Yes I should have clarified that it was world wide. They also mentioned it will grow because it hasn’t yet opened in Japan.
I agree it was not as good as WW but Box Office success is separate from quality as everyone knows.
I have not seen Aquaman so I cannot make any informed commentary about it, but the general consensus—that the plotting and dialogue are weak, but the visuals are stunning (if you like a lot of obvious CGI) and Momoa puts in a charismatic perfomance—is about what I expected. I wasn’t sure whether Momoa could carry the film, but then I had my doubts about Gal Godot and she managed to carry a film with pure charisma that was 1/3 pretty good (mostly the Themyscira), 1/2 passably derivative, and the remainder painfully awkward plot shoehorning. I don’t think Aquaman’s pretty modest success portends well for any kind of future “Justice League”-centered stories, but a teamup wih Momoa, Gadot, and Ezra Miller could be worthwhile if they don’t try to shoehorn in Sad Affleck and Raging Asshole Cavill in some midguided attempt at completeness.
Stranger
Affleck and Cavill have already left/been fired from the DCEU as Batman and Superman.
Personally speaking, I thought they performed just fine in their roles. Indeed, after Adam West, Ben Affleck was my No. 1 Batman actor. To me, he absolutely looks and feels the role of Batman, in a way that no other Batman actor has even gotten close to. To the extent that their appearances were weak, I blame on the writing and directing, not on the acting.
Affleck was perfect casting for Bruce Wayne, having spent decades cultivating the persona of a wealthy entitled douchebag in his personal life, but he just came off as very unenthusiastic about the role, which was admittedly underwritten. Cavill always just seemed like a jerk even before he opened his mouth in interviews and expressed his primary interest in just making as large of a paycheck as possible. His portrayal is the antithesis of the boyishly charming Christopher Reeve even above and beyond the Zack Snyder intent to make Superman dark and moody. Brand M has also had their behind (and a couple of times in front) of the screen shakeups but they’ve managed to actually improve on the casting and develop stronger narratives through them, whereas DC Films seems pretty directionless and derivative.
Oh, well…I’m at least looking forward to a Wonder Woman sequel with Kristen Wiig and the Red Viper (who hopefully doesn’t get his eyes gouged in and head burst like a melon this time around…keep your distance while monologing, Oberyn!) and hopefully a Flash movie that doesn’t suck.
Stranger
Maybe I’m not sure, but I guess we’ll see.
I’m not commenting on their personalities. However, I think they’re both fine actors.
Regardless of how many bad movies Affleck has been in, I’ve never had a complaint about his acting ability. He’s good at acting, plain and simple. I think he did fine as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. And I’d be happy to see him play the role again. What I fear is further bad writing and directing. DC obviously doesn’t have a very good concept of what it should do with Batman and Superman on the screen.
Similarly, I don’t think Cavill was terrible as an actor. He was fine in Tudors. Although, I think there are probably better choices, because he’s one of those non-American actors who do an American accent through a super-clenched jaw.
Say what you want about Reeve’s charm, but those movies were boring to me as a nine-year-old, and I still can’t watch them. Endless mooney-eyed scenes with long romantic ballads and stiff, unsubtle conflicts. Everything shiny. Blech. There was no joy for me in the Donner/Lester movies and they got stupid after that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Superman on screen that I really liked. … Except Ben Affleck as George Reeves, perhaps.
I thought that the movie for the most part looked great, with some really imaginative undersea shots in particular. But aside from that it was, surprisingly, pretty boring. It’s hard to get excited about what’s happening in the movie when:
- It’s 100% predictable. The only plot twist I guessed wrong was that Willem Defoe turned out to actually be a good guy. Who’da thunk it?
- The heroes never really feel challenged by any of their opposition. Aquaman got tossed around a lot, but I never got the sense that he was in any serious danger. I think in an effort to put the “Aquaman is a useless Superfriend” reputation behind them they went way too far in the other direction. When it came down to it, Black Manta was just a guy with a powerful gun who had already been beaten once, and Orm never came across as clever or buff enough to be a real challenge. I wish they’d played up his gladiatorial skills a little more, especially since Aquaman apparently got most of his weapons training up on dry land for some reason.
- The characters were completely inconsistent, Aquaman in particular. He ranged from dumb to brilliant, brooding to jovial, blunt to scheming all without anything in the script motivating the changes. It’s as if every scene was done in complete isolation. There was no motivating growth to his character. Was this about a kid who was treated as an outcast finally finding a place to belong? Maybe, for one or two scenes. Was it about a hero with a more complicated code of honor than Superman learning to live with the consequences of his moral code? Sort of, a little, but then that got dropped too. And there was nothing motivating Mara or Vulko, other than that Team Hero needed a motivating force. It would’ve been nice to see why they were so dead set against Orm.
- The bad guy’s plot made no sense. It’d be one thing if he was trying to motivate the undersea folk based on the water pollution and so forth, which they kind of made a nod to and which might have been interesting. But then he does the false flag with the submarine, which should have been no threat at all – the Atlantean’s technology is ten times better than a few torpedoes. This is enough for him to start uniting the tribes to… What? March on the surface and conquer it, when only the highborn can even breathe air? What’s his endgame here?
