Aquaman (2018)
Directed by James Wan
Half-human, half-Atlantean Arthur Curry is taken on the journey of his lifetime to discover if he is worth of being a king.
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106 films that influenced Aquaman
What critics say influenced Aquaman
After the near death experience of Justice League, it appears the thinking went something like this: the DCEU has to storm back with a movie of such crowd pleasing bravado and scale that the audience, though their brains will naturally resist, will ultimately surrender to its relentless action and a sub-aquatic succession drama modelled on proven templates, sorry hits, like Thor and Black Panther.
Whereas “Justice League” was a feeble attempt to deliver the DC answer to “The Avengers,” Wan’s “Aquaman” imitates Marvel’s “Thor” to an embarrassing degree.
The people who made three “Thor” films never seemed to have this problem.
Very much mirroring Tron (visually, all of Atlantis has some strong hints) and the Bifrost in Thor —the highway beautifully merges classicism with technology—as fish-shaped ships glide through beams of light-like street lanes over a glittering glass road with giant classical statues surrounding them.
Don’t worry that it practically tells the same story as Thor and Black Panther (and has more than a few echoes of Wonder Woman too): Aquaman is too much of a goofy stand-alone to be called a rip-off, and it’s also playing with decades of comic book lore that likely predate its more recent cinematic predecessors.
It has echoes of an underwater Thor, which is probably where its tone should have sat, but it wanders off into Tomb Raider territory, and even has some horror elements.
At its best, Aquaman channels family-friendly action adventures, with Mera and Arthur's argumentative back-and-forth being particularly reminiscent of Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser's chemistry in 1999's The Mummy (the new movie even manages to insert a desert set piece in among the underwater adventures).
Scenes in the Sahara—where Aquaman and Mera jump out of a plane for seemingly no reason—meant to be like “Indiana Jones” ends up feeling like something much cornier akin to Brendan Fraser’s “The Mummy.”
Instead of a brooding mess of muddled deconstructionism, Aquaman just wants to be a light-hearted swashbuckling adventure flick in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean or 1999’s The Mummy .
Y acertaron: James Wan logró su cometido al robarse, de Ant-Man 2 , el humor, la idea de un universo escondido y de una mamá guerrera perdida (vean el traje de Kidman y el de Pfeiffer); de Black Panther la mitad del argumento, la batalla entre hermanos y la idea de una sociedad escondida con pistas de superioridades raciales (más allá del argumento de Geoff); De Power Rangers lo ridículo de sus villanos; de Uncharted los pequeños puzzles de dudosa complejidad y, de The Mummy , la estética aventurera del desierto; de Thor: Ragnarok el atrevimiento de una estética neón insolente y de Pacific Rim el diseño de un Kaiju que, también, toma mucho del Smaug de Tolkien en su forma de hablar (con una sorpresiva Julie Andrews detrás del doblaje).
If you don’t take it too seriously, “Aquaman” has a variety of delights: Momoa is a natural star, and his charisma makes Arthur appealingly goofy; Arthur’s relationship with the more straitlaced Mera is often funny and brings to mind “The Mummy” franchise from the late 1990s; and the underwater world that director James Wan creates is detailed and impressive, if you can accept that gigantic seahorses are creatures of war.
It’s sort of like The Mummy , though we need a John Hannah.
Aquaman and Mera snack on roses in an Italian market, with Heard tearing into flowers fish-out-of-water style, a bit reminiscent of Daryl Hannah chomping a lobster in “Splash.”
The former plays the hydrokinetic love interest Mera, while the latter recalls Daryl Hannah in “Splash” (1984) before kicking ass in Tom’s living room.
This fantastic vision, something of a blend of Daryl Hannah in “Splash” and Gal Gadot in “Wonder Woman” is, in fact, Nicole Kidman with a touch of CGI to make her look more in her 20s than her current vintage – not that she needs it.
The movie starts out feeling like 1984's "Splash" with Kidman's Atlanna washing ashore and being baffled by the human world before we meet Aquaman.
Y, bueno, ese espectáculo visual fue también inspirado por otras cosas (como The Abyss y Godzilla ), mientras que la discusión con Karathen (interpretado por la gran Julie Andrews) es una calca de Smaug y otros grandes dragones refinados con dejos de Lovecraft.
Its inspirations include tokusatsu-style television series and sci-fi stories such as The Abyss , Humanoids from the Deep and especially Journey to the Centre of the Earth .
Visual inspirations run the gamut from The Abyss to Tron , from Journey to the Center of the Earth to Humanoids from the Deep , and from steampunk to Lovecraftian.
That's admirable, and the amount of worldbuilding and lore-crafting on display in this movie is staggering; new creatures, locations, and hi-tech doodads are introduced on the regular, and just when you think you've got your head wrapped around what's going on, an army of lobster people show up, or a massive alien ship (like something out of the end of The Abyss ) breaks through the surface of the ocean so that two impossibly attractive actors can punch each other atop its hull.
…silliness, and a hold-your-breath terror pairing World War Z with The Abyss.
Want a giant tidal wave straight outta “The Abyss”?
