Aquaman Accomplishes to be a Good Entry to the DCEU

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2018)

I was apprehensive at first when I purchased tickets a month ago from the Amazon Prime Early Screening promotion. If you're asking why, you haven't seen the other films, or you maybe asking why the hell would I bother with the DC films at this point?
Allow me to elaborate: Man of Steel (2013) set the precident for what would become the DC Extended Universe. I liked it for what it was, perhaps not as much as I enjoyed the Superman (1978) epic-but it's no mention that it surpassed the films proceeding it.
Then the highly anticipated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) hit the cinemas. I was part of that geeked crowd-until that somewhat jarring moment when Jimmy Olson was killed and that was only the tip of iceberg of what ensued the next two hours. I hated Batman v Superman-for doing something things right, specifically with Batman, but having such a chaotic storyline that had a layer of subplots in order to expand the story only to weight it down. But that's just a front, because I was fuming that Superman was killed-in his second film.
We are NOT going to talk about Sucide Squad (2016) beyond the fact that Margot Robbie was the best thing in it.
Then Wonder Woman (2017) came-reassuring me that there was hope for the franchise and finally gave us a superhero movie that fit the sensibilities of it's source material. So when Justice League (2017) was nearing, I thought there could be some hope. Justice League was just as well a "mixed bag", but not exactly the same mixture as Batman v Superman. It seemed that it's tone was everywhere-and I can go on all day about it.
Aquaman (2018), however, is in fact a good film. It's performances were strong, especially Yahya Abdul's-Mateen II's Black Manta and Patrick Wilson's Ocean Master. Momoa makes Aquaman his own, and even sort of gives a "Jack Burton" vibe to his performance. Amber Heard is also pretty good, but the chemistry between the two seemed at moments forced, albeit brief. I have always been a fan of the Aquaman comics growing up. Granted, as good of a film this was, it had flaws-particularly with it's choice in songs for certain scenes. The cinematic score was solid, but the soundtrack for this film derailed the film's momentum at some points, and truth be told, if you're going to use a cover of a Toto song, just use Toto. The film also suffers from too much exposition in it's story-but it suffers like a a two-day cold, well, more like a ten minute cold in Aquaman's case. But the film gets things right with everything else. What was the most entrancing was the extravagant cinematography (yes, there is some heavy handed CGI that is utilized-but it doesn't hurt the film), and the scope of Atlantis and it's lore are well established. James Wan once again makes a good film, and it's refreshing to see a DC hero that we as an audience never seen before attempted on the screen (nor television for that matter) come to life, and handled well.
But give this film a chance, because it is in fact good. Hopefully this well set the scene for the DCEU in the near future, but I've been fooled before.,,