- The usual globetrotting handwaving about travel distances and things is in full force here. Presumably the undersea tribes are spread all over the earth – there’s a quick reference to a ‘Seven Seas’ sort of motif. Which means Mara’s little aquacar is zipping along pretty quickly over the course of the movie, or they’re skipping over weeks of travel. Not to mention that the bad guy seems to be toting his whole army with him as he visits each of the other tribes. Then there’s a quick side trip to the middle of the Sahara for no real payoff. The whole thing seemed to sap the energy from the plot, since it’s hard to argue that the heroes have to hurry up and find this trident if it’s really taking weeks or months to make the trip.
- Although they did a reasonably good job of keeping it offscreen, a ton of (mer) people died in this movie. That’s kind of inevitable if you want big battle scenes. It kind of ruined the mood at the end for me, though. The royalty didn’t seem to care much that hundreds or thousands of the peasants had just gotten slaughtered for no good reason. Just bygones, we’re all a happy family now. Maybe that’s just the kind of movie it was. But in Wonder Woman, for example, the deaths of the people in the gassed village seemed to have a real emotional impact on the characters that was nice to see.
Yeah, “Too many people are dying! We have to end this battle right away! But first, well, there’s explosions going on all around us, and it’d be a shame to waste those when we could use them as a backdrop for a long, sexy kiss that we really didn’t do any meaningful build-up to at all.”
I could buy the romance between his mom and dad. They didn’t show much of the development (it wasn’t really their story, after all), but the chemistry was there, and it worked. But I couldn’t buy the Arthur-Mara romance. It just felt like “Well, we’ve got a male lead and a female supporting character, so naturally they have to fall in love (or at least lust)”.
I finally saw Aquaman last night, and I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed it. I found myself spontaneously smiling at the end when he burst out of the sea with his trident and costume. It was a naturally joyful moment. The only other superhero movie that has given me moments of unselfconscious joy was Wonder Woman.
It was certainly not a perfect movie. It had a lot of flaws. But most superhero movies have flaws, even my beloved Wonder Woman.
Flaws:
- Amber Heard. Her acting was absolutely atrocious. And she doesn’t fit my image of Mera. Mera should be a mature woman, and fully grown adult. Not an ingenue. At some point in the movie, I decided I would watch it and every time Mera appeared on the screen, I would mentally replace her with my vision of how Scarlett Johansson would have played that role. I loved the cartoony red hair though, and the green outfit.
—1.a. There was no chemistry between Jason Momoa and Amber Heard
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Really cheesy dialogue clumsily delivered. This was also one of the biggest flaws of Black Panther
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Some really atrociously jarring pop music choices for the soundtrack, the worst being a hip-hop version of Toto’s “Africa” for a scene in the Sahara Desert. (The biggest perpetrator of the bad soundtrack crime is, of course, Suicide Squad.) I love pop music and rock, but it wasn’t appropriate for this movie.
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The “young-age” makeup for Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison. It looked horrible. They should have cast different, younger actors for those scenes and then surprised us at the end with Nicole Kidman as the older Atlanna.
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I was a wee bit troubled at first by the villain Black Manta being played by a black man. I got shades of Conan-style racist casting. But overall, the movie balanced this out, with white villains, and Polynesian heroes, and stuff. Generally making good steps towards multiethnic casting, so it’s fine to have a black villain occasionally.
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Randall Park—This movie did not need that character or that kind of comedy vibe.
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Patrick Wilson as Orm was not the greatest
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I wish we had seen King Orvax, Orm’s father, on screen
The Good
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The visuals were just amazing. I was always seeing something new and interesting. I never, ever got bored, and as you can see below, I often get bored during superhero movies.
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I loved how the worked in all the main supporting characters from the Aquaman canon—Vulko, the Ocean-Master, Black Manta, Mera. If there’s a second movie, I hope we get Arthur Curry Jr., because to me parenthood and family are a big component of the Aquaman character. I like the change they made to Orm’s background (fully Atlantean son of the Atlantean king and Aquaman’s mother, instead of the fully human son of Aquaman’s father).
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The movie was just fun and joyful and heroic and mythological.
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I loved it whenever one of the characters said “gods.” Like in Game of Thrones, I like it when movies and shows acknowledge non-monotheist belief systems.
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The casting was generally very good. Highlights—Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Temuera Morrison (his dad), Nicole Kidman (his mom), Dolph Lundgren (!!) (Mera’s dad), Willem Dafoe (the vizier of Atlantis), Yahya Abdul-Mateen (Black Manta), Djimon Hounsou (voice), Michael Beach (Black Manta’s dad), Graham McTavish (the ancestral king of Atlantis). All the young Arthur Currys were also well cast.
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The revenge-motivated Black Manta and the lesson that Aquaman learns about his decision that led to this motivation.
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Manhattan was not destroyed in this film.
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The romance between Temuera Morrison and Nicole Kidman was cliched and stereotypical but it was beautifully portrayed and they had a spark on screen.
For context, here’s how I would rank the recent superhero movies I’ve seen.
