Spoilers Aquaman - Grading and Discussion

[LJones41]

My only real problem with the film was James Wan's direction. I thought it was a bit messy, especially in the film's final action scene.

I have read some comments about the similarities between the character of Arthur Curry aka Aquaman and characters like King T’Challa aka Black Panther and Thor. Yet, no one, as far as I know, had brought up the following contrast.

In “Thor” and “Black Panther”, the two protagonists are insiders and part of their worlds’ status quo. But in “Aquaman”, the protagonist is an outsider. In fact, he is blatantly labeled as a half-breed. I just find it odd that Aquaman has more in common with two MCU villains - Erik Stevens aka Killmonger and Loki - than he does with Black Panther and Thor.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

My only real problem with the film was James Wan's direction. I thought it was a bit messy, especially in the film's final action scene.

I have read some comments about the similarities between the character of Arthur Curry aka Aquaman and characters like King T’Challa aka Black Panther and Thor. Yet, no one, as far as I know, had brought up the following contrast.

In “Thor” and “Black Panther”, the two protagonists are insiders and part of their worlds’ status quo. But in “Aquaman”, the protagonist is an outsider. In fact, he is blatantly labeled as a half-breed. I just find it odd that Aquaman has more in common with two MCU villains - Erik Stevens aka Killmonger and Loki - than he does with Black Panther and Thor.

Only in the sense of their place on the family tree.
As far as virtues go, he was right at home with Thor.
The two of them would love getting an ale or two together.
Though he falls into the category of reluctant hero and there he has the most in common with Ant-Man if you must compare him to MCU heroes.

As far as JL cameos go, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman and or Bruce Wayne could have briefly appeared or at least been mentioned as providing desaster relief after the attack on the ships and shores.

 

[JD]

There were places to fit the other JL members in movie if they wanted, but I can't blame them from just leaving them out so the focus could be 100% on Aquaman.

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

Considering that women are allowed in the Atlantean army in the video game DC Universe Online, that is strange, but also considering how much of a budget buster that would've been, I can see why the filmmakers didn't include females as soldiers, and I don't see it as a big deal.

Hi! Hmm. I couldn't always tell the gender of the background people, but I thought that some might have been females. But what about the mounts? They could have females amongst them!

 

[LJones41]

The two of them would love getting an ale or two together. Though he falls into the category of reluctant hero and there he has the most in common with Ant-Man if you must compare him to MCU heroes.

I don't know if I would compare Aquaman with Ant-Man. And although I could see Aquaman sharing an ale with Thor, he still struck me as more of an outsider . . . like Loki and Erik Killmonger.

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

There was a mid-credits scene, and that's good enough for me. Honestly, I prefer that, so I don't have to sit all of the credits, which can be a challenge since my bladder is usually about to explode by the time we hit the end of a 2 hour+ movie.
I was fine with that since there really wasn't anywhere where they would have been needed.
I loved it, it's at least tied with Wonder Woman, if not a little bit ahead of it.
The visuals for Atlantis were amazing, if this doesn't at least get nominated for visual effects and/or production design at some of the next awards then I'll be very disappointed.
The whole cast was great, a lot of the stuff in this could have ended up being absolutely ridiculous, but the cast managed to keep things from getting to far over the top. Jason Momoa and Amber Heard both were a lot of fun as the two main leads. Patrick Wilson and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II did a good job as the villains. I was a bit surprised how sympathetic they ended up making Black Manta.
It some great action scenes, with the big battle at the end and the fight in Sicily as the big standouts.
The story was pretty cool too, the way Arthur was drawn into Atlantis made sense, and it gave us a nice introduction to all of the different kingdoms.
A solid A+ for me.

Howdy, JD! I almost always sit through the credits, because I am actually trying to read them, even if I have seen the movie before. But with age comes those bodily function distractions. Sigh. It also doesn't help that I can fall asleep randomly, but sometimes with one eye open. Having memories of the actual movie plus dream memories combining, causes confusion. So a review is in order then. At home, if the credits are readable, I pause them to take my time reading them.

But anyway....

As for the bit about cameos, I was thinking of the news reports and a stinger at the end of the credits, at least. Not being at home, I couldn't pause the news to read whatever words are shown in them, or peer at the images for clues and/or those so-called, "Easter Eggs".

