I think WW’s home was off South American somewhere, not in the middle eastern area.
I liked it. The writing was a little weak but it had amazing visuals and a lot of imagination and fun. It’s a fantasy movie basically and going in knowing that I think people would enjoy it.
I was wondering if they would connect it to Justice League at all and they did by mentioning Steppenwolf. Also I was sure the establishing shot of Sicily (which looked beautiful) would be Themiscyra but I was wrong.
Pretty sure this was just a paycheck for her.
The movie was a big drip. 2 conch shells out of 5. It was a feast for the eyes, but very poor writing and acting. There was so much going on, jumping too fast from one action set to another. Honestly, it would have been better served as an origin move.
I did like the comic accurate representations of Black Manta’s and Mera’s costumes, and Ocean Master’s helmet.
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You’re saying Steve Trevor flew from Turkey down the entire length of the Mediterranean then across the Atlantic in a crappy little World War One biplane? No wonder he crash landed.
And what was the German Navy doing in the South Atlantic?
Stranger
This article says that in the original comics it was implied but not confirmed that the island was in the Pacific. In the Lynda Carter series Paradise Island was in the Bermuda Triangle. A 2009 animated movie has Themyscira in the Aegean.
So we can take our pick.
”Themyscira is not a place; it’s a people.”
DC Films is creatively bankrupt at this point, anyway; they might as well borrow from the best Marvel films. I’m still not sure what to suggest that they do with Shazam! other than bring in Sinbad to bury that thing deeper than Chris Christies’ family Mafia connections.
Stranger
I liked it. The things I didn’t like about it -the stilted dialog (writer’s fault) and the gratuitous explosions- were the same things I don’t like about comic books. I always feel a bit like a visitor in these movies, and that’s as it should be. But in this case more than most, I felt as if the director had made an aesthetic decision to have all the dialog be a stand-alone declarative. It was like the 1950’s “More powerful than a locomotive!!” delivery. You can’t make every line quotable and still have a realistic conversation.
I thought Momoa did an amazing job of acting despite the pathetic script he’d been given. His face and posture made relationships believable when the words definitely did not.
The brother (Orm?) being wishy-washy was good to me. He’s a product of his two diametrically opposed parents, and stunned to see his mother alive. I thought he wore it well.
I would have appreciated just one good establishing shot of the mega-creature guarding the trident. I still can’t tell if it was a giant squid or some sort of crab.
There was nothing that really explained his sudden decision that being king might be fun. As someone said above, just figuring out the bottle/king riddle is not enough.
Things that completely took me out of it:
I actually heard myself say aloud “Oh! Come on!” When a group of professional sea-ninja pirates let loose a series of increasingly powerful kinetic weapons inside a submarine. You wouldn’t even take those in with you on a sub, much less release a spray of stray bullets.
William Dafoe’s accent. Why this Wisconsin boy sounds like a hard-bitten New Yorker while playing an Atlantean courtier is completely beyond me. But he sounds like that in every movie. Or maybe that really is a Milwaukee accent? I don’t know. But it felt jarringly out of place.
Nicole Kidman’s trident had five tines. This bothered me more than it should.
Shining a lamp on the ability to talk underwater. Not a terrible idea, but they did it so long after we’d been forced to accept the ability that it just took me out of it again.
Two things I can’t help seeing in every action movie: 1) the amusement park ride design (As they entered the Sahara cave)and 2) the video game sequence (chasing across the roofs of the seaside town.) The game sequence in particular looked like some cheap late-90’s game. I wasn’t impressed by that whole setting, nor by the “resolution” of the threat.
Things that bothered me less than I expected:
Mera’s red hair. Did they tone it down in post-production? I found it far less distracting than in the trailer.
The transitions from water to air bubbles and back again. They handled it pretty smoothly.
Nicole Kidman slurping down a live fish. She actually made that look natural and innocent.
Jason Momoa’s shirt. He spent far more time clothed than I might have liked, but I was fine with it. He made his character three-dimensional, causing me to feel embarrassed about having treated him like a sex-object.
Things I loved:
They did a great job with the underwater visuals. The Atlantis scenes had great depth and detail. I’d love to just sit and pore through the stills on those scenes.
The various Atlantis groups and the “look” they gave each of them. I hope we get more into the societies in the next movie.
I enjoyed it.
However, several times I was taken out of the movie by a “Goddamn! How much did this CGI cost??” thought.
I don’t think CGI should make you think that.
Saw it last night. Had a pleasant experience even though the script was awful. I recommend being high for the movie, it makes you more able to get past the awful dialogue and plot holes while really enjoying the scenery.
Totally worth seeing in 3d by the way. 3d is often an afterthought in post production and makes things worse, but this one used it really well. It enhanced the wonder of all the grand sweeping camera movements around all the sea life.
It tried to be too serious. Jason Mamoa has natural charisma and you can tell he’s having fun with it, so the movie should’ve catered to him having fun with it. Make his character have a goofy sense of humor, take advantage of that natural charm, and don’t worry about the whole thing being campy. Roll with it. It would’ve come off as more charming than the attempt to be more serious.
The dialogue and characterization is awful. Aquaman goes from being a laid back but smart, savvy dude to a dumbass who can’t remember anything in every other conversation. He went from empathically not wanting to be the king to suddenly feeling like he was born to be the king for no apparent reason. They really didn’t flesh out why it was even so important that he be the king, and why the second son’s advisor and bethrothed risked their lives to save him. Seems like they could’ve gone more into that.
It also just sort of seemed to be two movies crammed into one. We have a very rushed origin story (we get the aquarium scene followed immediately by him having his full on aquaman powers) - and then we have two villains in a movie that doesn’t really need them. It feels like they cut some parts short (him discovering/becoming aquaman) in favor of overly complicating the story with two villains.
