At least it's pretty

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2019)

Aquaman
RATING: 3.2/5
This movie has no business being 2 hours and 22 minutes long for being as dumb as it is. I really don't get how Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse can have more characters and tell a more cohesive story in less than 2 hours, and look way better doing it, while Aquaman trips all over itself. People try to excuse the stupidity of this movie by saying it embraces it's comic book goofiness, except that's a lie. The movie is a mess and it never fully commits to itself. Some characters play it super straight, but their dialogue is so bad that it comes off as generic, over the top, and just dumb.
The movie gives you two villains, Ocean Master and Black Manta. The problem is that they're two of Aquaman's biggest villains and they could each hold their own movies as the main antagonist. Black Manta's intro is something that could have been very powerful and character building for both Aquaman and Black Manta, but the garbage dialogue deflates the entire scene. As the movie continues, Black Manta just fades into the background as Ocean Master takes center stage. However, it makes no sense because Black Manta gets the origin setup and Ocean Master doesn't. Mera and Aquaman have zero chemistry, so when they get this epic kiss, it's practically meaningless. And there's a lot of moments like that where something will be presented as a big deal, visually, but will have piss poor setup and thus have little to no meaning behind it. For example, they literally show you dinosaurs in the background of somewhere they go to, with no explanation whatsoever, and no reaction from the actors. It's just poorly thought out. This is Aquaman's first real venture into this world of Atlantis and the 7 Kingdoms, but you wouldn't know it by the way he acts. This whole movie is really about distraction. They hit you with something shiny and pretty to distract from the fact that the story doesn't add up, and the dialogue is downright stupid most of the time. Character development be damned. Jason Mamoa does his best, but there's only so much he can do with the charisma he has.
As for the positive stuff, the special effects are fantastic. There's one underwater scene that looks really cool, mainly because Wan gets to go all horror movie director with it, and it works to great effect. And then the story starts happening again, and you remember how dumb everything is. Smh.
Atlantis looks gorgeous, better than Wakanda in Black Panther, that's for sure. However, you're not there long enough to get any sense of what Atlantis is, or the people, which Aquaman constantly repeats he has no allegiance to. In fact, they just have Mera beat you over the head with exposition which you can take or leave with her generic acting. The action scenes are solid, nothing super memorable but solid. The big fight between armies at the end is all but forgettable, just a big CGI mess. Not as bad as Wonder Woman's 3rd Act though, Aquaman's still looked gorgeous, but despite the stakes, you just don't really care because you know how everything's gonna turn out. There's no mystery or anything because of how generic and predictable it is.
In the end, yeah it's a gorgeous film but it's story is borderline asinine and it's almost 2 and half hours long, which I will admit, you don't really feel because everything moves so fast. If the movie didn't look as good as it did, and move as fast as it does, this would be an average film, maybe even less. As is, the craftsmanship manages to drag it into above average territory, but just barely... note, this is nowhere near close to the Aquaman in the current comics, but you might have fun with this Aquaman movie, if you don't think about it too much.