How did YOU like Aquaman? Vote! (spoilers allowed)

[Lightning Rider]

Absolutely loved it. One of the best superhero movies I've ever seen and the only DCEU movie I actually enjoyed.



No idea what you're talking about. The story and characters were great. I'll post a more detailed description using your guidelines later.

No offense to Thor fans but I found Thor 1 pretty dull and unengaging. Aquaman was leaps and bounds ahead of it.

What was great about the characters? Momoa aside, who had any distinct personality? Orm was "bad guy", Vulko was "good guy's friend", Black Manta had literally 1 scene of characterization, as did Arthur's dad, and we know nothing about Mera's upbringing or personality, or her father's motivation. None of the relationships are explored. The relationship that movie rests on is Mera's and Arthur's and the dialogue there is terrible. Everyone else is a plot device.

[Lightning Rider]

The first Thor movie is, depending how inebriated I am, a terrible movie or one so bad it's good. But the whole thing is all over the top in all the worst way. Thor 1 is an actual example of a movie taking itself too seriously.

Aquaman's storyline is simple, almost rpg like, but it is its strenght because it allows the movie to move forward and establish a lot of universe building.

I didn't really see much Universe-building because a lot was touched on without being developed. I've also never heard Thor 1 as taking itself too seriously, most find the opposite.

[hareluyafan1]

What was great about the characters?

They were fun to watch.

Momoa aside, who had any distinct personality? Orm was "bad guy",

That's all you need from a villain.

Vulko was "good guy's friend",

He served his purpose just fine.

Black Manta had literally 1 scene of characterization,

And it was an awesome scene. It really made you feel for him even though he commits heinous acts.

as did Arthur's dad, and we know nothing about Mera's upbringing or personality, or her father's motivation.

We know all that from the comics.

The relationship that movie rests on is Mera's and Arthur's and the dialogue there is terrible.

It's a comic book movie, what else did you expect? Besides so what? Actions speak louder than words and the scenes they had were great. Like when Mera eats the flowers and Arthur eats them to so as not to embarrass her. Sweet and funny.

I'm still working on my guideline-specific reply. I'll try to have it up before too long.

[Jim Kelly]

If I had voted after the first time I saw it, I might have gone for Very good. But I recognized my first viewing wasn't under the most optimum conditions and I needed to see it again to really judge, which led me to vote Amazing.

Liked everything about the movie. The things that people pick on are all good to me.

The main characters

Even though I have an aversion to Nicole Kidman in movies--maybe due to EYES WIDE SHUT--her character bookends the movie and gives it a purpose. Also enjoyed Tom Curry and his romance with her--and his longing for her was an emotional touchstone.

Vulko was a nicer version of Metron in the movie in that he seems to play for both sides.

Mera is wonderful. And the whole scene in Sicily brought out the charm and the bad-assery in her character. I could believe that Arthur would be in love with her--who wouldn't? Also Roy Orbison "She's a Mystery to Me" (Mystery Girl) was everything I needed. That song!

Jason Mamoa is so Jason Mamoa that it probably isn't obvious that he's acting. But remember him as Khal Drogo in GAME OF THRONES--that's a completely different character and the kind he'd usually end up playing in most movies. Here he's the central character and he holds the movie together. Kudos to Zack Snyder for having the vision to cast him as Aquaman. I just wish Arthur had better theme music.

In a way the side characters have it a lot easier because they don't have to carry the movie just their parts in the story. Shout out to Julie Andrews for some great voice work. And Patrick Wilson gives a Shakespearean authority to his role. There are no real villains, because everyone has their reasons for what they do. They all believe themselves heroes.

The Storyline & The Overall Tone & The Visuals

The visuals are the storyline and the tone of the movie. There are exposition scenes, but they function as rest points--otherwise the movie would be too overwhelming. Just when it gets a bit too much to take it all in, you have these exposition scenes to settle down. But Wan is sure to bring each info dump to an end with a big explosive exclamation point, that then starts the next chapter of the story. Far from being a flaw, this kind of repetition gives the movie its tone.