Black Mantis seemed like maybe he could’ve been a good villain if he was the villain of his own movie, but just didn’t work very well as a basically side character. Also, that costume/atlantean armor was kind of ridiculous. “Oh shit, I’m being hunted by a humanoid fly, in the water!”
The world building makes so little sense. Okay, so the biker guys in the bar come up to him and want a group selfie. That’s actually the sort of not taking itself seriously scene the movie should’ve had more of. And on the news, early on, he’s called “the meta-human aquaman”. So society apparently knows there’s a superhero roaming around and what he looks like and that he’s an Atlantean, but no one is studying him or trying to find his home or anything. We’re told repeatedly that the surface dwellers don’t believe in the existence of the Atlanteans, even though we’ve got people recognizing him in bars for a selfie. At the conclusion of the movie, we also see the news with a blank photo captioned “Aquaman?!” as if this were a new concept to them that only came to light after the resolution of the movie. How, then, earlier in the movie is he treated like everyone knows who he is and that he’s a superhero?
Okay, so if humans don’t believe in Atlanteans, why the fuck are they sending a lone sub down to the ruins of Atlantis to blow up some statues with a torpedo? That’s what causes the whole fucking war and makes no sense at all. "Hey, we don’t think Atlantis is real or anything, but we think we found some underground statues or some shit, so instead of sending archaelogists let’s go ahead and send one random sub to blow those statues up for no reason. If the humans secretly knew that Atlantis was real and it was a threat, it’s not indicated anywhere, and specifically contradicted with all the “surface dwellers don’t believe we exist” stuff. But if the military secretly knew, they’d sure as fuck do something more potent than firing a random torpedo at some old rusty sunken statues.
So, in conclusion, a waste of Mamoa’s charm, can’t figure out whether to take itself seriously or not, wildly inconsistent world building, two movie plots crammed into one, the whole hidden king and his supporters plotline isn’t very well established as why it’s necessary, bad dialogue, plot holes.
But really pretty scenery. Better direction and action sequences than most comic book movies. The humanoid hand to hand/weapon to weapon fighting was surprisingly well shot. All the expansive shots of Atlantean architecture and sea creatures were very cool. And since that’s like 85% of the movie by screen time it’s sort of redeeming.
Honestly, I think seeing this movie in a foreign language you don’t understand without subtitles would make it better. You would get the gist of it, enjoy the scenery, and assume all the dialogue and story parts were better than they actually were if you didn’t understand them.
Forgot to add: this movie may be the grandest example of the “scriptwriter can’t figure out a segue, so let’s have an explosion in the middle of dialogue” technique. I think it happened like 7 times.
This part was sort of muddled, but what the script is saying is that everyone knows there’s a water-based meta-human after the events in Justice League and that he has water powers, but they don’t know he’s part-Atlantean or that Atlantis exists (aside from a scientist everyone assumes is crazy). The post-credit scene is showing an old clipping, probably right after his reveal in Justice League.
To add one more thing, I think the director and/or DP of the movie had some really interesting ideas. There were a few unusually constructed shots in the movie, like how they were basically filming two seperate action scenes in one shot in Sicily. Pretty unique. The scene with the sea zombies (trenchers?) was also pretty uniquely shot compared to the rest of the movie and really photogenic… cinematogenic… looked cool. I could see that being a great horror scene in a movie that had an aesthetic like Metro 2033. I’d like to see what that director could do with a good script. There was some really good camera/choreography in parts, too, like the first fight scene a few minutes into the movie with Nicole Kidman.
Correction to my earier post - the submarine attack was a false flag with Orm paying off Black Mantis for the sub. Wasn’t totally clear especially since the hijacking attempt shown in the movie resulted in a disabled and sinking sub.
Manta was wasted and really shouldn’t have been in the film as he added nothing with his minor role. They could have just kept him out, started Aquaman 2 with the sub pirating flashback for motivation, have Manta steal the gun from some Atlanteans and then make his water-bug suit. Instead, he just took up time that could have been spent expanding (and filling in plot holes) the Atlantis story.
Speaking of – missing from the story: an explanation of how Mr. Manta got so tech savvy. He was a pirate and his pappy was a pirate and his pappy was a pirate but “able to reverse-engineer alien technology in his garage” isn’t something I consider part of the standard pirate skill set.
It’s funny you mention this because a review site I read said that one of the movie’s problems was it constantly relied on this, and they put the blame on the director because…
…James Wan is a horror director by trade. They were saying having a quiet moment interrupted by an explosion is the action movie equivalent of a jump scare
Ohhhhh is that what that was? I assumed the attack was set up to incite the war, but I never figured out how. So the beginning scene attack was there so that Orin could obtain a sub in order to do the attack? Wish they would have said that…
Saw it. Meh.
The Manta character was a complete waste of time and added nothing. I quickly tired of seeing Aquaman being smashed into things. The undersea scenes were well handled and convincing. My wife poked me and giggled when Mera kisses Aquaman and causes his trident to rise. The plot rambles and the dialog was cliched, to say the least.
Nothing wrong with the acting that a better script couldn’t fix. It didn’t seem to have any rhythm - just boring plot exposition interrupted by explosions and CGI monsters.
We should have waited for the DVD.
Regards,
Shodan
I literally fell asleep shortly after Arthur emerged with the MacGuffin trident (and his gold-and-green costume) and didn’t wake up until the battle was over and Orm was being arrested.
I don’t think I missed anything important. Frankly, the suggestions made by the redlettermedia guys would have made this film a lot tighter and more coherent.
I liked it. A good popcorn flick, and one of the better DC flicks in a long time. There was actual humor and colors brighter than grey. I’d recommend it.
Costume looks good. I just want to see it for the sex scenes with the mute janitor.