The Good—
- Wonder Woman
- Ant Man and Ant Man and the Wasp
- Aquaman
- Once Upon a Deadpool (The PG version of Deadpool 2—I didn’t see the R version)
The Flawed, but I liked some things about them—
— Black Panther (start by deleting the Martin Freeman character from this film. And that stupid casino scene. Ugh.)
— Batman vs. Superman
The Bleah—I got bored during significant stretches of these movies, so I judge them below average, and I have no motivation to re-visit them:
— The Spider-Man Movies,
— the Iron Man movies,
— the Captain America movies,
— the Avengers movies,
— the Guardians of the Galaxy movies,
— the Christopher Nolan Batman movies
The I-Can’t-Even-Remember-What-Happened-in-that-Movie Movies, so I might have to watch them again just for that—
— Superman Returns and Man of Steel
Way Below Average: Justice League, the Fantastic Four movies
Just Bad: Suicide Squad
Dead Last: Deadpool 1. God, I hated that movie. Everything about it rubbed me the wrong way
A few I forgot:
Thor movies: bleah
Doctor Strange: suuuuuuuucked. I was so disappointed because I love Benedict Cumberbatch
I don’t understand how anyone could think the visuals looked great. They looked so amateurish.
As I said, other than the “young” makeup in the opening scenes, I thought they looked great. I don’t know what else to say.
I enjoyed it too, but based on the movies you liked and disliked, I think we have very different taste in movies otherwise.
Well, in the comics, the character has always been black. In the 1970s, he was a political militant (Or he posed as one, when recruiting henchmen. When he turned out to be more interested in killing Aquaman than in social issues, his henchmen turned on him.) When not wearing his helmet, artists drew him to resemble Stokely Carmichael.
As for the animation, I would describe it as “stylized” rather than “amateurish”. I don’t think they were trying for realism.
Saw it over the weekend. I give it a solid B due to Momoa having fun with it. It would be a D otherwise.
I won’t rehash what others have said. A few points of my own.
This happens after Justice League??? WTF? I thought this was all before but whoever mentioned that they said Steppenwolf is correct and huh? He and Mara knew and liked each other in JL but first met here?
Atlantean tech. Sigh. The trope of ancient empire having better tech. Okay, fine. Whatever. And on land, I get that. But it really annoyed me that somehow electricity and technology is working in salt water. They didn’t try to explain how this changed. Later, one drop of water powers an entire hologram?
How do people evolve/devolve into fish? 10k years is not a lot of time to do that naturally.
I’m still not sure on the timeline of Atlantis and the first king, who made the trident. Assuming it was thousands of years ago . . . how did he use Romulus as the king? Wouldn’t Romulus be way late? Indeed, wouldn’t most of our Ancient world be recent to them?
Traffic going in and out of Atlantis? Huh? What are they doing? Commuting to . . . what job, exactly? I mean, I get that they must fish or farm something but seeing it would have been nice. And what’s the economy? Do nobles live better than commoners? And what’s up with the water cannons? They mention that all seven kingdoms, until now, have honored borders. So, why?
Are Mera and Arthur really the only Atlanteans who have special abilities? How is that not a much bigger thing or mentioned when she has it?
If all atlanteans are good, fast swimmers, what’s with riding the sharks? What’s with lining up underwater?? And yes to whoever said that he will have the biggest army but only after he’s battle tested and killed a lot of them in “uniting” them.
In the scene with Mantis, Arthur stands there and the blade doesn’t penetrate. Later, it does??? Why? And he can take a freaking grenade launcher to the chest, which he must have absorbed to save the room, but a plasma beam finally hurts him?
Those are my big points. I enjoyed watching Momoa and his charisma worked such that it was only upon reflection I had most of these questions.
Thanks!
Most of the details of the movie didn’t make too much sense to me either, but they at least sort of tried to explain that one. When Arthur gets stabbed in their second fight it’s because Mantis got Atlantean steel from Orm, so apparently Atlanteans can only be harmed by Atlantean weapons because they are just that much more awesome.
All those petrochemicals we’ve been dumping in the oceans have gotta be good for somethin’.
The evolution wasn’t natural. It was a side effect from the trident (which also sank the original kingdom).
And Aquaman already knew the other Atlanteans: Apparently they’ve been nagging him to come back for a while now, and he’s getting tired of telling them no.
But I will grant that the First King Whatever-his-name-was should have probably predated Romulus, and certainly pre-dated whenever those statues were made (which had to have been after the time of all of those not-kings), at least)
Good points, thanks!
Again, I enjoyed it and thought Momoa was great! I would be curious about the comics if they explained some of the lesser questions, like what Atlanteans do for jobs or the like. It’s just me nit picking it.
This really bothered me as well. Wouldn’t it be a Pentadent? But Vulko (Dafoe) specifically said it was Arthur’s mother’s “Trident”.
Ok, maybe a minor thing and perhaps not something to be hooked up on when you have to suspend belief for giant seahorses, fishmen and crab-men.
Overall, this was not one of my favorites. I was actually bored and fell asleep the first time I saw it and had to see it again.
You know what has five tines? A pitchfork. Nicole Kidman had a magic pitchfork.