The visuals are so astounding that on that strength alone the movie should be an A+. For other movies that are so beautifully realized, movie critics would be gurbling praise upon praise for such ground-breaking vison and this would be on everyone's ten best list for 2018. But it shows the snobbery of film criticism that they don't think this movie should be put in the same category as TITANIC or BLADE RUNNER 2049 or LORD OF THE RINGS.

Anyone who sees this movie and doesn't appreciate all that the movie offers is like some ungrateful child on Christmas morning who gets a pile of presents and cries about some toy that he didn't get.

[Lightning Rider]

They were fun to watch.

How though? What memorable lines and scenes between two characters watching made you have fun?

That's all you need from a villain.

That's all you need for a villain to be villainous, but a good villain has to have more going for them. Orm didn't.

He served his purpose just fine.

Characters are supposed to feel real, not just have narrative purpose. I have no idea who he is as a person or what drives him to do what he does.

And it was an awesome scene. It really made you feel for him even though he commits heinous acts.

It wasn't enough. He was committing heinous acts already. Who is Black Manta beyond a criminal with a dead dad? Again, characters need to feel like people and not narrative devices.

We know all that from the comics.

Lol what? The movie doesn't presuppose we've read the comics. This is a fairly ridiculous argument. The point of seeing comic book heroes on screen is to recreate the stories and themes that make them who they are. If you skip all that, what's the point? A movie needs to make clear why characters act in certain ways, otherwise nothing has any weight.

It's a comic book movie, what else did you expect?

Comic book movies don't have to have bad dialogue. Plenty don't. I expected something other than cliche platitudes because a lot of great comic book movies are written competently.

Besides so what? Actions speak louder than words and the scenes they had were great. Like when Mera eats the flowers and Arthur eats them to so as not to embarrass her. Sweet and funny.

That was cheesy as hell. But if that were the worst joke in the film I wouldn't mind it. But none of their interactions seem like earnest bonding.

It just sounds to me like you don't care about the movie being good, having a bunch of Aquaman characters in it fighting a bad guy is enough for you. And that's cool, but it doesn't make it a good movie. If your villain is generic, your dialogue is bad, your story is disjointed, and your characters are underdeveloped, you don't have a great film. Maybe a serviceable one.

[PyroTwilight]

I'm on the great level. Not "one of the best ever" but definitely up there. I still think my favorite of the DCEU is Dawn of Justice.

The main characters
As we go I think Aquaman and Mera sold themselves in their roles pretty well. Both however go through character growth a bit too suddenly. Mera seems to love the surface world way too quick after what was it, Sicily? Arthur's at least made sense. Seeing his dad could easily (and almost was) a casualty of the war Orm wanted to launch was a necessary kick in the pants.

The Villain(s)
Actually part of me loves Orm because despite the political attacks and backstabbing it's not hard to see why he might even now be a better "King" than Arthur. He doesn't want Atlanteans hurt but he's easily willing to hurt or kill a few if it means his people as a whole are safe. Which while obviously evil works in much the same way Zod's actions in Man of Steel were over the top but justifiable to himself.

Nereus kind of escapes scot free but that'll almost definitely be something played up in future movies.

Black Manta killed it even in the small amount of screen time he has. He's a perfect Nobody to Nightmare villain here.

The Storyline
A bit basic overall but definitely helped by the cast doing well in their roles. Nicole Kidman killed it in her parts as Atlanna. It was simple but still just complex enough to help launch future stories.

I do think the entire premise of Arthur being able to communicate with sea life being so important to being chosen should've been explored more.

The Overall Tone

Pretty awesome. Perfect for the fil they were trying to deliver and show us wonder and danger all in one. (Like the ocean itself)

The Visuals/The Action

Easily where the film excelled. Mera and Arthur themselves killed it and really sold the action. Manta as well was an amazing villain and his fight with Arthur was very kinetic and well choreographed. Let's be honest all the battles were. It's hard to even remember so much cgi was used for a film all under water.

