A Visual Marvel

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2019)

This film is worth watching for the remarkable production design alone. It is not an easy feat to make a film where half of the action takes place underwater, but here Aquaman excels. Gorgeous visuals, incredible underwater battle sequences, and well-choreographed fights make this film impossible to look away from.
That said, the plot is fairly basic. Reluctant hero, doomed mentor, unexpected love interest, bad guy who wants to take over the world, etc. Aquaman is surprisingly likable, much different from his closed-off Justice League persona, but he's not particularly clever. He kind of just goes with the flow, punching bad guys as he goes. There are various attempts at injecting humor into the script, but its not very smart - especially compared with the witty comic brilliance of the recent Deadpool, Guardians and Ant-Man films.
One aspect of the film that was done surprisingly well was Black Manta's origin story. Not that he has much competition, but he's the best DCEU villain we've met thus far.