Aquaman (2018)

Sea-dwelling hero Aquaman has long been the butt of many a joke but with the DC franchise expanding and Jason Mamoa almost selling the character last year, could his first solo outing hush the laughter?

Born to Thomas Curry, an Earth-living lighthouse keeper and washed up Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), the Queen of Atlantis, is Arthur (Jason Momoa), a boy who discovers he can communicate with fish and after years of training he hones his watery powers. Under the seas, Orm (Patrick Wilson) is planning to war against the surface world for all the devastation they’ve caused him and his kind. Arthur is aided by Mera (Amber Heard) who helps him face who he is and who he could be if he returns to Atlantis to stop Orm.

Horror orchestrator James Wan has kick-started ‘Saw’ conjured up a franchise in ‘The Conjuring’, with one speedy blockbuster behind him, which was ‘Furious 7’, so it was definitely interesting to see if the genre director had it in him to make a great addition in the comic book movie world. Safely, it can be said that Wan does do a brilliant job with this sixth instalment in the DCEU. It seems that all the movies featuring just one of the main heroes work well but their universe falls apart when they unite.

What works for ‘Aquaman’ are the impressively epic visuals, the rest of the universe feels way too moody and gritty and gets lost by murky morals whereas this has the scope to explore great new places and Wan truly dives into the expedition of this characters home, with Don Burgess handling vivid and magnificent cinematography, it’s definitely the most colourful DC release yet.

In terms of story, the film doesn’t get to the best of starts. It’s sorely missing impact and the mix of Curry’s origin and the birth of another villain are fairly bog standard, uninteresting plots to follow. Gladly, once we and Aquaman enter the Kingdom of Atlantis the film gets better and more confident in its storytelling and style. Yes, there are still issues with the overall length of the movie, chunks of the plot are way predictable and cringey snippets of dialogue are more soaked through the film than it’s heavy CGI but the whole feature is just foolish fun.

It’s only really in the scenes set upon land that dampen the movie. A vengeful adversary who seems to be getting set up for more come the end of the film is never dark, exciting or captivating enough to face the hulking force of this half-breed hero. Again, the DC figures are so immense and indestructible that any clash of characters is losing a necessary jolt of immersion because you just sit back and know Aquaman will be fine. There is one great land-based clash though, Sicily is the location for this certain showdown and it’s mightily enjoyable to watch.

Momoa is the perfect Aquaman and fares much better with his blend of indifference, humour and growing heroism than he did in the weak ‘Justice League’. This new film has plenty of bad ass imagery and not many other actors could pull of the shot of riding an armoured seahorse, clad in yellow and green with his golden trident firmly in hand. Amber Heard is as fiery as the red hair which she rocks. Princess Mera is a strong and resourceful mistress of controlling water and even if she becomes the obvious and needless love interest, Heard holds her own in the number of fight scenes she’s part of. A great reason why the movie improves once immersed into Atlantis is because we see the plans and calculations of Orm, fantastically played by Wilson throughout the feature.

James Wan masters the ocean and gives the DCEU a welcome step in the right direction, so even if ‘Wonder Woman’ still reigns supreme, this comic book flick is entertaining and makes a substantial splash as worthy second place.

6.5/10

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

The MCU is into the second half of it’s tenth year and now comes their 20th feature film; a sequel to the visually jokey ‘Ant-Man’. After the bombastic success of Infinity War, it was going to be interesting to see how this movie would play out and though the stakes are much lower and the film is quite a so-so affair, it’s exactly the kind of light-hearted superhero outing we need after the gut punch of Thanos’ Gauntlet snap.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is close to finishing his house arrest duration and is bonding further with his daughter. After his Civil War decision to help Captain America, he’s distanced from Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). They may need him though as he receives an important message, one that leads the trio to cross paths with the quantum shifting powers of Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).

One of the selling points with the 2015 feature was the playing around of scale. This is no less the case three years later. The visual splendour of watching not just Ant-man, but the Wasp switch back and forth between tiny and human-sized fighters is a beaming sight to behold. There’s great fun to be had in watching a kitchen based sequence where Lilly excels as the Wasp fully taking flight and later on in the film we see the roads of San Francisco become a literal Hot Wheels play-set as cars shift mass.

There’s a heck of a lot of writers on board with this movie, Rudd being one of them, but unlike some comedies where too many cooks spoil the broth, this comic book flick manages to evenly play to the strengths of what these 5 screenwriters bring to the table. There’s points where you feel like the funny one-liners could topple over into annoyance and overshadow the main narrative but luckily that doesn’t happen frequently. The humour is felt for sure, but it serves as a well needed light-hearted tone to back the story.

I must say this film feels like it’s taken a step back again into the formulaic routine of pre-Black Panther Marvel flicks. There’s never a true sense of dread or anything to be unexpected. The villain again is the weakest element of the film; in fact there’s two antagonists that are fairly underwhelming and did little to heighten my excitement. I guess the fact this film is fairly stand-alone from the dusty aftermaths of Infinity War doesn’t help too much, an FBI agent spieling off an admittedly amusing reasoning of why Lang is where he is, sets up the personal stakes of Lang and his investment with Hope and her father but aside from that it’s a film that doesn’t grip as strongly as it could have.

Paul Rudd is great once again as the do-gooder shrinking hero, his daughter being the key drive for him to stay on the straight and narrow are sweet moments throughout the scene. Evangeline Lily gets more screen time which is excellent because she too is excellent as the winged, blaster laden partner to Lang’s roguish charm, in fact she is every much a leading strength as Rudd is. There’s great comedy to be had with the ex-con group but it goes without saying that the man of the hour is Michael Pena. He plays Luis perfectly, the comic timing, his delivery, the almost child like burbling wonder is expertly acted.

It obviously was never going to be a film that possessed the same epic weight from April’s Infinity War but as a teeny and fun-sized sequel; it’s a pleasant, entertaining buzzing with gags aplenty.

7/10