He managed to be believable and expressive while speaking something nobody understood. You couldn’t understand a word he said, yet you knew what he was saying. OK, a lot of it didn’t exactly need much in the way of esoteric translation (“c’mere wench” is pretty universal), but there’s a lot of guys who wouldn’t have been able to pull it off in any kind of credible way.
Well, my wife wants to see this and there was some Amazon Prime thing (I went through Atom tickets, dunno if it’s available elsewhere) to see it a week early on the 15th. So I’ll be able to complain about it before anyone else! And post spoilers on Facebook!
I didn’t really like Justice League, though I didn’t hate it as some seem too. I’m…cautiously optimistic about this film. I did like the trailer, and it looks like a good popcorn and soda movie. I hope they pull it off…it would be nice if they managed to get some good movies other than Wonder Woman, but they seem to miss a lot more than they hit. I was ‘cautiously optimistic’ about Suicide Squad based on the trailer as well, and that didn’t turn out well. 
Saw it tonight and it wasn’t bad. Not great but better than most other DC movies. Never reached the heights of Wonder Woman but also lacked WW’s trainwreck ending. Really just sort of consistently okay. My wife really liked it though so maybe together we’d average a B rating. If it was MCU, this could star in a double-feature with Ant-Man & Wasp without either film upstaging the other.
It had action, it had big CG ocean scenes, it had humor – although not as much as I was expecting. It wasn’t Suicide Squad “Oh shit, we need to splice in some jokes” bad but it’s obvious that they weren’t going into this with a full “This will be the funny one in the DCU” mindset. It had Black Manta and he was okay although underused in my opinion. It had the actual main bad guy who I had little opinion about and it had Willem Defoe who made me think “Hey, it’s Willem Dafoe” each time I saw him. It also had Amber Heard in her questionable cosplay wig. Speaking of, when Aquaman was underwater, his beard moved a lot. Much more than I’d think a beard would move underwater while you’re staying still.
Besides the beard, there were also a lot of fish. And sea horse-dragons and giant turtles and crab-people and other stuff I wouldn’t want to spoil. But trust me when I tell you that there’s a LOT going on under there that you don’t know about. I was disappointed that they didn’t play Donovan’s “Atlantis” over the ending credits.
It was alright. If you think you want to see it, go ahead and do so. You probably won’t leave angry and you’ll get to see larger sea horse-dragons than the people who waited on the video release.
As I posted on Facebook: Aquaman is no Wonder Woman, but he’ll do. Now when is Flashpoint?
Yeah, I really, really want to see Flashpoint. I’m hoping that now that they’ve established the Amazonians and the Atlanteans and their respective mythos, we’ll get to see them duke it out for supremacy over the Earth.
In case there’s any doubt, here’s a quote from Captain Marvel’s creator, C. C. Beck:
Captain Marvel himself was based on the actor Fred MacMurray, who was known as a pretty down-to-earth guy.
— C.C. Beck
Interestingly enough, Mary Marvel was based on Judy Garland.
In theory it should be brilliant since:
- DC movies suck
- Underwater fiction is almost always boring
So something as ballsy as this must be good. They only needed to add peter pan and a waterworld crossover to have a surefire hit.
Seriously it’s frustrating with DC movies. I know this is a couple years late but I recently watched this breakdown of the editing and plot problems with Suicide Squad showing how a potentially good film was spoiled by several inexplicable decisions.
I saw it via the Amazon “preview” screening. I thought it was ok… it’s by no means awful and I think Jason Momoa has the charisma to lead the franchise but some of the dialog was beyond corny, like cringe-worthy bad. Amber Heard is also, uh, not a great actress? In general I was a little underwhelmed but my husband liked it well enough so I’d say, if you have any interest going in it will probably be satisfactory 
Saw it yesterday, I liked it quite a bit. It’s basically the* Throne of Atlantis* retold as live action, and I’m cool with it. Sufficiently comic-booky for me, especially some of those wide shots, like in the boat, and the final battle. Nice creature design, obviously got good use out of Wayne Barlowe there.
I only had to mutter “Lava doesn’t work that way!” under my breath 3 times, too. Which is a lot for a film mostly set underwater, but not too much as these things go.
I told my wife I heard good things about ‘Aquaman,’ and replied: “I don’t care if it’s the dumbest movie on the face of the Earth, I’m going to watch it.” She says this because (A) she’s the kind of person who will deliberately watch cheesy movies like ‘The Meg’ and (B) Jason Momoa.
Just got back from watching it.
Pros:
Although the overall story arc is fairly predictable, enough things happen along the way to make it a good story
Liked Momoa in this role…his apathetic vibe fits well in the crowded superhero field, and his face is believably half-atlantean
They used the same brighter color scheme as WW (no more attempts at gritty realism), and good use of depth in many sequences
Original setting
Cons:
The story is really very similar to Black Panther.
They very frequently use explosion jump scares to abruptly start action scenes. Including at one point a hard cut to a guy shooting directly at the camera. So lazy and so annoying.
In some close up shots, it really looked like a cheap, star-trek TOS set. Bizarrely this was most often during scenes on land.
Black manta I’m torn on…the character WRT the plot is not just a mindless thug, but that’s the way the actor played it
For me, it’s a “quite good” movie, the same as I thought of Wonder Woman.
Upthread someone put this in the same bracket as Ant Man 2…can’t understand that at all, antman2 was dreadful.
That was me. I felt both movies were inoffensive and entertaining enough to sit through but nothing to recommend that people need to see. Your opinion may vary, of course.
Except - Aquaman is the outsider Killmonger figure here, Ocean Master is the raised-to-rule T’Challa analogue.
So in a way, it’s the inverse.
Some day, maybe your wife would like to get together for movie night. (I’m saying I’m exactly the same way.)
My wife wants to see it just because she likes things DC. Personally, I thought the trailer looked stupid as hell and featured every bad thing about comic book movies.
As my standard for watching movies is pretty casual, what the heck. I mean, it can’t be any worse than the Spider-Man movie that had Andrew Garfield in it. If it’s better than that I’ll be happy.
Because of this thread I am now ending all my prayers with, “So help me, Aquaman.”
I loved Jason Momoa in this, and not just because he’s eye candy. I think he’s a fine actor and did a great job with crappy writing. I hated some of the lines he had to spew, namely the ones where he had to act dumb. “I don’t remember what $person just told me 2 seconds ago”. I fault the writers for that. Just because he’s all muscle doesn’t mean he has to be stupid.
The hair bothered me quite a bit. It clearly looked CG, pasted onto their heads.
The movie would have been better to spend more time on character development and less time chasing two bad guys around. In other words, they should have only had one villian. And it should have been black mantis, who was interesting and extremely under-used. The brother was a cream pie milk sop villian and therefore a waste.
My husband and I agreed that we never really cared what happened to any of the characters. They all seemed flat. Needed more development and a reason for us to get emotionally invested in them.
I thought it a pretty poor movie. At every step of the way bar one Momoa gets told what to do. He almost never finds out for himself. The exception is the bottle in the hand of the king. And the fights above the lava fields? Give over.
And, oh look, they’re going to the Mediterranean! Umm… isn’t Wonder Woman’s home in the Med? They missed an opportunity for a cameo. Or was Gal Godot pregnant at the time?
Meh, it was mediocre at best. Too many meaningless battles between nameless groups we don’t care about. Too many pointless jump scares. Too many difficult to follow action scenes. Too many interchangeable characters.
And Nicole Kidman is horribly miscast.