The best things in the movie are the visual effects and costumes. Everything else came off as overworked and overdone. It's basically a mashup of The Little Mermaid, The Sword in the Stone, and Black Panther (minus any interesting technology or meaningful cultural references).
shareDC Fanboy: Look, a Marvel movie... Flashy, flashy, flashy. All flashy and colorful what a horrible movie.
2018
DC Fanboy: Look, Aquaman... Flashy, flashy, flashy. All flashy and colorful. Wow, what a masterpiece...
hahahahahha so true
shareThis also rings 100% true...
DC stan: Look, a Marvel movie yet again being fun and silly and somehow audiences & totally not paid critics are loving it. Horrible, horrible movie! DC makes movies for adults. Marvel has always been 4 kiddies!
DC stan: Oh my gawd! Shazam looks amazing! Jokes! Childish jokes! It doesn’t take itself seriously while Marvel’s “Captain Marvel” appears so super serious and stuff! No laughs there at all! Shazam looks what a true comic book movie should be! By the way Spider-Man: Homecoming sucked. Huh? The guys who wrote that movie are also gonna do The Flash movie? Awesome bro! DC is king!! (Side note: it’s not just the DC army criticizing the upcoming MCU movie this way... it’s also those who couldn’t care less about the DC & Marvel beef but still need an excuse to throw tantrums over strong female characters and their actresses)
Yes, these are based on true events. Goddamn that hypocrisy is astounding....
Everything you said is true.
And yet, I still thought Aquaman was fun.
For the most part I, too, had fun with it. Although, I thought it was unnecessarily long and on top of that it felt like a mixture of a bunch of different movies. And I get that it’s self-aware (I appreciated that), but to paraphrase what someone wrote: “it drowns in its own identity crisis”. Its screenplay really holds it back.
But that being, it was a fresh breath of air for the DCEU. When it comes to visuals and entertainment value, Aquaman is far and away the DCEU’s best offering yet. It wants to be fun and ridiculous and probably nothing more. You simply have to sit back and enjoy the ride. So all in all, while I by no means consider this DC’s greatest (don’t know how it will hold up with repeated viewings), I will say it was the movie the DCEU needed.
[Still amusing how many of those who repeatedly criticized Marvel for knowing how to have fun with their films are suddenly embracing something more colorful and very cheesy — the dialogue in Aquaman is perhaps cheesier than any dialogue in other recent comic book films]
Yeah, I remember some DCEU fans complaining that Guardians 2 had a poop joke but they say nothing about the pee joke in this movie.
shareThere is one scene (you'll know it if you've seen this movie) where my 13 year old nephew leaned over and whispered "Welcome...to Jurassic Park!" but you know....watch Justice League and BvS first and you'll appreciate this much more.
shareI definitely got a little bit of Jurassic Park in this! I also got a little bit of every cheesy romance+action movie ever when the girl touches the guy and their eyes meet and suddenly they realize they're both attractive! Barfs up!
shareIt all looks like a video game. Even the live actors look like video game characters. Movement is fake looking. If you prefer the appearance of video games, I guess you will like how this movie looks.
shareI must admit I got a little bit bored. It's overloaded with references/steals from other films but not in a good way. Some of the naff clichéd duologue is worthy of Star Wars and it felt too long. Which is a pity because Momoa and Heard were OK.
share"It's basically a mashup of The Little Mermaid, The Sword in the Stone, and Black Panther (minus any interesting technology or meaningful cultural references)."
Lol, not really.
If anything, this is a riff on the King Arthur myth (Arthur...Curry get it?), Man of Steel structure and ample Raiders & ClashofTitans elements.
Ocean pollution is not a meaningful cultural reference? Pearls cast before the seapigs!
Finally saw it. I went in expecting it to be "OK to great" based on the overwhelming opinion average. Turned out to be a little below OK. To say it was a mashup is an understatement. It's like DC got tired of their movies being called bad and decided to copy movie parts that have proven to work with audiences in the past and paste them all together with exposition glue. Sorta like a video game with button mashing interrupted by periods of rest to be told what the story is.
Visually, I enjoyed a handful of things. It certainly was big budget and wowed for its money's worth. I will even give Mamoa a bit of credit. He toned down the dude-bro thing a lot and even upped his game a little in the acting dept. This is not to say that he was "good," but just better. There were some fights that I enjoyed too.
The movie was overloaded with style cliches. From the face-zoom-glance-up to the now-yer-gonna-get-it guitar solo to the here's-the-special-move-that-will-win later on moment. It was very much a movie by the numbers but sadly with as little chemistry between scenes as there was between Arthur and Mera.
I think of DC as a cook weary of people disliking his meals. He says "I'll show you! I KNOW you like chocolate cake so I will put all of these ingredients to your favorite chocolate cake together in this bag and shake it up. Then, if you don't like it, it will prove that you have something against me because this is the secret formulae to what you like." Except it's just an uncooked bag of ingredients without any heat nor skilled technique. Expensive ingredients. Some even tasting good on their own. But in the end just a bag of uninteresting stuff that is NOT chocolate cake.
In the end, it is a mediocre movie. 4.5/10
I sorta liked some stuff and only actually hated a few things (I hated what they did with Black Manta. I was looking forward to BM more than anything and they went way stupid with him)
This would have been a phenomenal five part mini series in the 80's.
Someone convinced me to give it another shot. After a rewatch, I hate the Black Manta scenario less but am even more weary of the acting and plot. I actually have to drop it a bit down to 4/10.
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