Aquaman the lesser known member of The Justice League was a product of the 50s comic book scene and originally had blonde hair, blue eyes and an OCTOPUS SIDEKICK named Topo. Together they fought crime, spoke to fish and occasionally rode them like... well like a person riding a fish.
Since then a lot has changed and thank God/Zack Snyder for that. The most recent adaptation of this character has presented itself in the form of a rugged, tattooed, 6foot 4, Polynesian, Struggling with the loss of his mother and the fact that he belongs nowhere. (Also he might have a drinking problem but that's just extra fluff)
The story pits Maui- I mean Aquaman against his half brother who wishes to take the throne of Atlantis in order to attack the surface world. But he struggles to find his way because he is a Half breed. Feeling like he belongs nowhere with a human father (Temuera Morrison) he also blames Atlantians for the loss of his mother (Nicole Kidman)
The film itself is Directed by James Wan, most well known for scaring the crap out of everyone for the past 10 years with his Conjuring series. So I was pretty excited to see what he would do here, given the film needed to be family friendly. After all the mixed reviews I'd been hearing over the past 2 weeks the film itself is racking up to be the biggest box office hit that Warner Bros has had since Christoper Nolans Dark Knight, stacking up over $900M before the end of its run. So why the mixed reviews?
The film itself is visually the most beautiful film I've seen this year, the character and costume design is vibrant and un-apologetically comic book accurate to the point where it does look kinda silly, but you accept that very early. I kept thinking back to the first time I saw Starwars.
Just the scale of the battle scenes and the different creatures that existed in the world. The ridiculousness of everyone trying to fight with huge helmets and the cheesy one liners. It's silly but you still like it because its fun. Thats the point of film right, to entertain. James (director) has taken on the task of trying to make something seemingly not "cool" and make it appealing to a modern audience. This has been made especially hard given most of Aquamans origin story was already told in the original cut of Justice League before Warner Bros decided it was too dark and axed Zack Snyders cut in favour of Joss Wedon's (Avengers) 59minutes of reshoots. In the original version of Justice League Falco (Willm Dafoe) and Aquaman had to retrieve his mothers trident from Atlantis. Without these critical scenes unfortunately Aquaman has a lot of world building to do and the film is very long. But given all this James Wan has still done a great job. What I like is that it doesnt rely on pop culture references or Actor/character cameos to get by like most of these films that are coming out. Its just a good stand alone film.
BUT...
It does have a few Pitbulls- I mean pit falls.
Score is everything
For some reason this film goes from having a relatively cool/Tron like synth score for the first half and then as soon as Jason Mamoa makes land we get the most cringe 4 seconds of Pitbulls cover of Africa by Toto!!! Who decided this was a good idea!!
WHO LET THIS HAPPEN??!!!
This scene is one of two cringe music moments as during a scene which is meant to reflect the growing bond between Aquaman and Queen Mera, The score is taken away again and replaced with some strange acoustic love song that basically describes exactly how the characters are feeling instead of just letting them act. These 2 scenes almost ruin the entire film for me and they're only about 20seconds in total. Luckily I feel like James recognized the cringe in the script and follows it with some heavy violent action to get the bad taste of awkwardness out of your mouth.Don't get me wrong I already knew
The film is Very cheesy
BUT it didnt have to be THAT cheesy. While the script is the script and as an actor you have to say whats on the paper, everybody delivered their one liners as best they could. What let them down was editing. Not just in music but in shot. Since the dawn of Snapchat this generation has found hours of hilarity in the...
Sloooow Zoooooom 0_0
Unfortunately who ever was in post production didn't get the memo that these are funny now. So for every important line and even a bunch of random looks, you're treated to a slow zoom that feels like you're about to touch faces with the character. But how has it been this successful you ask? The answer is simple...
Cheesiness doesn't come across in subtitles.
The film opened in China first so a majority of audiences are watching it with subtitles which fixes its major downfall, Cheesiness. Besides that, it is actually a good film! Its fun and exciting and features the first Polynesian superhero! which is something I never thought was a big deal to me as a Polynesian but after seeing the film it feels great! RECOMMEND? I'll put it this way
This is a lot closer to an Indiana Jones or StarWars film than your typical super hero film and to be honest after 13 years of superhero films its actually quite nice. Yes its overly cheesy in parts but its never boring and that to me is a win. If you're a Marvel Fanboy you've probably decided you hate it before seeing it so have fun with that (lol), but let others enjoy it for what it is, fun :)
In short, go see it in a good movie theatre with good surround sound. Its worth it just for the fight scenes :)