Aquaman

In this age of media blizzards surrounding us at all times, it's difficult to approach anything without a least some preconceived notion. So I came to Aquaman having heard from Esquire Magazine that, compared to most of the other DC movies, this was a 'fucking masterpiece'.

As glorious a line as that is, Aquaman is not a masterpiece. It is visually arresting and often very beautiful, all of which can be laid at the exhausted feet of the costume designers, the CGI animators, and director James Wan. These elements did not need to be as good as they were to get asses in seats. There are a handful of shots that must have been a nightmare to craft, and I sat there in the theatre taken aback by the care in evidence on-screen.

The script isn't as good, unfortunately. It rambles along like an amusement park ride, putting words on the screen to get us from one spectacle to another. There was an interaction between Aquaman and Mera early on that was genuinely funny, but for the most part,  the script relies too much on crowd pleasing one liners and shouting about this and that.

Jason Momoa is fine in this version of Aquaman, which owes very little to the comics and a lot to Marvel's take on Thor. He's a cheerful bro, eager to have a drink and not too great on the uptake. Momoa has as much charisma as he does muscles and hair, so he does a superb job of winning the audience over.  Amber Heard gives us a stern and angry Mera,  a woman who seems to be constantly teetering on the edge of Fed Up and Dismissive.  The scenes between her and Momoa sometimes run a little flat, and their inevitable falling in love feels enforced and ridiculous. (There's an entire section that takes in the Sahara--yes, a movie about water kingdoms has a major section in a desert--where Heard and Momoa have to carry the entire segment, and unfortunately don't.)

But despite the script and the acting stumbles, I really quite enjoyed Aquaman. It's gloriously dumb, and knows it. It amps the stupid so well. Everyone buys into the film, and plays it straight, which is the only way to make gloriously dumb work.  There is a solid attempt at world building here, so much so that I was actually interested in the genesis of Atlantis and its politics, which is something the comics have never done for me.

I am genuinely exhausted with superhero films, but I still find myself curious about them. As such, Aquaman entertained me, partly because it doesn't really feel like a superhero movie. Wan takes a very fantasy approach to the genre, which works well for a character many people have never cared about.  Without someone like Wan at the helm, this could have been a Razzie level shitshow. It's also great that there are no connections to the on life support DCU movie-verse, aside from one line regarding the Justice League film. This is a fun standalone, which is perhaps the approach Warner Brothers should take with future films. Leave the trash heap of a shared universe burning in the dumpster, and just dazzle us with fun and stupid.