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The action in Aquaman takes place in the far corners and depths of Earth, from
an island in Maine to Saharan Africa to a place called the Kingdom of the Brine,
deep under the ocean. One extended fight sequence occurs in a picturesque
village on the coast of Sicily, the kind of place that’s breathlessly fawned
over on travel shows like Rick Steves’ Europe. Here, walls of stately villas are
barreled through, terracotta tiles are smashed to bits and plasma rays turn
ancient Roman statues to dust.
Seeing all of this culture and beauty laid to waste didn’t bother me until they
got to a high-end cafe that was lined floor to ceiling with bottles of wine. I
found myself mourning the loss of the product of all of that hard work and
viticulture even before its inevitable destruction. Sure enough, a character who
can control water musters all the wine into projectiles and fires it at some bad
guys.
On one level, who cares—Jason Momoa’s New England-raised title character is more
of a beer drinker anyway. But on another, using something as delicately crafted
as fine Italian wine as just another blunt instrument that ends up as collateral
damage in the film’s innumerable smash-ups, sums up what is so wrong with the
movie.
Making his superhero debut, horror maestro James Wan (the Saw and Conjuring
movies) sadly and consistently chooses dumb spectacle over anything that might
be considered shrewd, clever or less than obvious. In other words, there were
better ways for him and his pair of screenwriters to use that wine, just as
there were better ways to tell the story of the half-human heir to the undersea
kingdom of Atlantis taking his proper place on the throne.
That is not to say that the latest entrant in the DC Extended Universe—the RC
Cola of synergistic corporate superhero undertakings—doesn’t have its occasional
B-movie pleasures. While a few of these are visual (I for one will never cease
to find gratification in watching an intricately manbunned Willem Dafoe riding
an oversized seahorse, or an octopus playing war drums before a big fight) most
come virtue of Momoa’s smirk-and-muscles lead performance.
With his eyebrows carved into a questioning arches and a seemingly permanent
half-smile on his face, Momoa recalls the heyday of pumped up ’80s action stars
who would offer a moderately clever one liner before tossing a guy through a
wall. The Game of Thrones hunk of meat plays everything with a subtext of “Can
you believe this shit?” It’s a change of pace from typical superhero
earnestness.
But that's undercut by the way his character is written. With his frequent
exclamations of “awesome” and “bad ass,” he talks and acts like a prepubescent
sixth-grader trying to crack up the other kids in homeroom. When Atlantis
royalty Mera (Amber Heard, sporting a green sequin jumpsuit that looks like
something Liberace might have worn to an aerobics class) recruits him to bring
peace to the kingdom, which is on the verge of war with the surface dwellers
because of their bellicose leader Orm (Patrick Wilson), Aquaman is reluctant to
join her. “Your fish ship has been marinating in chum butter,” he says. “We’re
going to smell like swamp butt.” The back-and-forth bickering/verbal foreplay
between Arthur and Mera occasionally feels forced. They’re not Tracy and
Hepburn. Momoa, although charismatic and physically gifted, isn’t well-suited to
this sort of repartee. Amber Heard is worse, looking like a live-action Ariel
wannabe who has a tendency to deliver her lines in a monotone.
But the real problem with Aquaman is less its oddly written dialogue than the
monotony of its rhythms. It quickly falls into a steady pattern of long bits of
expository patter that is suddenly interrupted by a big explosion that send
characters scattering bloodlessly. (Atlantians’ skin is largely impenetrable to
weaponry.) It’s as if the detonations happen at the exact moment where a focus
group would say, “Enough yakking,” and it happens over and over again. On at
least three occasions, a seemingly-sedate moment is interrupted by a pyrotechnic
blast loud enough to be heard halfway round the world (and likely a couple of
theater auditoriums away). There’s a law of diminishing returns for this sort of
thing. The first time, it’s unexpected. By the third instance, it’s grounds for
a drinking game.
But even graced with the charming company of Momoa and Nicole Kidman, who is
having a blast playing his high-kicking, otherworldly mother, the timing and
tone of this movie is consistently off. A movie this silly—and we’re talking
Rocky III strongman Dolph Lundgren in Strawberry Shortcake pink hair level
silly—should not be so long, portentous or one-note. Put simply, Aquaman is a
fish opera that wildly overstays its welcome.
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