I agree with you, by the way! I love it! (My standard point deductions usually involve the killing of animals, depiction of drug use, including Alcohol & Tobacco, bad grammar used as Slanguage, and so on and so forth. But sometimes the movie earns points back for me anyway, because of other qualities.)

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

Only in the sense of their place on the family tree.
As far as virtues go, he was right at home with Thor.
The two of them would love getting an ale or two together.
Though he falls into the category of reluctant hero and there he has the most in common with Ant-Man if you must compare him to MCU heroes.

As far as JL cameos go, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman and or Bruce Wayne could have briefly appeared or at least been mentioned as providing desaster relief after the attack on the ships and shores.

Greetings! Hmm. Yes! That's what I was looking for too in the news reports. (By the way, as one who loves ships, if I were viewing at home, I would be distracted with wanting to pause just long enough to identify each ship. But since I could at least tell that hull numbers weren't visible, they probably did not want to offend real ship crews, et cetera.)

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

There were places to fit the other JL members in movie if they wanted, but I can't blame them from just leaving them out so the focus could be 100% on Aquaman.

Hey! Well, there's always product placement. Not just obvious stuff like toys and clothing, but advertisements and displays. Like in that one "Iron-Man" movie, that had Happy (his name makes me think of the dog in, "Seventh Heaven"!), trying to be sneaky while standing next to a display of eye-shades. It had pictures of Jane Lynch, Johnny Depp, among others.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Someone online caught this in the mid credit tease. It’s real the director commented on it on Twitter. I never noticed it but there are so many newspapers in that scene. I will have to look on 3rd viewing.

 

[stj]

Best parts: Octopus drumming, the bar fight, the scoreboard comparing the two contestants.

Jason Momoa was very pleasant company. Amber Heard was like a less vivacious Scarlet Johansson, but the wig was the key to her role anyhow.

The origin story should have been cut, the pirate should have been cut. Nicole Kidman with Patrick Wilson humanized Orm after long stretches of robotic villainy, but otherwise Atlanna was unnecessary.

The score was shameless in doing the heavy lifting for the movie.

In the end, you can either put up with rayguns and swords at the same time, or you can't. I'm not proud but I took it for two hours.

Voted B-

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

Someone online caught this in the mid credit tease. It’s real the director commented on it on Twitter. I never noticed it but there are so many newspapers in that scene. I will have to look on 3rd viewing.

Thanks! But how did they get such a picture anyway, I wonder.

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

Best parts: Octopus drumming, the bar fight, the scoreboard comparing the two contestants.

Jason Momoa was very pleasant company. Amber Heard was like a less vivacious Scarlet Johansson, but the wig was the key to her role anyhow.

The origin story should have been cut, the pirate should have been cut. Nicole Kidman with Patrick Wilson humanized Orm after long stretches of robotic villainy, but otherwise Atlanna was unnecessary.

The score was shameless in doing the heavy lifting for the movie.

In the end, you can either put up with rayguns and swords at the same time, or you can't. I'm not proud but I took it for two hours.

Voted B-

Hello! Hmm.
I wanted to read that scoreboard data, but it wasn't on screen long enough for me to read it all.

I'm not sure if I had read about or heard about Amber, before this movie. Her surname does not help me. Host/Hostess: "Amber Heard!"
Me: "What did she hear?! They never say!"

A wig? Not a dye-job?

The music? Other than the songs, I think that there must have been some instrumental music too. Hopefully, I'll notice it better next time. Oh! Yes, when he lifted the Russians' submarine, I noticed some of that music then. I liked it!

But anyway, I disagree about the cut suggestions. The movie was still fast-paced enough for me.

Huh? Do you mean that each side used both, as opposed to it being a situation in which one side has melee weapons only, while the other has guns only? Klingons use both. Real militaries have both strategic and tactical weaponry. So why not fictional ones?

Why are you not proud?

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

Oh yeah! I forgot. Ahem. Okay, I understand the "returning" of the garbage/trash to us, as we shouldn't pollute. But as for the warships, wouldn't "expell" be the better term to use in that political context? It was not like they returned warships that we lost and they found. Or that they checked them from a library and then returned them.

Now about that waste! Huh? The Atlanteans "and the rest", had to do the cleaning?! I thought that in a world with a Superman, it was once told, that he would give the planet a super cleaning, and then make sure we mere mortals, avoided being messy from then on, rather than abuse his services by taking him for granted. Sure, people thought that he was dead for awhile. But during that time, that much pollution would occur again?!