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Aquaman’s jet-propelled splash through its various imagined underwater kingdoms proves genuinely entertaining, offering up differently calibrated undersea realms that recall James Cameron’s Avatar, the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft (whose story The Dunwich Horror appears as an early bit of set-dressing) and the archly operatic Luc Besson of The Fifth Element and Valerian.
He borrows a bit from The Fifth Element, too.
Esta cinta se siente como una mezcla de Ant-Man and the Wasp con Black Panther , un poco de la cacofonía visual neón de Thor: Ragnarok , algunas tomas robadas de Harry Potter y The Fifth Element , una pizca de Nathan Drake y La Momia noventera.
Wan’s exhilarating adventure makes overtures to a few films, like Indiana Jones , The Fifth Element , The Lord of the Rings , and Jurassic Park.
Aquaman’s jet-propelled splash through its various imagined underwater kingdoms proves genuinely entertaining, offering up differently calibrated undersea realms that recall James Cameron’s Avatar, the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft (whose story The Dunwich Horror appears as an early bit of set-dressing) and the archly operatic Luc Besson of The Fifth Element and Valerian.
With its bright visuals punctuated by Avatar-like neon hues of blue, green and pink, the stylistic world that he builds is eye-popping and truly unique.
Not since the ground-breaking work on Avatar has such world building stunned and awed the way it does here.
I can’t say I blame him, considering the stale fight choreography, repetitive narrative structure that feels it’s necessary we visit all Seven Kingdoms of the Sea (yes, even Kingdom of the Brine), lame jokes that don’t land, unintentionally funny moments that made me snort laughing (Patrick Wilson’s King Orm calling himself “Ocean Master” with a straight face, and honest-to-God sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads), all of which occur before a visually underwhelming backdrop that at best felt like a video game, and at worst looks like discarded scenes from Avatar that Cameron forgot in the Avid for Wan to find.
Aquaman gives audiences a Lord of the Rings meets Avatar vibe.
There were angry aquarium sharks; a bioluminescent Atlantis, equal parts Gungan city and Avatar planet; an underwater reenactment of the Thor-vs.-Hulk…
The design of Atlantis and the underwater kingdoms is gorgeous, with the bioluminescent environments and lavishly gaudy costume designs giving it a real “ Flash Gordon under the sea” vibe; seriously, this movie features dresses made out of jellyfish and henchman uniforms straight out of a series of Power Rangers , and yet it all somehow just works.
Some of the film’s fight scenes are truly impressive in nature, but others look lifted off a Power Rangers battle.
That angry son becomes the revenge-driven baddie Black Manta (Yahya Adbul-Mateen II), who looks a little too much like a Power Rangers sidekick in live-action and about whom the movie seems to forget entirely partway through.
Once Aqua put on his best Club Monaco jet-setting fit, the film really let’s go and somehow the same journey takes him through the Sahara, Italy, on a boat fighting Power Rangers demons and finally, a Crash Bandicoot level.
The director James Wan ("Saw," "The Conjuring," "Furious 7") has concocted an action-packed story that is partly a redemption tale and partly a coming-of-age story but with an entertaining low-stakes feel that can be best described as a mix between a "Power Rangers" movie and the classic 1982 Disney movie "Tron."
Y acertaron: James Wan logró su cometido al robarse, de Ant-Man 2 , el humor, la idea de un universo escondido y de una mamá guerrera perdida (vean el traje de Kidman y el de Pfeiffer); de Black Panther la mitad del argumento, la batalla entre hermanos y la idea de una sociedad escondida con pistas de superioridades raciales (más allá del argumento de Geoff); De Power Rangers lo ridículo de sus villanos; de Uncharted los pequeños puzzles de dudosa complejidad y, de The Mummy , la estética aventurera del desierto; de Thor: Ragnarok el atrevimiento de una estética neón insolente y de Pacific Rim el diseño de un Kaiju que, también, toma mucho del Smaug de Tolkien en su forma de hablar (con una sorpresiva Julie Andrews detrás del doblaje).
But unlike its cinematic cousins “Wonder Woman” and “Suicide Squad,” “Aquaman” is akin to a trove of borrowed treasures instead of being its own thing.
Whatever the case, Aquaman falls into an uncomfortable try-hard dead zone that leaves it in better shape than, say, Batman v. Superman or Suicide Squad , but just shy of the gleefully anarchic predecessors whose ranks it could have joined, like Jupiter Ascending or Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets .
The disastrous Justice League and the hodgepodge known as Suicide Squad ?
Sure, the critically panned but financially successful Suicide Squad was part of this interconnection, but it wasn’t until the almost universally admired Wonder Woman film in 2017 that people began to think that maybe DC had it figured out.
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In the climax, he even manages to do Zack Snyder’s bombastic, grimacing slow-mo style better than Snyder did in his own DC superhero movies Man Of Steel , Batman V Superman, and Justice League.
Arthur's burgeoning powers are seldom explored, however, and the occasional training or education flashbacks offer none of the excitement or moral dilemmas that are custom-built for superhero origin stories (Clarke Kent not beating up his bullies in Man of Steel but then saving a busload of kids, including the bullies, being a prime example of the device done properly).
In a few ways, Aquaman reminded me of Man of Steel .
The movie is a mix of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), a little bit of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), part The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) with just a touch of The African Queen (1951)—you know, without all the problematic stuff…yeesh.