Maybe the nicest thing I can say about Aquaman is that there's nothing insulting about it. Not a huge compliment, I know, but this is the DC Extended Universe we're talking about. That's the place where Batman tries to kill anything that gets in his way (including Superman) and the Joker has face tats. Aquaman, as a character, isn't quite as sacrosanct as those guys, so the jump from the blond-haired Aquaman of yore to the Jason Mamoa/Justice League version continues to be just fine. And everything else here is given proper comic-book reverence. Aquaman is a straight-forward, respectful look at the character's origins and his growing place of importance among the Atlanteans, the race of undersea people whose blood he shares. If you're a DC superfan or count Aquaman as one of your favorite heroes, that will likely be enough for you to enjoy the film.
As for the rest of us? Aquaman doesn't offer much you haven't already seen done better. The mythological heroics of Thor and nautical treasure-hunting of Pirates of the Caribbean factor heavily into this film's DNA. And at a whopping (and honestly needless) two hours and 23 minutes, you may feel like you've been pummeled into submission by a never-ending series of heavy ocean waves, one after another until that end-credits stinger rolls. Aquaman is an epic all right, but there's just no need for the fish-man movie to be almost as long as Avengers: Infinity War.
The film spends a good chunk of time setting up its underwater universe and laying out its hero's origin story. Arthur Curry is half-human, half-Atlantean, conceived when his mother Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) flees her underwater home to solid ground and falls in love with a humble lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison). She eventually returns to the ocean's depths to protect her family on terra firma, while Aquaman grows up getting the occasional training from Vulko (Willem Dafoe), a counselor to Atlantis's royal family. Once Arthur is full grown — and on everyone's radar thanks to his shenanigans in Justice League — an Atlantean named Mera (Amber Heard) tracks him down to bring him back under the water, where Arthur's half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) is uniting all the kingdoms of the ocean to wage a war against humanity.
(You might need a plot break here. Take a deep breath, as if you've been under water for too long and just came up for air. Okay, ready to dive back under?)
Mera convinces Arthur that he must protect humanity by finding a legendary trident that would make him the ruler of the ocean and give him the power to drive back not just Orm, but also a pesky, high-tech sea pirate named David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Kane has a personal vendetta against Aquaman and eventually takes the name Black Manta, a.k.a the only Aquaman comics villain there's even a chance you've ever heard of.
It's a lot of a story, and to the film's credit it dives fearlessly into all of it, with only the Black Manta bits feeling tacked on. James Wan (Furious 7, The Conjuring) is a fantastic director with a great visual sense, and for a while it's fun to watch him seamlessly swing back and forth between present day and various flashbacks, keeping the pace up and the narrative moving despite all the heavy lifting he has to do to service the bulging plot. Once the movie passes its halfway point, though, it starts feeling more and more waterlogged, and eventually you find yourself wistful for Justice League's positively restrained 120 minutes and just want the damn thing to be over.
Part of why it might feel like the movie overstays its welcome is because Arthur Curry just isn't much of a character. Momoa has a certain brutish charm about him for sure (an early scene set at a bar is good fun), but I'm still not convinced he can act. The movie sidesteps this potential problem by not really giving him a reason to. Arthur gets dragged along on this huge adventure by Mera but doesn't go through much of a character arc, other than deciding it's time to get involved in Atlantean matters. Honestly, Mera often seems more emotionally invested in ongoing events than Arthur does. Momoa strikes a fierce pose, but Aquaman's internal struggles are rarely on display.
The supporting cast is pedigreed, but no one manages to rise above his or her comic-book-appropriate, two-dimensional character. Honestly, Patrick Wilson is just too good for this type of thing (Watchmen was a better use for him), and Dafoe could do his role in his sleep. Heard and Mamoa don't have any chemistry, despite both of them … you know … looking like they do. I do approve of Dolph Lundgren's casting as Mera's father. Between this and Creed II, it's a veritable Lundgren-aissance this fall at theaters.
Aquaman is an exhausting movie in an exhausting genre. It seems like every TV network and streaming platform features a glut of superhero shows, while a new big-screen comic adaptation drops monthly now. Personally, I can only take so much. (True story: I still haven't seen Venom.) And the fact is, if Marvel Studios puts out two high quality superhero films in a year (which they almost always do), that's all I need to hit my quota. If you want to get my attention past that, you need to bring something new to the table. Wonder Woman, still the DCEU's best movie, managed to do it last year by putting a superheroine front and center and letting her kick ass in a series of standout action sequences. Aquaman is a well-designed movie — at times every corner of the screen at times is crammed with exotic sea life and Atlantis's G.I. Joe-esque underwater tech — but nothing here rivals Wonder Woman's emotionally charged No Man's Land sequence or Battle of Themyscira. What you get instead is a competent but also often boring superhero film that feels like it's never going to end.
I'd still take it over Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad though.
