[Review] Aquaman (5.5/10)

Title - Aquaman
Studio - Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films
Starring - Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren, Randall Park, Ludi Lin, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Writer - Will Beall, Geoff Johns
Director - James Wan
Release - 21 December 2018

So many reviewers want to compare Aquaman to Thor. That's just misguided. All the plot points of Aquaman's origin and his first encounter with Atlantis were all lifted from the source material. You want to compare to Marvel? Dig a little deeper. But by then, you are just trying to find faults in this movie.

As far as I'm concerned, James Wan did an amazing job with making Aquaman likeable; something which Zack Snyder struggled with. With enough of a back story, the audience got to relate to him as a character; and there were even a couple of dialogues delivered really well by Jason Momoa to give the character depth. (Though I do wonder had we had a better actor, would we have gotten a much deeper characterization.)

This entire cast under Wan, in general, was awesome. And my two favourite characters were the main villains of the movie. Patrick Wilson was my favourite. He out-acted everyone because he just embodied the character. He could play anyone and I would believe him.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was a real surprise. His backstory was a more superior one as compared to Aquaman and I really felt like he was underuse here.

I even found Dolph Lundgren to be a breath of fresh air. The intensity and royalty he brought to the role spoke volumes of his capability as an actor, but also of Wan's ability to direct actors. Also, Temuera Morrison's chemistry with Momoa as father and son worked so well.

Wan's eye for action sequences is a thing to look forward to. It's a definite now that Furious 7 was no fluke. The first fight scene with Nicole Kidman was breathtaking. The rooftop chase fell slightly below expectation, but probably because the whole thing was released as a clip online as the marketing department foolishly thought they needed it to bring more butts in seats.

And that final showdown was actually quite epic.

So what went wrong? Why 5.5?

There were so much good Wan brought to the movie. But equally, so much bad.

The meeting of Temuera and Kidman was so poorly done that even the actors had no time to develop chemistry. The sequence played out in such a way that Thomas Curry finding Atlanna and then caring for her stemmed from the first time he laid eyes on her, judged her beauty and then forgave all her weird antics in his home. Are we back in 2008?

The whole Sicily piece with the fountain and the Pinnochio book, and Mera eating a flower... okay, so Wan cannot direct drama and romance. And he had to force this in; and I say "force" because the script was abysmal when it came to romance.

That kiss shared in the midst of an all-out battle, at least Wonder Woman had the courtesy of waiting for a downtime. But here, Mera even had time to wrap one leg around Aquaman's. I puked.

And speaking of that all-out war, Wan did not build enough around this underwater universe. I know he built an entire universe of it, but he didn't build enough character of it. Take an example from Black Panther (I know, I know, I'm comparing. But just taking it as an example), we had a feel of what Wakanda was about. But can you say the same for Atlantis? Or worse, the other "races" like Brine or Fishermen? At best, they were just shoehorned in there.

And, SPOILER, is Aquaman so cool to not even react when he actually found dinosaurs? Why even show us dinosaurs if you won't let your characters acknowledge them?

And I'm sick of characters posing for the sake of posing. We saw Aquaman in many video clips online standing in front of a waterfall posing with the golden trident in the full orange getup. We had no context. When you watch this movie, you will get the context. But it became this ridiculous pose that no real character will do in that situation.

Also, Atlanna had time to change clothes in the middle of a war. Please give some realism here.

And one more thing that Wan was bad in, selecting songs for specific scenes. Every song was such a juxtaposition to the scene playing.

I will admit, I was very disappointed walking out of the movie. The overall tone of it was just weird because different scenes had different tones and Wan could not kept them consistent.  And running at almost 2.5 hours long, it could have easily been 15 minutes shorter.