Aquaman 2018
I knew Aquaman wasn’t supposed to be that great of a movie, but I am trying to wrap up my 2018 movies, so I went to the early matinee of this movie which is only $3.49. It starts with a lighthouse keeper and I was thinking that guy’s face looks all weird, guessing he had been digitally de-aged, but they did a terrible job. Nicole Kidman shows up too, but they did a better job with her. And as the movie wore on there were more and more just incredibly bad components or flat line readings that just screamed “This is a terrible movie!” Atlantis is protected by aquacannons. Really, aquacannons? Is everything aqua this and aqua that? Jason Momoa in the lead simply can’t act, even when he’s trying to be glib and get a one-liner in. They’re trying to make him seem like a regular guy and be funny, but they don’t really try that hard and it doesn’t work anyway. They are trying to get away from dark superheroes to fun ones, but they don’t know what fun is. In one fight scene he dramatically looks over his shoulder for the next guy to fight, a cheesy head shot, and then do it again! He meets Amber Heard and she can’t act either. They’re made for each other! I stuck around until the first big fight between Aquaman and his brother and then left, an hour into the movie, figuring I had seen half of it, but not realizing that there were still 90 minutes to go! So I missed most of the movie, but I saw enough to know this was a terrible mess of a movie. I haven’t seen anything so bad that I walked out in years (I’m usually pretty picky, but wanted to see this one since it was a surprise hit, ending up in the top 10 highest grossing movies of the year), so I feel like I have to give it an F. Metacritic’s score for this movie is 55, which isn’t awful, but generally not something I would see, though I saw A Wrinkle in Time which got a 53 and thought it was okay. And Bohemian Rhapsody got a 49 but was still nominated for Best Picture. This movie is much worse than that score.
Written: 27 Jan 2019