Arthur riding Karethen in to battle against the battling armies alone may have made this movie.

[Lightning Rider]

But it shows the snobbery of film criticism that they don't think this movie should be put in the same category as TITANIC or BLADE RUNNER 2049 or LORD OF THE RINGS.

Anyone who sees this movie and doesn't appreciate all that the movie offers is like some ungrateful child on Christmas morning who gets a pile of presents and cries about some toy that he didn't get.

I couldn't disagree more. How could you mention this movie in the same breath as those other ones? There is so much more focused character work and better story-telling in those films.

[BatmanJones]

The short answer is I loved it. I couldn't have asked for anything more. I found it completely and totally fulfilling.

The TL;DR version since voting for the category saying it was "maybe best ever" opened my floodgates, follows below. Spoiler alert: 'It's TL. DR.'

I'd have liked to have just voted "AMAZING" without the "maybe best ever" because, for me, "best ever/best yet" belongs to Nolan's Dark Night and Superman: The Movie was the one that had the most impact on me.

Of all DC movies I have Aquaman among my favorites which include Superman: The Movie, Superman II, the Nolan Batman trilogy, and Wonder Woman, in order of release date.

My favorite (so far) was The Dark Knight, because of Ledger's Joker, Nolan's direction, the screenplay, and because it was my favorite Batman movie and the first one I found entirely satisfying. But I loved all of the Nolan Batman films. I was lukewarm on the Burton films, which I saw in their premieres while at college in NYC. It was impossible not to have very high expectations being at the premiere in NYC. There was so much hype and it was the first serious attempt at Batman in live action. But by that age, I wanted any Batman movie to be much more complex than Batman or even Batman Returns, which I prefer of the two, though I've grown to appreciate them much more with age.

For perspective's sake I guess it's obvious from the above that I'm old enough that I saw each of the above films in their original release and at the premiere which is my habit with DC superhero movies.

But that it isn't "maybe best ever" doesn't take anything away from how blown away I was by Aquaman. The RT score came out before opening night and I saw tepid-to-negative reviews on sites I often agree with so my expectations were somewhat lowered but it would have blown me away no matter what my expectations were. I really did find it amazing. The direction, the world-building, the fan service, the acting, just all of it.

I LOVE Aquaman as a character, going back to watching Super Friends as a small child, which got me into comics immediately. The comics made me a lover of DC characters for all my nearly 50 years, and I devoured then-current issues and also back-stories through any back issues I could afford and find at comic stores and what we used to call comic conventions. I love many comics from other publishers but DC Comics is the "never-ending story" I've been reading every week since childhood and will until I die. I don't have the same relationship with Marvel characters though I grew up reading them in almost equal measure. I just wasn't obsessed with them like I've pretty much always been with DC, with a small dip in the early-mid '90s when I sort of forgot to buy them for a while, being of the age I was then and focused on other things. Morrison's JLA brought me back and I never wandered away again.

Though my own life's work is in theatre, and though music is the art form that's most moving to me, that's what makes comics my favorite art form--the fact that I can get new chapters each and every week as the story keeps going and changing and evolving and becoming ever-richer over time as I change and [ideally] mature in my life.

And DC Comics grew up right around the same time I was growing up, with Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams runs on Batman and GL/GA coming out when I was a too-precocious kid because of stuff in my own early life and stuff like Watchmen and DKR coming out when I was in high school. If I were much, much older I might have outgrown comics in the '50s or '60s when they were still mostly for children and if I were much, much younger I might not have been able to appreciate modern comics as a child. So I'm just the right age to have been able to love contemporary DC Comics my entire life, through highs and lows in quality for each character according to creative teams.

So my main expectation regarding Aquaman, over my many years as a DC lifer, was that there would never BE an Aquaman film, let alone that it would be able to feature so much of the supporting cast I'd read about my whole life and do so in such an epic way.

I thought Wan's direction was brilliant and, as a fan, I deeply appreciated how much of Aquaman lore he was able to fit into it. I thought it was a perfect love letter to folks that have loved the featured characters for a long, long time.

