Aquaman: Film Review

Aquaman: Film Review

Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Kidman
Director: Jason Wan

The litany of DC movies is scattered with almost-rans.

For every Marvel success, there’s been a thudding DC failure, a reminder that tone and story still triumph in the comic book medium.

So it’s pleasing to reveal that Aquaman goes some way to addressing prior failures, by telling a story early on that packs heart and heft, before the usual rote destructive CGI chaos steps in to clean up in the final act.

At its heart, in terms of plot, Aquaman is DC’s take on the political in-fighting last seen in Marvel's Black Panther.

Momoa is Aquaman, aka Arthur Curry, a half-human, half Atlantian, who's keeping the seas safe from the likes of marauding pirates, when he finds himself hauled into a political coup after red-haired Mera (Heard) emerges from the waters of his long-lost home world.

Warning him that the war that's unfolding at the hands of King Orm (Wilson) will affect his beloved surface dwellers, Aquaman's thrown into a battle over the rights to the underwater throne and a birth right he doesn't potentially want...

Aquaman offers a Tron-like spectacle with an underwater world that's vibrant with life and teeming with visual creativity and depth. Atlantis looks like it's a lived in world, a world that breathes as it floats below, and as various sea creatures float by, with CGI in overdrive to showcase its very best.

Sadly, the same can't exactly be said about the more human elements of the film which are overwhelmed by the script's over-stuffed nature.

Momoa treads a thin line between knowing cheesy dialogue and performing endless action sequences while revelling in the OTT nature; but he has the charisma for Curry (and performs enough hair flips through water to look like he's advertising premium shampoo), and lends Aquaman the kind of reverence - and occasionally irreverence - the DC material affords him.

The problem is some of what is populated around him.

With one-note characters like Mera offering mainly exposition (and a clumsy attempt at romance that should have been drastically re-worked at the script level before being committed to screen) and Orm proffering petulance and discord, the film's tonal shifts are seismic in their execution and occasionally jarring as it swims between cornball and seriousness.

Meshing the myth of Excalibur, Karate Kid training, Splash's inter-species love story with a pro-environmental message, and the politics of power and squabbling brothers that we've seen in Thor and Black Panther, Aquaman never really lays any claim to originality - nor would it expect to with some of its utter po-faced dialogue and frankly creepy digital de-ageing of stars like Morrison and Dafoe.

What Aquaman does deliver is spectacle, and radically changes the game for what's to be expected of DC films - it still has the pomposity of the dialogue of Batman Vs Superman and ends up in an utterly messy CGI fight as its denoumenent, but those troubles are inherent to all comic book films, not just the long derided DC Universe.

There's a lack of emotional investment in Aquaman's central character, but there's plenty on show early on in Morrison's heartfelt turn (some of his best work yet) and pre-credits love story with Kidman's Queen of the sea. It's a welcome touch, before the continual shock and awe of the action overwhelms everything and builds to a deafening crescendo.

In terms of cache, there is no denying this is a major step up.

But Aquaman's over-reliance on CGI spectacle, bombast and underwhelming quest a-to-b type story, coupled with a lack of depth on its hero and his glistening abs, means that Aquaman is more a film that delivers on its outlandish promise, rather than holding back a little and running with what sticks to the wall.