Aquaman Review

Oh boy. I was wondering what was going to go down when I inevitably reviewed this. Get ready, because I'm about to make some DC fanboys/girls sad.

DC is lame compared to Marvel. I guess I can't say it's a fact, but most of the world seems to agree. But every single movie that DC that has made feels like it's riding off the coattails of something that Marvel already did. Man of Steel? It was meant to be the start of a universe of interconnected films, something that Marvel did with Iron Man 6 whole years before. In fact, Marvel had already released a movie that tied up the previous films before Man of Steel came out. "So what next? Well, of course, let's rush a team-up!" Batman V. Superman appears, and instead of wowing people like the Avengers did, people ridiculed the film to oblivion. While I think it is somewhat overhated, I still can't get over the fact that the titular fight ends just because both heroes' mommies have the same name. "Alright, that was too dark and depressing. Let's make a WHIMSICAL tale that's super fun and super dark at the same time! Because we're DC. It has to be dark." Suicide Squad. Ridiculed even more than the last one and I just didn't even bother watching it. "Okay, okay. We have to actually do something that Marvel hasn't done before." They win this time. Wonder Woman. The first major superhero movie starring a female protagonist. Marvel should have listened to the pleas for a Black Widow movie much earlier than they did. But even though it's their best movie, Wonder Woman is just fine. It doesn't feel fresh in any way. It's basically the same story as the first Captain America, except its WWI and Greek mythology, just done slightly better. Also, I love how Marvel finally released their first superheroine movie this year and it's miles better than Wonder Woman (I'll review that one too, especially with Endgame coming out). But alright, they finally got a victory. But then, DC faces their most epic fail with the release of their REAL Team-up film: JUSTICE LEAGUE.

Yeah, that's right. Look at the puffy lip that cost $3 million to create. That is not a joke. They actually spent $3 million to poorly remove a mustache with CGI.

It bombs at the box-office because the film is awful. It is hands down the worst superhero movie I have ever seen. Justice League remains to be one the most pitiful disappointments I have ever seen in my life. I'll give DC this: they are persistent. In 2018, DC finally decided to release a film that was predominately light-hearted. That's right, on the eve of Marvel reaching 20 films, DC finally makes a light-hearted one with Aquaman. And are proceeding to do it again with Shazam!, which actually looks amazing. But anyways, back to Aquaman. The DC movie that actually managed to win people over. The DC film that earned $1 billion. The DC motion picture that made so many people happy. Well, I watched it on DVD and I have something to say:

Y'ALL ACTUALLY PAID TO SEE THIS IN THEATERS OVER INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE?

Why? Why did this happen? How did a movie so utterly stupid (made by DC of all people) manage to out-gross quite possibly the best superhero movie of all time by $773 million? But yes, we live in a world where pretty much every Spider-Man movie was out-grossed by a movie about one of the lamest characters of all time. A character who was more or less the worst part of Justice League, which in turn is one of the worst movies ever made (my opinion). A character whose main power is that he can talk to fish. Also, may I remind you that DC is completely aware how lame this character is? Look what he normally looks like:

You see, in the movie, he's shirtless and has a lot of tattoos. Now you have to take him seriously.

They even ruin that later in the movie by giving him the exact same stupid costume. Except it looks even stupider.

And by the way: I'm not saying you have to dislike it. If you enjoyed this film, good. So with that being said, allow to evicerate this utterly lame film (in my opinion).

First of all, am I the only one who laughed at practically every line in this film, except for the intentionally er...."funny" lines? When they were trying to get a LOL from the audience, it was absolutely dreadful. Trust me when I say this: there are very few things that are more awkward than a failed joke. That complete and utter silence is just about the worst thing that can happen when attempting to joke. But trust me when I say that this film is one of the most unintentionally funny movies I saw from 2018. I'm not even going to describe what's bad. Take any of the lines from the trailer as seriously as you possibly can. And if you don't want to try that, just trying taking this line seriously:

"Nice try, BUT THIS IS ATLANTEAN STEEL!"

