Review: Aquaman

Pretty much a mixture of “Green Lantern” and “Clash of Titans”, as Jason Momoa stars as Arthur Curry, AKA Aquaman, the son of a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) who hooked up with an Atlantean queen named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman, making like Daryl Hannah in “Splash”). It is through his mother’s genes that Arthur gains special abilities in swimming, breathing underwater and being the Dr. Doolittle of the ocean. The gist of the film has Arthur/Aquaman doing battle with the vengeful son of a pirate (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) trying to hijack a ship, before venturing to Atlantis to claim his birthright and deal with his power-hungry twit of a half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) who wants to gather all of the undersea kingdoms together to wage a war above water. Amber Heard (with unflattering red hair- sorry, it only works on animated mermaids) plays Mera, who urges Arthur/Aquaman to come to Atlantis. Willem Dafoe plays Arthur/Aquaman’s mentor Vulko, whilst a red-bearded Dolph Lundgren plays Mera’s father King Nereus.

Jason Momoa is ideally cast and brings credibility to the orange and green suit, but this 2018 DC Comics film from ill-suited director James Wan (“Saw”) comes close to besting “Batman Forever” in the Loudest Movie Ever stakes. There’s too many ‘jump scares’ in the first fifteen minutes alone in what is absolutely, positively not a horror film and might just lessen the appeal for some of the film’s target audience. A wimpy kid like I was would have had a hellacious time at the cinema with this one. The rest of the audience will find the film fairly unappealing anyway, and largely miscast aside from the terrific Momoa and an occasionally beautiful look (the hairstyling and costuming aside from Momoa is dreadful, especially the fishy storm troopers). The finale is especially flat and underwhelming for this sort of thing.

I said that the cast were mostly miscast, but in Nicole Kidman’s case she’s perfectly fine in casting, just completely underused. Ditto Dolph Lundgren, who also has the misfortune of sporting red hair and a beard (Seriously, why not blond like the comic book character of Aquaman himself? Lundgren’s Swedish for cryin’ out loud!). He brings weight and gravitas to a role that seems to evaporate by the second. Other than them and Momoa…oof, it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Willem Dafoe can be a great actor in the right role, but whatever the fuck he’s doing here is as far from the right role as I think he’s ever gotten. He’s awkward and unconvincing, and quite possibly picking up a pay check. Temuera Morrison’s performance isn’t awful, but the attempt to de-age him via CGI certainly is. The real stinkers however, are Patrick Wilson and Amber Heard as our completely limp villain and leading lady, respectively. Weirdly failing to maintain eye contact with any of his scene partners, Wilson hasn’t got a menacing bone in his body, nor the presence or gravitas to play a supervillain. He’s completely ineffectual in a pretty important role and entirely uninteresting. He’s also nowhere near enough of a physical match for Momoa’s Aquaman, and I do think that’s a legit problem. Imagine any of the following in the role instead: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Scott Adkins, Dave Bautista, Tom Hardy or John Cena. Hell, Dolph Lundgren has gotta be around 60 and even he would provide a more intimidating threat to Momoa than Wilson. That said, his more buff criminal associate Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, is also pretty underwhelming (His costume is just about the most absurd and stupid-looking things I’ve seen all year). I’ve seen Heard (get it?) do fine work on screen, but here she acts like she’s in a C-grade 80s swords and tits movie from Roger Corman’s New World/New Concorde Pictures (“Barbarian Queen”, “Deathstalker” etc). She’s stiltedly earnest and dull, with the fish-out-of-water romantic comedy bullshit between her and Momoa falling entirely flat.

One thing I did like about the film was that it’s not some graphic novel-esque pose-a-thon like most of these DC movies (“BvS” and the wholly overrated “Wonder Woman” being the worst offenders). In fact, it’s probably more in line with what Marvel deliver, just not one of the good ones. As far as I’m concerned, any film that features Atlanteans riding seahorses and sharks can’t be all bad. That was freaking cool. While underwater explosions proved to be nauseating, I’ll never complain about underwater lasers. Again, it’s just plain cool. Atlantis itself looks really lovely, kind of like Naboo, but don’t worry, there’s no Jar-Jar Binks in sight. Nor any Snorks. I was a bit disappointed by the latter.

Sometimes visually appealing and a cool Jason Momoa is ideal in the lead, however much of the film is unengaging and poorly performed. An overall lumpy mixture of cool and dopey, It’s the first “Thor” movie pretty much, and the only one of those I really liked was the second one. The underwater explosions here are also irritating beyond belief. No, this one didn’t do it for me. The unoriginal screenplay is by Will Beall (The perfectly OK “Gangster Squad”) & David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (“Orphan”, “Red Riding Hood”, and unsurprisingly “Wrath of the Titans”).

Rating: C