthur because of their mother’s death, Orm isn’t the type to blame his jealous
insane pops for ordering her death, instead of the cause of his mom’s death. Yeah,
the animated movie has Orm run his mother through with a trident. Just saying. In
this movie, though, he’s the bad guy that has at least some justification for
his actions. Yeah, we on land have royally screwed up the sea. Murdering all of
us feels a little extreme, though. This is also a DC movie that found a good
balance between the serious tone they’re trying to foster and the levity one
needs with a comic book movie. They have a number of fun little gags sprinkled
in to break up the tension. Like when Arthur is about to fight Orm, we see 10
seconds of a billboard summing the half-brothers up. Orm has things like King
of Atlantis and War Hero. Arthur has only a couple of dashed lines in pros, and
his con list includes being a filthy half-breed and a drunk. I chuckled a few
times.
The bad is there. But thankfully it
isn’t as in-your-face as some of the other DC projects. Black Manta is some
what underused, but then they set him up as the villain of the sequel so I guess
that isn’t too bad. The romance between Mera and Arthur feels really forced. I’m
not the biggest fan of the hate/love relationship style myself, so that’s kind
of a taste thing. The CGI was rather streaky in this one. Some bits look fine,
like the animation of the different Atlantian races, or on the Karathen. Other things
look down right silly, like when Arthur spins his trident around at high speed.
It’s looks like he’s waving his hands back and forth while standing in front of
an airplane propeller. One moves completely independently of the other. And
finally, their quest was kind of wonky. So, after finding an ancient video
recorder and going to the ancient Atlantian city, they find a literal message
in a bottle and have to travel to ruins in Italy? And the bottle, which I’m
shocked Atlantians were manufacturing like 3000 years before anyone else, is instrumental
in leading them to the Trenchers… Wait, they already knew where the Trenchers
were. It’s kind of vague, but I got the implication that the magic that sunk
the nation is what turned some of them into fish, crustaceans and ravenous
monsters, so the Trenchers were probably around when Atlan was around. Wouldn’t that alone prove enough of a safeguard
then the unnecessary Sicily stop? “You want my Trident?” Atlan asked, “Just swim
down into the depths of the sea filled with Piranha men. Good luck!”
Overall, this is a B+ movie. It is far
superior to Justice League, Suicide Squad, and Batman v. Superman but still has some room for improvement. I’m
hoping that the fellas in charge of DC’s Movie Universe are taking notes.
Because the directing and writing for this film kicked the ass out of the other
DCU movies. If this film had come out before Justice League, things might have
ended up working more smoothly. Just saying. I’m hoping to see more of Mamoa’s
version of Aquaman and see how Black Manta will try to get his vengeance next
time. Fingers crossed. Have a good one!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23954249
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Aquaman_poster.jpg
https://dccomicsextendeduniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Nereus?file=IMG_0014.jpg
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dccu/images/5/5c/Black_Manta.png/revision/latest?cb=20180722104712
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/newdcmovieuniverse/images/9/9c/King-Orm-Ocean_Master.png/revision/latest?cb=20180801143944
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