Aquaman

Seriously, there were a lot of movies in the back half of this year! So with this being another comic book movie, of course I had to go see it. I know Aquaman is a punchline for the majority of the world. but in the comics he's become a much stronger character in the past few years. Honestly, I've really enjoyed him and was buying a number of his issues since the new 52 relaunch. One of the things they got right was level setting with Aquaman.

I say all this to say I was somewhat anticipating this movie. I say somewhat because DC doesn't exactly have the best track record. Outside of Wonder Woman, everything has been straight up bad. The less we say about last year's Justice League, the better.

I am happy to say that outside of Wonder Woman, this has been DC's best movie since they started their DC Universe line of movies. Granted, I know this is a low bar, but this movie was alright. It was better good than bad. There were certainly some bad parts and I will get to that.

First of all, I think Jason Mamoa is great as Aquaman. He brings a ruggedness to the character that I think makes you take Aquaman a lot more seriously. If they are trying to improve his status quo with the general public, you can't go wrong here. He starts off seeming like a hothead jock, but throughout the movie they show that he does have some intelligence. Otherwise, they risk having him look like a total frat boy. However, his relationship with his dad is genuinely sweet and that humanizes him.

I had to say, I was shocked to see Nicole Kidman in this, but I think she does a great job with what she is given. Everyone else is fine here. There weren't any glaring holes except for maybe Patrick Wilson's King Orm. There is scenery chewing and there is the job he does in this movie. Which kills me because he can be a good actor, but when he plays the villain he goes way over the top and that is what happens here. His acting combined with his delivery of being called Oceanmaster threatens to really doom this movie. It was 100% mustache twirling villain territory. I'm glad we have Black Manta as the other villain in this movie to temper that. At least he has a warped sense of motivation.

For the most part, this movie is really beautiful and they pack a lot of different locales in here. We go from cold marine town to underwater ocean kingdom to the desert to Italy and back to ocean kingdom. This movie is almost like scenery porn.

On the flip side, I was unimpressed with some of the special effects, as there are shots where they use digital stunt doubles and it is completely distracting. There is also some more use of that de-aging technology they have used on older actors. They do it here with Willem Dafoe and it looks super weird. While I'm talking about things I didn't like, let's hit a couple of other items. First of all, the musical choices and score are all over the map here. We get some orchestrated stuff that is then cut into by some weird daft punk sounding electronica from time to time. What the what? Also, this movie has some cutesy scenes where it tries to turn this movie into a romantic comedy. Also, this movie is way longer than it needs to be. There is an extended fight scene in Italy that goes on for way too long and could frankly have been cut from this movie for all I care. We all know where this movie is heading, but it takes so long to get there. This movie really tried to do too much.

All in all, I did not hate this movie. I did genuinely like it. I had fun with it and that is all I can ask. Clearly, DC is doing well with movies that don't have Batman or Superman right now. Hopefully Shazam will be equally as fun. Oh yes, I realize the Suicide Squad falls under the no Batman/Superman, but we don't talk about that.