Jason Momoa swims but Aquaman sinks
uperheroes who travel by sea horse never get any respect.
Since Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger first dreamed him up in 1941, Aquaman’s fate has largely been as the Rodney Dangerfield of DC Comics – a regular punchline for his not-so-potent powers. Sure, he can talk underwater and brandishes a big fork for weapon. But like Luca Brasi, he sleeps with the fishes.
Yet Aquaman’s day has finally arrived. And if there was one inspired stroke behind the first solo movie for the Atlantis hero, it was in casting Jason Momoa in the Justice League role, one he begun in 2016’s Batman v Superman. It’s almost a dare: Try telling this guy your Aquaman jokes.
In James Wan’s waterlogged, fitfully entertaining Aquaman, a heavy metal guitar riff blares at our first close-up of the long-haired, much-tattooed, shirtless Momoa. “Permission to come aboard?” he says with a sly, over-the-shoulder grin. It’s a welcome arrival. As Momoa showed on his recent SNL hosting gig, his charisma is as formidable as his brawn. So why is Aquaman so soggy with Atlantis mythology and drowning in special effects when all it needs to do is let Momoa’s Aquaman rock?
There are pleasures in Wan’s extravagant underwater pageant. It’s surely the only movie around where you can enjoy a floating Willem Dafoe (as Vulko, counselor to Atlantis ruler Orm, played by Patrick Wilson), see a gladiatorial showdown sounded by an octopus on drums and, in one of the many scenes where water is weaponised, witness death by Chianti, in a tussle that tumbles into a Sicilian store. Aquaman weighs in somewhere between
Justice League and Wonder Woman on the uneven scales of recent DC films. But the bright spots (Momoa, that octopus) can be difficult to really relish amid the oceans of exposition and a typically pulverizing, overelaborate screenplay.
A war is brewing underwater, but David Leslie Johnsonmcgoldrick and Will Beall’s script takes a while to get us there. They have origin stories to map out, beginning with Atlanna, the banished Atlantis princess (Nicole Kidman), washing up on the rocky Maine shores of a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison). They fall in love and have a child named Arthur (Aquaman) before Atlanna is forced to return to the sea.
As an adult, Arthur moonlights as a hero in between happyhour trips to the bar. But he’s reluctantly drawn into a struggle for the throne of the seven seas with his younger brother Orm, who’s plotting a battle with “surface dwellers.” He regards Arthur as a “half-breed” not fit for the underwater kingdom. After centuries of peace, Orm and his conspirators have had enough of the landlubbers and in one tidal wave of vengeance, he washes the ocean’s garbage and warships onto beaches of the world. The Xebel princess Mera (Amber Heard), a formidable fighter, joins with Arthur on a mission to save Atlantis and prevent war.
Wan deserves both criticism for soaking the film so thoroughly in kitschy CGI and praise for the glowing synthetic beauty of Atlantis. The movie zips along too quickly before we get much more than a float-over view of Atlantis. But in almost “Tron”like contours of luminous neon, Atlantis is a cinema world well built, at least on the outside. But the movie’s only truly visually stunning sequence is a deep-sea chase lit by a lone flare.
But both Wan and Momoa have a firm grasp of who Aquaman is, and they steer the film toward sincerity and away from bombast. It’s surely some measure of accomplishment that
Aquaman, for all its messy grandiosity, culminates in its hero therapeutically saying “Let’s talk,” and it’s uttered not to a manatee but to a brother.ap
Aquaman
Director: James Wan
Cast: Jason Mamoa, Amber Heard