Messy story, but not unredeemable.

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2019)

I really gave DC another chance after Wonder Woman, which I thought was a wonderful movie, but they have disappointed me again with Aquaman.
---MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD---
The story is extremely messy: there are a lot of things happening, but the movie never seems to focus on anything. Which is strange since they had more than enough time to do so: the movie's running time is rather long and, considering the story, should have been a lot shorter.
The action scenes were boring and seemed to be going on forever. Up until the last 10 minutes, Aquaman was just a guy who could punch REALLY hard and who occasionally used a trident to do nothing more than use it as a sword. It isn't until the last scene that he gains his extraodinary powers of being able to control the ocean and its inhabitants. Therefore, all the action before that moment was a snoozefest and also took forever. You just want them to go on with the story.
Granted, both Aquaman and his love interest, Mera, are very easy on the eye, which makes it (at least in my opinion) more entertaining to watch, but on that alone you can't build an entire movie.
The visuals of Atlantis weren't as beautiful as I expected them to be: I was kind of confused as to what it even really was. It just seemed like a big ruin (and a lava pit?) with a couple of high tech water ships floating above it. The sea did have some pretty lights in it though, but what the meaning of them was is still unclear to me..
They also tried to create a villain who had absolutely nothing to do with Atlantis, but merely had a personal vendetta with Aquaman. The story doesn't pay any attention to him until he comes in handy for some action scenes though. Why the audience should even consider him a threat is still completely lost on me, but maybe I'm missing something.
Overall, I did not enjoy this movie very much, but to be honest, I still have hope for the Aquaman character. Yes, this movie wasn't all that great, but they didn't ruin his story. Therefore, I think that if they would make a sequel, it could still be a good movie as long as they do things differently than they did in the first. I would consider to go see a sequel, so I guess the movie sort of did what it needed to do..