Aquaman

For anyone who doesn’t look at the Facebook page that basically just redirects people here and holds some Quick Takes (and that’s likely the overwhelming majority of the folks reading this at any given time), my first glimpse of Aquaman came during the trailers in front of The Predator.  And it was baaaaaad.  And no, I wasn’t pretending to be a weresheep mid-transformation, it was embarrassingly bad, with special effects that looked rather unfinished and messy and gave off an uneven idea of plot and tone.  Suffice it to say, it wasn’t a propitious first impression.  Still, I’d heard some decent buzz down the home stretch before this weekend’s release date, so I figured I’d cave and give it a shot.  I can easily say: It’s better than that awful trailer.  Slow clap.

So it’s got that much going for it, at least.  The visual effects are definitely better here, finished, polished, all that.  The colors are nice and kinda vibrant, especially for a film that ostensibly fits into the DC continuity pushed by Zack Snyder and David Ayer.  Jason Momoa is rather charismatic and engaging.  And that’s where my praise ends.

See, I don’t think Aquaman is that bad, certainly not down to the standards of BvS and Suicide Squad, but, like Justice League, this film is insanely flawed, and I think it comes down to trying to crowbar people where they don’t belong.  First is director James Wan.  Wan’s known for his horror-thrillers like Saw and The Conjuring, and for good reason: he can craft some eerie atmosphere with an ease that so many other directors have to envy to death.  He’s a good director, but putting him in charge of a big, splashy superhero flick is like hiring David Fincher to direct your romantic comedy:  Sure, I’m gonna be all over that flick, but I’m not expecting anything all that good, ’cause the man’s out of his depth, out of his niche.  Wan’s eye isn’t quite as sharp when it comes to lots of effects-laden action, and it shows here, with things looking somewhat flat, the camera occasionally unsure where to look.

Then there’s the casting.  Nicole Kidman plays Momoa’s mother (before he was born, granted), and I guess I’m supposed to ignore what may be a decade-plus age difference between her and the man playing her mate.  (Looking it up:  Okay, well, I’ll shut the hell up, ’cause Temuera Morrison is actually seven years older than Kidman.  Hm.  My foot tastes pretty bad, in case you were wondering.)  Still, she seems out of place, like they overreached with that particular casting choice.  Maybe I can’t explain why I think it’s a bad idea.  But then they went the other way with Patrick Wilson as a power-hungry Atlantean.  Wilson is a fine actor to be sure, but he does not fit here, much like how he didn’t fit in Phantom of the Opera (just in the other direction), ’cause he doesn’t seem the ranting, megalomaniacal type.  One of his allies is played by Dolph Lundgren, whose fake beard is too apparent to work, and whose accent makes his already garbage dialogue sound all the more stilted somehow (more on this momentarily).  Just as in Justice League, Amber Heard doesn’t seem entirely invested in things, and Willem Dafoe plays things far too at-the-norm to warrant his inclusion (I mean, if you’re gonna have Willem Dafoe, might as well take full advantage, right?).  Aside from Momoa and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays Black Manta, no one seems to really feel right in their role, and these two feel like they’re in a completely different movie.

Of course, many of the problems with this cast can also be traced to the hacky-at-best script.  Right off the bat, we get the whole “We’re from two different worlds, so our lovechild will be able to unite them” schtick, which always seems to ignore the realities of such unions, wherein the offspring usually faces the ostracism from both sides, getting the worst of both worlds.  Call me cynical.  Not only is this stock and meaningless, it’s communicated poorly, woodenly, blatantly.  Then there’s the Atlantean power struggle, where poor Patrick Wilson and Dolph Lundgren are left hanging, pressed into delivering the lamest, hokiest dialogue of the film, often in bursts of manic shouting.  Nothing works there.  And Black Manta, as well as he’s acted, is written so broadly earnestly that it’s hard to really take anything he says or does seriously, a paradoxical situation that often sprouts up when hack writers ply their trades with little quality control.

But, of course, there’s the whole problem of context.  See, Warner Bros. has gotten a raw deal whilst trying to chase Disney’s Marvel model.  They know they have the characters and stories and enough clout to get some big stars, everything needed to get butts in seats.  But they’ve gone about it wrong, shoe-horning characters into films to jumpstart the cinematic universe thing and generally getting ahead of themselves at every step.  Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg all appear in BvS and Justice League before they’re established, and now they’re getting their origin stories, their individual contexts, fleshed out after the fact, after already seeing them in a thoroughly mediocre film.  This film’s had a steep hill to climb because of this, and, honestly, it’s hard to really look at it without having Justice League‘s flop-sweaty tendrils swirling around it.  Aquaman as a character has never been a draw for me – and I’m fairly certain I’m not alone there – and taking the 90s revamp of the character was probably the only way he was gonna be taken seriously.  Still, there’s little here we haven’t seen done better before, and the grubby fingerprints of the previous films cannot be scrubbed off easily.  It’s clear Wan and the gang actively tried to distance this film from Snyder’s bleak and dreary tone and visuals, but memories die hard (without, say, booze or blunt force trauma).  Even if they didn’t, the result here is uneven, confused, and often laughably bad.

Aquaman is one of those projects you know is gonna be bad, but you’re unsure of just how bad it’s gonna be.  Sure, it jumped my expectations, but my bar for DC movies is currently in a divot in the floor, so that’s faint praise on a good day.  On a day like today, I’m gonna tell you that Aquaman is a bit of a mess, a film that tries so hard to do a number of things but succeeds at nearly none of them due to unfocused and misplaced energies.  It’s not bad enough to endlessly mock (sorry, Suicide Squad, you’re on your own down there), but it never achieves anything worthy of true praise.  It exists, that’s weird, let’s just move on.  If you really wanna see it, I’d suggest waiting until you can either rent it or catch on one of the premium channels.