What I’m watching: a fatally water-logged superhero movie

Date: 12/26/2018

What I’m watching: a movie for which I had high hopes.

In theaters: Aquaman

I really wanted this movie to work, as I really liked the re-imagining of the long-time superhero into a bad ass as seen in “Justice League.”

Let’s face it comic book fans, Aquaman was always a bit of a puzzle when I was growing up. Besides being able to breathe underwater, his biggest ability was to talk to fish.

To be clear, the original Aquaman first appeared in 1941 in the comics and was a bit of a rip-off of Bill Everett’s Prince Namor, the Submariner who appeared in 1939. Namor was more interesting a choice for a star of a comic book, as he hated humans although he was half human himself.

Yes, too much detail perhaps for my non-fanboy readers, but my point is over the years the character is always at a bit of an also-ran. The Aquaman comics over the years have presented various versions of the character, but let’s face it, until Jason Momoa’s interpretation there wasn’t much non-comic book fan interest in the character.

In this film, Aquaman must stop his half-brother who is the king of one of seven kingdoms of Atlantics from starting a war on the surface dwellers, while at the same time he must avoid being killed by a human villain dubbing himself The Black Manta.

I’ve never been a fan of the double-teaming of many superhero movies, but it seems to be a standard narrative device.

The problem with this movie isn’t with Momoa who is completely engaging as the rightful king of Atlantis. It is with the terrible script and director James Wan.

The script combines two tricky kinds of stories: an origin tale and a quest story. Wan must set up the story giving us the details behind Aquaman’s origin and then keep us interested in a story that essentially alternates between fight scenes and chases.

Let’s just say he doesn’t do it very well.

The devil in telling these kinds of stories is in the details and Wan doesn’t get this. Let’s look at the opening sequence. Pirates board a Russian submarine hundreds of feet below the surface. They kill the crew with powerful assault weapons. Yes, they spray automatic gunfire all around the sub’s control room. I think most people would recognize this makes no damn sense.

Then once Aquaman turns up he kicks the pirate’s backsides pretty thoroughly and the head pirate tries to slice him open with a sword. He can pierce the skin. This is after we’ve seen that bullets can’t penetrate him.

So how the heck did Aquaman get all of those tattoos?

In the origin story, the decision was made to take the two actors playing the parents of the superhero – Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison – and use CGI technology to make them appear younger. The results are fairly frightening as both actors have a waxworks quality that detracts from the story.

The quest story begins with Aquaman and Princess Mera (Amber Heard) searching for the long-lost trident with powers that would confirm Aquaman as the king of Atlantis.

There is way too much plot, way too much backstory, way too much silly brother versus brother nonsense and all of these excesses bring this film down.

I’m sorry to report this fact as Momoa deserves much better.