Movie Review - Aquaman

Aquaman ***** for the way it looks; ** for everything else (out of 5) (PG-13) Since Aquaman was never among my childhood comic-book favorites, this epic origin story was not high on my list of Christmas wishes. It still isn’t. There have been many versions of how he came to be. In all of them, he was the child of a union between a land-based guy and a babe from beneath the blue. Mom has usually been from Atlantis, but not always royalty; his birth name was usually Arthur. This version cobbles together a number of familiar backstories from other sagas, including the overuse of his name as it relates to a familiar tale from centuries ago. You’ll know it when you see it, if you don’t already. I found the story tedious and predictable, all the way to its inevitable table-setting for a sequel, if not a whole new DC superhero franchise.

On the plus side, the visuals are truly spectacular, and well worth the extra effort of finding a 3-D theater for your journey into his terran and underwater endeavors to stop a war between his power-crazed half brother from below (Patrick Wilson, who always looks properly cast as a villain), and the landlubbers who have befouled the oceans and ravaged its known and unknown denizens. The computer-generated city of Atlantis, all the marine life, and some stunning action sequences raise the bar for others to follow. Although one battle looks like it came from a Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy, having a blue background instead of the blackness of space made the vehicles, weapons’ firings and explosions look far more dazzling.

Several surreal monsters add to the novelty factor. But perhaps the most impressive visual achievement was making Willem Dafoe look like a young man in flashbacks to his mentor role during Aquaman’s (Jason Momoa) formative years. They did the same for Nicole Kidman when she met and fell in love with his lighthouse keeper dad (Temuera Morrison), but that couldn’t have taken anywhere near the effort required for Dafoe’s grizzled visage.

The story is admirably non-linear, starting with the meeting of our hero’s parents, but jumping ahead to his adult self, with periodic cutaways to fill in his evolution and education. One will also appreciate the insertion of some clever throwaway lines that Momoa handles deftly among other bits of comic relief. Once again, we find the DC universe shifting towards levity to compete with Marvel’s vast superiority in that regard. Momoa’s no Robert Downey, Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man) or Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), but he’s a breath of fresh air compared to the stiffness of Batman, no matter who played him (other than Adam West on TV in the 1960s).

As long as they keep the same bunch of techies for all the visual elements, I’ll stick with Momoa for the next round that is surely in the works. If they find more creative writers to give him a truly original plot, even better. (12/21/18)