Aquaman
This may very well be the most effusive review I’ve ever written for an average movie. That is how wild James Wan’s “Aquaman” is to watch.
The director of “Insidious,” “The Conjuring,” “Saw” and “Furious 7” is an interesting choice for a superhero movie, but Wan must have had a Hell of a pitch for how he would bring Arthur Curry’s world to life for the studio and DC, because his visual style in this film might be one of my favorite experiences just watching a superhero film in the past few years. This movie pops off the screen with boundless visual imagination and detail to where it almost feels like overdrive, at times. No DC Cinematic Universe has looked so appealing in its detail and scope and style (even “Wonder Woman,” which is still the best DCEU film), and I want more of it.
If you’ve seen the trailers for “Aquaman,” you know the story being told, basically beat-for-beat. Arthur’s father is a lighthouse worker in Maine (Tom Curry, played by Temuera Morrison), while his mother is Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), who has washed up by his pier. He nurses her back to health, they fall in love and have Arthur, but her obligations to marry the King of Atlantis come back to haunt them, and she has to go back to protect the love of her life and their son. Cut to the present day, and Arthur is helping people as the Aquaman after the events of “Justice League,” and gets drinks with his dad, who still pines for Atlanna’s return. One day, however, Mera (Amber Heard) comes from Atlantis with distressing news that Arthur’s half-brother, King Orm (Patrick Wilson), is trying to raise a coalition of the Kingdoms of the Seven Seas against the surface, and Mera needs to convince Arthur to claim his birthright as King of Atlantis over Orm.
The screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall is very standard superhero origin story stuff, although I will say, using the environmental negligence of the surface world as motivation for Orm’s desire to attack it is one I didn’t necessarily expect. (How weird that every live-action superhero film this year has had a “villain” whose rationale for their choices you can understand why they’re doing what they’re doing?) That motivation aside, though, there’s really not much you can say about the script, and how it goes about its business. The story is fine, and it’s up for the actors to make it really come to life on-screen. As Arthur, Jason Momoa does what is asked of him, and while it’s fun work, there’s not really much beyond the surface in terms of the character. Same can be said for Heard as Mera- she does what she’s asked to do, and does it well, but these are less characters of depth than ideas of characters that work better visually than as living and breathing individuals. The performances that really show some feeling are Morrison and Kidman, who shine in their brief times on-screen. Everyone else, from Willem Dafoe as Arthur’s trainer to Dolph Lundgren to Patrick Wilson and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Manta, whom we see get bested by Arthur at the beginning, has differing levels of over-the-top acting to do in order to make these events feel epic and important. They succeed to varying degrees, but as a whole, I didn’t feel a particularly strong connection to the story on-screen.
What I did connect very strongly with in “Aquaman,” however, was the film’s remarkable use of images and music. Cinematographer Don Burgess and the artists at Industrial Light & Magic brought this film to life for me in a way I cherish. I can’t help but think of fantasy worlds like those created by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta in “Fire and Ice,” especially when it comes to the Kingdom of the Trench that Arthur must fight his way into. The use of slow-motion is very Zack Snyder-esque, to be sure (not necessarily a plus for me), but my God was this film too well designed visually for me to care much. And Wan shows himself reasonably adept at shooting action in this movie (even though “Furious 7” had already displayed some of that)- the fight early on in Tom Curry’s house between Atlanna and Atlantan soldiers was wonderful to just watch unfold, and a chase in Italy is fun to see how Wan shoots this foot chase. I don’t know that this film would have quite worked for me, though, if it wasn’t for the big, bold musical score Rupert Gregson-Williams wrote for the film. A fantastic use of synthesized atmosphere, themes and rhythmic writing, I wouldn’t put this as some sort of musical masterpiece, but like a lot of the rest of the film, it’s just what “Aquaman” needs to delve deep into our imaginations, and leave us entertained when it has every reason not to.
