(Edited for a little brevity. Original post was a dissertation)

I saw this for free last night. It was some of the dumbest **** I'd ever seen. But the dumb parts were the best parts, by far, and I don't know if that's intentional. It's easy to say "yes, that's the tone they were going for," but I'm not convinced.

The only James Wan movie I've seen is Furious 7, and I think it's pretty strong. It's also kinda weird. It opens with a strong ~20-minutes where Jason Statham is chasing the gang, and then it takes a sharp left-turn when government agents show up and the movie abruptly becomes about finding Ramsey and stopping God's Eye. There's also some silly **** like Diesel stomping concrete to collapse a parking garage.

So I don't know if James Wan has that self-aware, intentionally hokey style that Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness had, or if he goes too far over the top, intending for something to be cool, and it only gets a pass because the rest of the film is (usually) working.

So, Aquaman. Yes, it's cheesy. But I just don't know when that was intentional. Surely some was - like the drumming octopus - but some of it was probably meant to be cool and came off as super lame, like when Kid Arthur's eyes glow gold at the bullies at the Aquarium.

I thought the humor was bad overall. The banter between Arthur and Mera was very weak. Cookie cutter stuff. Or lines like swamp butt. I laughed 1 or 2 times when I was supposed to, and probably 20+ times when I probably wasn't. So overall the movie was funny, even though almost all the jokes sucked.

Here are some examples of those unintentional laughs. Did they stumble onto a laugh by accident, or was this somehow self-aware brilliance?

- "Where I come from, the ocean wipes your tears away"
- Teen Arthur diving through the air with dolphins. Terrible.
- There are 3 guitar peels in the submarine scene.
- I didn't think Black Manta was very good at all. He seemed to take himself SUPER seriously, but even when he had a joke or two - like the "I'm going to need a bigger helmet" - it was delivered pretty poorly.
- Not to mention, he has a heart-to-heart with his father seconds after stabbing a dude to death.
- When Arthur defeats him in Sicily, Manta hits about 9 rocks on the way down. It's quite funny.
- Three separate instances of "then I will have the title of....... OCEAN MASTER..."
- I also laughed at the idea that TV stations are suddenly covering pirate news.
- During Volko's history lesson, he has some throwaway line about how "we uncovered the secret to unlimited technology" before their ambition caused the fall of Atlantis. Unlimited technology! I know Black Panther had a lot of "just go with it" technology, but that tech was also explained in the opening sequence and is a major part of the movie. But this is just... we discovered unlimited technology.
- The part where Arthur wakes up on the boat, and the tune that's being played is just Mera playing a recorder or something.
- Holy ****, Nicole Kidman's crab costume.
- The moment when Arthur wields the trident and the camera zooms into his eye for a 20-second montage of kelp and whales
- By far the best part of the movie was the crab kingdom. The king has a voice that's straight out of Labyrinth. But all the actors treat it as though it's perfectly fine, there's nothing absurd about this talking crab man.
- Very low-energy speech at the end. I'd heard it said that the actor must have performed it on a green screen, thinking maybe it was for about 5-10 people instead of ~500.

All that, and the octopus playing the drums isn't even in the top 25 dumbest moments in the film. You could convince me that 5, maybe 10 of those are intentional, but I'm not buying that it was 100% planned for comedy.

So I think I'd be disappointed if this was an MCU film, because it was fun in spite of itself. But, personally, it was the most enjoyable DCEU viewing experience by far. I'd rather a movie be so-dumb-it's-fun, like Aquaman, than so-serious-it's-dumb, like BvS.

"Like The Room, if it had incredible cinematography."

Jesus Christ.

rhutton125 said:

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I know... I really word-vomited there. But how else is one supposed to react when a woman shows up in a crab outfit and it's not a joke?!

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i didn't read any of that but...

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Just passed Man of Steel domestic.

Hello there said:

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Passed TDKR to become DC's highest grossing movie of all time.

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dave94 said:

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Hello there said:

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Passed TDKR to become DC's highest grossing movie of all time.

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That's a travesty. I can't contemplate why this made so much money overseas. Without that, this isn't sniffing the top of the DCEU list.

I had a good time watching this movie, but it was pretty damn vapid. When this hits HBO, sure I'll watch it here and there, just like Justice League. But damn, this isn't one of those movies that we're talking about in 5 years as anything deserving of revisiting.

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Well ok tap the brakes - that's Worldwide which I generally never use to measure a movie. WW audiences are bizarre really - just look at the F&F franchise and Transformers for that matter. Or say.....Avatar.

And it has barely passed those WW - given the adjusted ticket price compared to 2008 and 2012 it's probably not surpassed them.


On raw domestic Aquaman is not close to TDK or TDKR

TDK $533M
TDKR $448M
WW $412M
BvS $330M
SS $325M
Aquaman $316M

Wan being eyed for the sequel, but hopefully with a better script

http://deadline.com/2019/01/aquaman-sequel-james-wan-plan-jason-momoa-dc-warner-bros-1202540137/

AgfromHOU said:

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But it is, so....

Also, Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3 aren't good movies and aren't bolded. I would argue Aquaman is better than both.

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