Since I've talked about so many DC movies, I'll briefly address the two Snyder films we actually got to see. I appreciated that he was trying to make Superman more complex and do something new with the character, but while I didn't mind the killing of Zod I really minded watching Clark Kent watch his adoptive father die without doing anything about it. That's an example of how they just felt off to me even while I was expecting to love them. I don't dislike dark/serious superhero films; I typically prefer them. They just felt to me like the work of a great auteur trying too hard, which often happens with great artists; if they didn't dare, they wouldn't fail but they wouldn't succeed either. (I don't love EVERY Bob Dylan song; I find most of Knocked Out Loaded sort of boring though "Brownsville Girl" is maybe what I most loved to sing along to on youthful road trips.) I did like BvS better in the extended cut and I badly wish we could see his Justice League, even if I don't count his prior main-DCU films among my favorites. And I'd love to see a great live-action Lex Luthor in my lifetime. Even as a child, I found Gene Hackman's version too silly and Jesse Eisenberg's version was one of the more grating portrayals of a comic character to me. Both great actors being directed by great directors but I'm still waiting to see Lex Luthor on the big screen.

[Killerbee911]

I'm really confused. Does nobody care that the actual story and characters didn't offer much of anything? Thor 1 was tighter than this.

Nope , Aquaman will be judge way more harshly later on when DC has more good movies out in similar way some people went from calling Avengers 2 and Iron man 3 "good fun movies" to "Hey these movies are kinda bad". Right now things are being judge on Justice League, Batman V Superman Scale and once anything isn't those movies they are happy.

[The_Greatest_Username]

I really enjoyed the movie for what it was. There were some holes in the story and the script could have used a little more work. I’d give it an 8.5/10.

This was a definite step in the right direction for WB/DC. I’m hoping between this movie, Shazam, and WW84 that DC movies will start to be more fun.

[Lightning Rider]

Nope , Aquaman will be judge way more harshly later on when DC has more good movies out in similar way some people went from calling Avengers 2 and Iron man 3 "good fun movies" to "Hey these movies are kinda bad". Right now things are being judge on Justice League, Batman V Superman Scale and once anything isn't those movies they are happy.

You have a point there and are probably right, but I thought Justice League was better than this. Maybe it had too much attached to it so the flaws were highlighted.

[C_Miller]

I'm somewhere between very good and alright. I really enjoyed it, but I don't think I'd call the movie very good by any stretch. And alright, kind of makes it sound like I didn't enjoy it as much as I did. However, while I did enjoy it, it's a very flawed film and DC is walking a tightrope continuing to make flawed films like this.

The characters are paper thin, but look cool. Which, seems to be the from the Zack Snyder school of filmmaking. Jason Momoa is not the strongest actor, but he's also not really asked to do a whole lot besides act like a badass, which he does very well. Though, like someone said above, it does start to grate after a while. I like Jason Momoa, but I still feel like his casting is a bit too try hard to make Aquaman into a serious character. Amber Heard looks like she stepped right off the comic page. She's gorgeous, seems powerful, and while I know it's not her's, hair that red only exists in comic books. But her character is somewhat flat and I don't really buy the chemistry. The script was asking them to kiss at the end, not the actual movie.

I enjoyed the people around them, Willem Defoe was a welcome addition and Patrick Wilson did a great job selling the film's conflict. But, my favorite part of the movie was the stuff between Arthur's mother and father. DC struggles with adding in the human moments, but these scenes were great and really helped ground the movie in a way that it would not have been if left out. But as a whole storywise, I think the movie just tried to do too much. Every time there was a second to breathe, something exploded leading to the next fight scene, which didn't help the movie feel very human and it lead to things feeling very disjointed. I wasn't able to connect to Arthur and Mera's story because the movie was too busy going from one set piece to the next. The movie felt both overlong and too short. I think a big problem with comic book movies is that they can sometimes intentionally leave the more interesting things in the sequel, which you cannot say that they did in this movie, but it felt too stuffed and all of the storylines suffered for it. My wife who is less into comics also had trouble following it in parts because they couldn't spend too much time on the lore.