With dialogue like that, it's has to have a good plot yes? NO. The story is oddly similar to the much superior film, Black Panther. You know, it's Black Panther, but without the social commentary, good performances, a complex villain, diversity, and positive change in the film industry due to said diversity. Everything in this film is so dull. Every plot point in this film feels like it's ripped out of some other movie. Protagonist who is half-human, half-powerful species? Guardians of the Galaxy. Protagonist who has to take back his rightful throne? Black Panther. Mentor character who seems to be dead at first, only to appear alive later? Winter Soldier. Climax involving a character becoming unstoppable after he obtains his true powers? Thor: Ragnarok. Climax involving a character becoming unstoppable after he obtains some powerful object? Infinity War. Villain character motivated by heroic character killing a loved one? Oh man, that's Black Panther and Civil War. Racist villain obsessed with annihilating a certain people group? Guardians of the Galaxy. Protagonist has to save the day by properly controlling thousands of creatures? Ant Man. IT'S RIPPING OFF EVERYTHING. Listen, there's no problem having some major plot points that are similar. Aquaman, however, decides to derive from just about everything that already exists and doesn't aim to do anything special with its premise. I'm sure there's plenty of other plot points ripped from some other better movies that I didn't mention.

The characters are garbage. They are. This film has one of the most bland rosters of characters that I've ever seen. The best is, thankfully, Aquaman. This film made him significantly more likable than he was in Justice League, mainly because now we know why he's so much of an edgelord. He had a hard life: raised for almost his entire life without his mother, bullied by other kids, and shunned by the Atlanteans. That's development. That is some character development. I'll take it because NO ONE ELSE IS DEVELOPED. Red wig girl is just there to be the girl character, spew exposition and look pretty. That is just about one of the worst types of characters you could put in a movie. This is the 2010s and almost the 2020s. We should be past reducing female characters to serve as a bland love interest to the male protagonist. They make it seem like she can fight and stuff, but they never give her anything to do! This is really annoying. For those who are confused about why most people prefer Wonder Woman over this? Just look at this girl's character: so bland, I can't even remember her name (I looked it up and apparently it's Mera, boring name). King Orm (snicker) is so dull, yet somehow also over-the-top. The funniest thing about Orm other than his name is the thing he'd do to rally his troops; he'd swim in the middle of some area, do a t-pose, and just scream, "HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" like some maniac. But other than that, he's really boring. Willem Dafoe's there.....yeah, he's there. Nicole Kidman honestly looks like she's stoned in every scene she's in. HOWEVER, although she look rightfully confused about what was going on in the production of this trainwreck, her character AT LEAST was given stuff to do in the little screen time she has. So that's good. But all is fine, because now I get to talk about the most moronic, over-the-top, hilariously bad excuse for a character known as the Black Manta. This man, Black Manta,  receives a nice looking laser gun from the Atlanteans so he hunt for Aquaman. WHAT DOES HE DO WITH THIS GUN? He turns it into this idiotic looking mask:

I'm sorry. There's no way that's even more efficient than holding the gun. On top of that, it just looks like the stupidest thing. His character's execution was just full of bad ideas and because of that, he was the most entertaining character without fail.

Finally, we have to talk about the technical aspects of this film. It is a technical disaster. The effects were not very good, which is something to be scared of, considering how VFX heavy this film is. I heard people say they actually looked good in this one. And while they do look better than Justice League and Wonder Woman at the very least, I won't call them good CGI. It was bad, and there was way too much of it for it to be redeemable. The lighting was eye blinding. DC's answer to people saying their movies are too dark? "Let's lighten up the mood!" Yeah, no. That's not what people mean about the movies being dark. I recall them giving an epilepsy warning right before Incredibles 2 was playing, for one particular scene. If you're gonna do that for one scene, then you should put a warning for this entire movie. The score was all over the place and couldn't stick to single genre throughout. There's no way you need to switch from a sweeping orchestral score to a weird synthy score. That's so weird! Why would you do that? And it's not like the composer, Rupert Gregson-Williams, isn't a good composer. He's fine. He did some good scores in Hacksaw Ridge and The Lone Ranger, but something went wrong with this one. I don't know what happened, and I may never know. Lastly, it's never a good idea to have an original Pitbull song in your film. Stop supporting Pitbull. Just stop. I don't ever want to hear "MR. WORLDWIDE" again. I'm sure many agree with me too.

SCORE: 3/10

Yeah, I thought this was a mess. I don't recommend this film. It's entirely too long for it to be an entertainingly bad film, it's too bad to be a normal film. It's just nothing, really.