I really wanted to like it.
I tried.
The new Warner Bros. comic book extravaganza is a 2-hour-and-23-minute water-logged mess.
The entire movie is over-Photoshopped, over-orchestrated, and over-long.
If you are someone who saw the scenes of Jar Jar Binks’s underwater home in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” and said, “Damn! I wish they’d make a two-and-a-half hour movie of this!” — then you’ll probably be happy with “Aquaman.”
I suppose we need a DC Universe movie every so often to remind us that Marvel owns the “secret sauce” on superhero movies.
Granted, the filmmakers tried. They did their level best to make a deep-sea world that was an underwater version of Thor’s Asgard.
But instead it was just an indecipherable mishmash of “undersea kingdoms” that were largely indecipherable from one another (I mean, other than the world that was ruled by crabs).
King Orm (Patrick Wilson) wants to unite all the nautical kingdoms and go to war with land dwellers — who continually pollute and ravage the oceans.
Dolph Lundgren plays King Nereus — leader of another Atlantean tribe who is united with Orm in his quest.
(Honestly, Dolph is one of the best things in the movie.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The movie starts off with a lighthouse keeper (Temeura Morrison, who played Jango Fett in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones”) rescuing an underwater princess named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) during a storm.
The two have a kid. The kid is named Arthur Curry. He is the bastard child destined to rule the underwater world of Atlantis. Eventually, the lighthouse is attacked and Atlanna leaves to keep her son safe — never to be heard from again.
Arthur, when he grows up, is a well-meaning brute — trained to be a deep-sea warrior by his mother’s advisor Nuidis Vulko (Willem Defoe), but is rejected by Atlantean society for being a half-breed.
Eventually, a woman named Mera (Amber Heard) comes from the sea to tell the adult Arthur (Jason Mamoa) that they need him to take control of the kingdom and save the world from King Orm’s sinister plan.
I’m not going to give you an entire rundown of what goes on. “Aquaman” blends Thor-like “mythology” with Tolkien-esque “world building.”
Along the way, it sort of becomes an Indiana Jones movie as Arthur and Mera hunt for a special trident. By that point, they could have been looking for a vintage package of Trident gum and I wouldn’t have known the difference.
It’s quite possible I’ve lost touch with what appeals to today’s younger set. A handful of people applauded after the 2:30 p.m. showing I attended. It made me wonder if I had been missing something.
Kevin Feige and the crew at Marvel understand how to make superhero movies. They know how to craft stories that appeal to more than video-game-loving fanboys.
It’s really hard for me to willfully suspend my disbelief when I look at a movie and ponder things like “layer opacity,” “Gaussian blur,” “unsharp masks,” and “digital grain” as I look at action scenes that feel like they employ every filter available in Adobe Photoshop.
(I use Photoshop for a living, so I’m allowed to notice these things.)
The film is directed by James Wan, who did a “Fast and Furious” movie and some popular horror flicks like “The Conjuring.”
Wan and the writers try to bring us a fun and colorful movie like “Thor: Ragnarok,” but most of the jokes fall flat. Unlike Marvel, the whole never feels more than the sum of its parts.
Watching a bunch of CG-manipulated characters fight to be “Ocean Master” in “Aquaman” lacks the deft touch found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Aquaman” would have been far more compelling if they’d found a way to keep the story grounded in the real world. Quite honestly, the “above water” sequences in the film are the most compelling in the narrative.
If you want to see a terrific superhero movie about the fight to be king of a “secret world,” do yourself a favor and watch “Black Panther” again (arguably the best superhero movie of 2018 — read my review).
Again, I understand the filmmakers were trying to make a cheesy 1980s cartoon. Unfortunately, the the timing in the film felt off, and the pacing was sluggish in certain sequences.
I haven’t yet seen all the holiday blockbusters, but in the battle between “Aquaman” and “Bumblebee,” I’m gonna have to give the edge to the Autobot (read my full review of “Bumblebee”).
Some of you might disagree with me about “Aquaman.” If you do, that’s great. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d encourage you to check it out for yourself and see if I’m way off base.
In my mind, it was 20,000 leagues under the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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