As for the undersea kingdoms, why did they allow it to happen at all? As we saw, they kept shipwrecks for their salvage value. Perhaps even for decor and as artificial reefs. But, do they not have Recycling? If so, why not keep it all and recycle it, rather than return it for free? (Yes, it was a political statement, but so would a citation for littering and pollution.)

 

[dahj]

Flashpoint canceled?!?

 

[stj]

Huh? Do you mean that each side used both, as opposed to it being a situation in which one side has melee weapons only, while the other has guns only? Klingons use both. Real militaries have both strategic and tactical weaponry. So why not fictional ones?

Why are you not proud?

It's hard to recognize rhetorical questions online.

Swords and tridents are not melee weapons. Tasers and batons are. No soldiers use swords and spears in battle. Klingons are a good example of the problem. But even if you could rationalize the desire to use hand weapons in space, lest the life support get damaged, you have an even worse situation in water: No projectile can maintain speed and every ray should boil the water. Nets should be the melee weapons underwater.

Not proud because, comic book movie, and I'm obviously not a sophisticated movie watcher.

 

[Leo Star Dragon 1]

It's hard to recognize rhetorical questions online.

Swords and tridents are not melee weapons. Tasers and batons are. No soldiers use swords and spears in battle. Klingons are a good example of the problem. But even if you could rationalize the desire to use hand weapons in space, lest the life support get damaged, you have an even worse situation in water: No projectile can maintain speed and every ray should boil the water. Nets should be the melee weapons underwater.

Not proud because, comic book movie, and I'm obviously not a sophisticated movie watcher.

Hello! Thanks for your reply.
Hmm. I was thinking of the classifications used in RPGs. (I have several, including "DC Heroes", "Doctor Who", & "Star Trek".)

I've noticed that even spear guns have a limited range because of the friction that water has, or rather the resistance. Note though that SEALS can fire their rifles at you, whilst underwater, but the range is shorter, because of the same problem.

As for rayguns, I thought that they did cause the water that they passed through to boil/fizzle, or did I fill that in?

Hey, so what if it is of that genre?! There isn't a rule against you being proud! (As a teen, I was in the "AFI".)

Oh, breakfast! Bye for now!

 

[JD]

It's hard to recognize rhetorical questions online.

Swords and tridents are not melee weapons. Tasers and batons are. No soldiers use swords and spears in battle. Klingons are a good example of the problem. But even if you could rationalize the desire to use hand weapons in space, lest the life support get damaged, you have an even worse situation in water: No projectile can maintain speed and every ray should boil the water. Nets should be the melee weapons underwater.

Not proud because, comic book movie, and I'm obviously not a sophisticated movie watcher.

They're a super high tech underwater kingdom, so I'm pretty sure they could find a way for their ray guns to work underwater.
And if the problem with sword and tridents underwater is resistance and weight, they are super strong with bodies evolved to handle going all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.

 

[JD]

Jason Momoa will be voicing the LEGO version of his Aquaman in The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part.

 

[McDuck]

Really enjoyed Aquaman! t was definitely the most fun DC movie... not a hard feat considering what's come before it, mind.

The world building was great, I actually believed there was this whole world beneath the waves. And I want to see more. Aquaman's armour was pretty spectacular. Who thought orange and green would look so awesome? I did not.

Black Manta seemed to pointless and wasted this time around. I guess we have to wait til Aquaman 2.0.

 

[stj]

They're a super high tech underwater kingdom, so I'm pretty sure they could find a way for their ray guns to work underwater.
And if the problem with sword and tridents underwater is resistance and weight, they are super strong with bodies evolved to handle going all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.

The way ray guns work underwater is to be self-propelled projectiles. The boiling water doesn't disappear when the ray vanishes. You wouldn't say super high tech figure out a way for ovens to boil water that don't scald when the cook fishes something out of the pot.

Not one creature of the undersea abyss is superstrong to resist the pressure of the ocean. Internal pressure equals the external pressure. An open balloon can sink to the bottom of the Marianas trench without using any tensile strength at all. To be sure, keeping lungs full of air at sea level atmospheric pressure from collapsing would require superstrength. But the Atlanteans breathe water.

If these things don't come to mind the moment you see the screen, no doubt it is easier to willingly suspend disbelief. But if such thoughts do force themselves during the movie, long before leaving the theater, they can't be erased at will.