Inclined to agree with Matt about
Aquaman in every particular.
Some of the surface sequences in the second act are fun (the Sicily chase, mainly), Momoa has occasional flashes of charm, and I did like some of the creature designs quite a lot, but if it wasn't for Amber Heard's décolletage I fear I would have fallen asleep more than once. It managed to be shockingly pedestrian and drawn-out while at the same time wildly overstuffed and more than a little crazy. Or to put it another way, despite excruciatingly long sequences of exposition, no single element ever gets time to be developed (example: in about 20 minutes we get through previously-unseen kingdoms of
merpeople, crab people, deep-ocean-trench people and pterodactyls at the Earth's core, without ever getting to know anything about any of them). The
de rigueur climactic battle that takes up much of the trailer is between King Orme and "The Kingdom of Brine", a bunch of creatures we were never even introduced to - but they went to the bother of hiring John Rhys Davies for the two lines that their single talking representative has. I won't even comment on Julie Andrews' bizarre contribution, or what the point of casting Dolph Lundgren was supposed to be. Wasteful, and frustrating.
There's absolutely no point picking holes in any of it, cos it's
all holes but but but:
Orme sends singulaly unimpressive tidal waves to crash into the world's coasts, specifically including Maine, but when we see the Currys' lighthouse there's no hint of damage - even the rickety landing stage is intact. Ditto all of Sicily. Speaking of Sicily, the map they find there points the way to the deepest ocean trench giving access to the hidden ocean at the Earth's core... in the Med?!? . Oh i need to stop, we'll be here all night
The de-ageing craze continues apace with what seem like rather gratuitous jobs on Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe, and a bizarrely unrecognisable shot at Temuera Morrison. Actually, Morrison isn't half bad in this.
On the positive front, my wife assures me that Jason Momoa remains a very fine figure of a man, and even on the rare occasions when he is wearing a shirt on it appears to be painted on. Take that as you will.
The real disappointment is that a film obviously designed to capitalise on Aquaman's surprisingly enjoyable turn in Justice League... doesn't. Everyone around him is so grim and serious all the time that the brief glimpses of that humour seem utterly out of place without other lighter characters to play off. Oh, and large chunks of the third act are lifted from
How To Train Your Dragon 2, but not in a good way.
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