Like I said, I had a good time with the movie, but the flaws really stood out. I want these movies to be successful and it looks like Aquaman will be, but I think they need to spend more time focusing on the story and human elements and less on cool visuals. But you can do both.

[CRaymond]

As I said on Facebook last night:

Aquaman is every movie you love, but dumb, fun, and underwater!

It could've used more jokes and gnarly guitar riffs though.

[Castling]

I'm really confused. Does nobody care that the actual story and characters didn't offer much of anything? Thor 1 was tighter than this.

I thought the characters and story were fine. It's a jam packed rock and roll experience featuring the first biracial superhero in the genre. I had a blast with Aquaman.

I'm not really sure where you're trying to lead us. If you didn't like it, fine. But why try convince others they didnt really like it either ?

[babybats]

I saw the movie last night for Christmas and it was just okay. For the DCEU it was good, but I wouldn't want to see it again. Spoiler warning!

The main characters

I went in excited to see Momoa's Aquaman, and left it kind of hating him. He's just kind of a meathead stereotype throughout and doesn't seem to have learned any lessons by the end of the film. In the Black Manta fight, I found myself rooting for Black Manta. Mera's motivation makes no sense. She hates the surface, but also will betray her people to save it? She wants to stop the war from happening to save Atlantean lives, but then helps Arthur massacre the Atlantean army at the end? I did enjoy some of Mera's scenes, though. Her action sequences and depiction of her powers was cool. And it's always fun watching Jason Momoa throw down.

The Villain(s)

Black Manta was definitely a stronger villain than Oceanmaster, so I have no idea why he shows up for two fights and is never seen again. Oceanmaster was okay. Pretty forgettable and cliche, though that scene with the sub was cool.

The Storyline

I get why others in this thread have mentioned MCU Thor, because this was basically that but with even more CGI. Unfortunately, Thor did it better. I didn't really believe Arthur was worthy of the trident when he picked it up, and the conflict between the brothers wasn't very interesting. The most impactful and interesting story moments for me were definitely the Atlanna and Black Manta stuff, so the C plots.

The writing was very cliche and cringey at times (the flashback where Arthur learns about his mom's death was so bad I actually groaned out loud), there's a lot of telling-not-showing, and the whole film has way too much going on. I'd have cut out Black Manta completely (despite him being one of my favorite parts) because his story was completely unrelated to the rest of the film and it would've helped to streamline the story. The pacing of the movie was also pretty bad, intercut with flashbacks and exposition at random points, no build up to pivotal moments, throwing in new characters with no introduction, etc.

The Overall Tone

A huge step in the right direction for the DCEU. And probably why I still enjoyed the movie despite thinking it's pretty badly made. Because it's fun. It's a fun time with special effects and cool action sequences. Superheroes can be fun, and I'm glad the WB is embracing that.

The Visuals

It's a mixed bag for me. There were a lot of times the vfx saved the movie for me. Like the moment in the boat when I was like "why the hell are they taking a boat when they could swim this is so stupid"--but suddenly the trench monsters appear and there's that GORGEOUS scene with the flare in the water. UGH. That was so good. Props to the concept artist who thought of that. The creature design in this was also fantastic.

On the OTHER hand...I did not like most of the underwater scenes. They didn't look like they were underwater at all, they just looked like very dry actors in front of a green screen with cgi hair effects and a color filter thrown on top. I normally don't mind when cgi doesn't look realistic, as long as it's creative and interesting, but this was really distracting. Costumes were mostly good, but I found Atlanna's look distracting in the reunion scene. Here's this big emotional moment, and you got Arthur's mom over here looking like a Power Rangers villain.

The Action

It was good. Mera's waterbending made me wish we'd had a good ATLA movie. There were a lot of bizarre slow mo shots of the fodder villains that made it seem like they were meant to be important, so that was weird...but otherwise everything was great.

I'd give it a solid C+