James Wan gets to direct Aquaman

If you all like Momoa so much, why don’t you all watch Stargate Atlantis? I think it’s on hulu.

What if I just watch Moana again? Is that close enough?

Well Moana is definitely a better movie.

Took the boy to see it today and we both liked it. Definitely the best DC movie, visually spectacular that would be a great showcase for 4K TVs.

I just watched this. Is a decent action movie with cool worldbuilding. The movie try and acomplised to be cool. It don’t try much else. It somewhat try to be a super hero movie, but is just silly and bad has a super hero movie. The movie sell me this guy, as Arthur, King of Atlantis. It don’t sell me aquaman.

I still think is dumb to have a turret system on the borders of your system aiming to the people inside. Is practically begging for somebody hacking it and using it to murder your own civilians. More because walls don’t defend people, people defend walls. Is a silly bad strategy. I don’t see the point on this very small particular worldbuilding.

Perhaps the scriptwriters were Republicans?

People, in general, need to play more Turret Defense games.

OK help me out here - is turret defense another way of saying tower defense? Or is that its own thing?

Ooh, is probably Tower defense, I got my terms mixed up, sorry.

Ineffective turrets and apparently generations of some of the worst traffic control ever.

Huh. I had got the impression this flopped, but it turns out it’s doing insane numbers for a DC film, especially overseas. Nearly $1bn worldwide now.

Saw this today. I’d rate it second best of the DC movies - I thought Wonder Woman was legit good, if not spectacular, whereas this was maybe not actually good but super cheesy and fun, which is the next best thing. Certainly a huge improvement over the dour and inane previous installments Zach Snyder directed. And full of lots of neat visuals and at least one genuinely neat action sequence (the village chase scene with the cross-cutting - sure, there wasn’t any real sense of danger to the protagonists but it’s well done otherwise).

Breaking out Toto’s “Africa” for the plane ride into, y’know, Africa was…sure a choice. :p

Oh, it’s better than that. It’s Pitbull covering Africa, sped up like 20% from the original.

Welp.

Saw it over the break when my sons were home from school. One of them saw it and said it was fun and pretty visuals and not to expect a lot. I went in with that and it was fun and had pretty visuals. I enjoyed it and would rate it 2nd behind WW of the newer DC movies (though that isnt saying much I know).

We saw it at the $5 Tuesday show so we are a bit less critical. Got free popcorn too. It was a fun two hours of action stuff with underwater visuals which was welcome. I’ll be happy to see the sequel for $5 and free popcorn too.

I had no intentions of watching this in the theater, but the got dragged along by some friends. Oof.

To its credit, I was never bored while watching the movie. Also, Jason Momoa did the best he could with the material given - and, by all accounts, he also seems to be a decent/affable fella. Patrick Wilson hammed it up as much as possible, but Orm overall still will end up as a rather forgettable villain.

I probably would have liked this somewhat better had it come out a few years ago. The hero-must-prove-to-be-a-worthy-leader thing has been covered by a number of recent comic-based movies, and you also couldn’t help but remember Black Panther when it comes to the general premise of the movie. (Of course, Aquaman was already well into production when BP came out; so this comes down to timing.) I appreciate that they went all in on the setting, but I think movies like Guardians 1&2 and Thor: Ragnarok did a better job at employing colorful goofiness. To me this felt more akin to Thor 1&2 in that I give them points for not being in NYC for a change, but never really cared much about Asgard nevertheless and found it too artificial. I liked some of the shots, e.g. them diving while being surrounded by the swarm of whatever their name was, or the big creature showing up at at the end–I’m too much of a kaiju fan to not get any gleeful excitement out of that. I also liked that Arthur didn’t have to fight to get the trident.

Most of the acting (except Momoa and, to a certain extent, Wilson) fell flat. No one felt invested, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of chemistry between Momoa and Amber Heard. (Well, I also was happy to see Temuera Morrison, but he wasn’t in this enough.)

The movie also suffers from the heroes-are-just-as-strong-as-they-need-to-be-for-a-scene syndrome which, to be fair, it has in common with many other comic-based movies. Except that it became jarringly notable in some of the set pieces. In Sicily, Arthur gets punched down a mountain, lands on the roof of a building and barely manages to hold onto it with one arm. The way it’s shot and acted (Arthur looks briefly down in a “Phew!” moment) implies that falling off that roof would have posed a significant danger to the character that jumps out of airplanes without a parachute, shrugs off getting punched through buildings and, just seconds ago, fell from a far bigger height.

Also, why did Mera and Arthur ride the boat through the storm instead of abandoning it and doing something that has been established they’re awesome at: swimming? Clearly, Arthur had recovered from his injuries at that point. And it didn’t seem like they did it for safety reasons because they seemed surprised and not really prepared when the creatures attacked.

Arthur’s mother not being dead was so heavily telegraphed that I’m not sure if the script wanted it to be a surprise twist or not. If the movie was more clever overall, I’d be inclined to believe the latter.

I’m not familiar with the source, but I’m guessing the Black Manta suit in the movie is in line with that? Too bad that it looks like something that has escaped the Power Rangers tv show. In general, many of the props and costumes looked like plastic rather than metal, e.g. armor and weapons. That highly advanced plasma gun which then got repurposed for the Black Manta suit felt like something coming out of a Fisher-Price line.

Mera’s ability to apparently change the density of water so that it can be used like a projectile comes out of nowhere and is also never employed again at any point later in the movie. The rest is mostly down to her being able to displace water in some form.

When Mera fought the soldiers with that glowing blade, that looks really videogame-y. Not in a particularly good way. Same for the location of the final confrontation between Artur and Orm, which felt like it could have been part of a Soul Calibur or Mortal Kombat game. In general, I was initially confused at to what the location was supposed to be since it’s not clearly established (or I missed that) and can only assume that it was a capsized Atlantian ship.

The way the action was directed was, in part, bland and annoying. I do think that some of the DC movies have neat close combat scenes that are done better than the shaky-cam-fast-cuts approach used in Russo-made Marvel movies. But Aquaman had some camera swoops and turns that felt just utterly gimmick-y and irritating, especially during the first action scene of the movie and the final battle.

The writing was partially cringy. “Call me Ocean Master!” Uh alright. Worse, it was being used before: “Call me Black Manta!” Do villains go to the same school of name introduction? When Mera tries to convince her father that Arthur is the real deal at the end, and one second later two characters show up á la “We can confirm that he has the trident!” … thank you, random Soldiers of Convenience! Where was Atlanna during the final battle? Hiding somewhere and hold back, not being involved in the battle and also waiting until her sons are done fighting each other? And there are many more examples of this.

In short: more entertaining to watch than BvS and Justice League, but not necessarily good.

There’s a scene where the helmet explodes and he says “I need to make it bigger”. I think the character (and the movie) would have been better of if he made a big helmet and some joke was made about size compensation etc. and he’d get made a smaller one.

That would have been brilliant!

Maybe the character is boring in the movie (haven’t seen), but I liked the Power Rangers villain look of Black Manta, presuming that’s the alien-looking costume in the trailer. I’d rather have that than “impressively realistic” bland that they pulled off with Steppenwolf.