‘I am Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis…’
There was a point towards the end of Aquaman when a number of disparate fish-based soldiers gathered across the oceans to prepare for a huge battle. There is a big octopus thing and some lobster creatures who share an unfortunate resemblance to the Crab People from South Park. And within all this CGI nonsense, James Wan veteran Patrick Wilson looks directly to camera and says ‘call me… ocean master’. And in that moment, I knew that this was a bad film…
Hmm… the plot. A bunch of fish men are angry because Nicole Kidman did or didn’t marry some old fish king years ago. The biggest fish person, or Aquaman as he is known, must combine with someone who looks exactly like Aerial from The Little Mermaid to defeat some other fish men for reasons that are neither coherent or important. This goes on for almost two and a half hours, and then, thankfully, it’s over.
Now. Both the MCU and the DCEU have created a business model by which you have to keep watching the crappy entries in both franchises in order to enjoy the good ones. The problem for DC, of course, is that even the good ones are not really that good. That renders this standalone fish man film even more pointless. I should say this is not really the fault of the cast. Jason Momoa does a good job delivering a performance that calls back to the action heroes of the 80s. Wilson is a little fresh faced to play this kind of villain, but he does ok. Amber Heard probably fares best as Aerial Mera, but all of them struggle to shake off the feeling that this film will become dated and worthless the second that the credits roll. Even director James Wan can’t be blamed. He actually does a good job in making such an absurd concept seem fairly grandiose and visually impressive, the problem however is that there is just no need for this film to exist. Not every single comic book character ever needs their own movie. In fact, hardly any of them do. And yet, with the new Spider-Man movie about to dominate the box office as I write this, it appears that this is one decade long fad that is yet to fade. And Christ. I keep watching them. Here’s to the next one.