AQUAMAN
Trident tested
Will DC’s amphibious marvel make a splash or flop, gasping, on the shore?
RELEASED OUT NOW! 12a | 143 minutes Director James Wan Cast Jason Momoa, amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Yahya abdul-Mateen II, Willem dafoe
Even though the sea covers more than two thirds of the Earth’s surface, our exploration of the oceans lags far behind our understanding of space – scientists reckon we’ve explored less than 20% of what lies beneath the waves. A similar discrepancy exists on screen, where big-budget space movies are significantly more commonplace than underwater tales.
A true aquatic fantasy epic, then, feels like the chance to truly go where no one has gone before, and it’s a gap in the market that Aquaman – a genuine “sea opera” – seizes with two (webbed?) hands. Director James Wan (The Conjuring, Fast & Furious 7) throws ideas and invention at the screen with enthusiastic, Wachowski-like abandon and while there are plenty of moments that miss, enough hit the mark to ensure you’re reeled in for most of the running time.
Beyond the setting, Aquaman is new territory for DC’s cinematic universe, as the dour seriousness of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and incoherent plotting of Justice League are banished to distant memory. While not as accomplished a movie as Wonder Woman, Aquaman is more fun. It embraces its silliness head-on, with an acceptance that there’s something inherently ridiculous about a man who can not only swim fast and breathe underwater, but also chat with fish. There’s also a tacit acknowledgement that the eponymous hero has long been an object of ridicule – up to now, his most notable screen appearances of the 21st century have come as the butt of the joke in Family Guy and Entourage – and the film even gets away with putting its leading man in the sparkly gold and green suit from the comics. Bizarrely, it works.
If it wasn’t for the clunky, over-familiar origin story (think Black Panther) and the fact that half-human/half-merman Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is already a fully paid-up member of the Justice League, it would be debatable whether Aquaman’s a superhero movie at all. Brought up on land, Curry (the reluctant lost heir of Atlantis’s throne) is the quintessential Chosen One sent on a quest to recover a mystic McGuffin (a trident) that prophecy claims can unite the squabbling races of the sea. Everything that follows is as derivative as hell, with echoes of loads of other franchises (The Lord Of The Rings, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name but three), but the repackaging is fresh enough to keep it feeling new.
The film’s biggest achievement, however, is creating a fantasy landscape that looks like nothing we’ve seen before. It’s a vibrant, alien world of biophosphorescent buildings, fishy underwater races, and soldiers riding giant seahorses – it’s as if Stingray’s submarine kingdoms have been given a multi-million-dollar makeover with state-of-the-art CGI. Wan has an eye for a spectacular visual, and you get the sense that we’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg; that there’s plenty more underwater kingdoms to be revealed in subsequent instalments. (With
The gags make you smile rather than guffaw
Aquaman’s world feeling richer and more vibrant than anything else we’ve seen from DC’s movie universe, it’d seem a retrograde step to saddle him with another Earth-bound adventure with the Justice League.)
This incarnation of Arthur Curry is a huge step up from the boorish, wisecracking bro we saw in Justice League. Momoa still plays him more as Aqua-Dude than Aquaman, but you actually feel there’s a character beneath the tats and the quippy one-liners. His verbal sparring with powerful Atlantean princess Mera (Amber Heard) has a fun Romancing The
Stone vibe, while Curry’s relationship with his human dad (Temuera “Jango Fett” Morrison) is arguably the film’s emotional anchor. Indeed, Aquaman’s best character moment simply features the pair of them getting drunk in a remote fishermen’s pub.
For all Aquaman’s steps in the right direction, however, it’s still not quite as accomplished as Marvel movies at their best. The gags make you smile rather than guffaw, while the characters simply don’t feel as human as their counterparts in the MCU. This is not a shades-of-grey world, with the “goodie” and “baddie” camps being obvious from the start – lead villain King Orm (Patrick Wilson) initially has some moral high ground regarding the human race polluting the oceans, but that’s soon eclipsed by pure megalomania and comic-book villainy. DC are undeniably catching up with their rivals over at Marvel. Sadly, in MCU terms, that puts Aquaman somewhere around 2015. Richard Edwards
Early on, when Arthur and Mera leave her ship, The Conjuring’s creepy doll Annabelle can be glimpsed on the ocean floor.