"Worlds of DC" has discovered color!

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2018)

Aquaman has loads of spectacle and loads of color -- all the way down to Mera's ultra-red hair. In that one way it's the polar opposite of the dark and glum Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad. Director James Wan has decided to throw the kitchen sink at us, with giant armored sharks, supergiant weaponized crabs, fleets of manta rays, armies of mermen, magic tridents, and even wilder fantasy flights of imagination. What makes this work, which it pretty much does, is that it has the big advantage of being new: we haven't seen this before, by comparison with any other action-driven movies that are usually on the "surface world", as the Atlanteans refer to it.
But as writer Ursula LeGuin once said, if the only thing happening is unrelenting physical action then it's a sure sign that there is no story being told. And that's where Aquaman teeters on the edge. It's got a storyline, which is actually quite simple and barely adequate to support all the action, but in a sense the real center of interest is the spectacle itself largely because of its new and unfamiliar setting. The overall feeling I got was that I was watching some kind of stylistic combination of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pacific Rim, Star Wars, and King Arthur all piled together. My (adult) daughter says it's like a cross between Tron and Little Mermaid.
About the acting: Jason Momoa is -- OK. Maybe a promise for better things to come. He and all the rest suffer from having to deliver a pretty simplistic script with stereotype dialog. I was generally pleased with Amber Heard as Mera; she got more to do than I was expecting and they gave her a distinctive water-control superpower that was fun to see and came in handy at certain points. Patrick Wilson and Willem Dafoe stood clearly above all the rest, however, just for their quality of diction; i.e. they didn't mumble. Why has slurring your words become a 'style'?? As a last comment, I thought Rupert Gregson-Williams' musical score was kind of a disappointment. It was workmanlike and did the job needed for an epic like this (essentially telling us how to feel at every moment) but it was nowhere near the standout work he did for Wonder Woman.
Bottom line is that you'll get your money's worth for an evening's entertainment. For Worlds of DC it's a step up in production values. Now let's just add some serious storytelling to go with it.