Aquaman and the Muddled Mess of Divine Right Doctrine

Aquaman Opens with a pointless origin story.  What could’ve easily been accomplished in a line or two of exposition, may not have been needed at all. It rarely gets better than that as the film slogs on. A soggy mess of a film saddled with a lazy, sloppy script that can’t seem to make up its mind if Aquaman is a hero worth paying attention to or just plain silly. Too often the film leans toward silly.

Directed by James Wan, any of the mastery Wan displays when working in his wheelhouse of horror is tragically lacking in this water bloated movie. Of course, with his horror films Wan wisely relies upon Leigh Wannel to provide taught scripts, but screenwriters David Leslie Johnson McGoldrick and Will Beal are no Leigh Wannel. The dialogue is cheesy and the heavy reliance on exposition boring.

Arthur Curry (Jason Mamoa) is Aquaman a half-breed born of an Atlantean queen whom we are told is long dead, killed for the treason of loving a land dwelling light keeper. The queen, is played by Nicole Kidman in this pointless origin story so we can be fairly certain she’ll show up alive and well later. In the present day, following the events in Justice League, we first see Mamoa as Aquaman saving a Russian naval crew from techno-pirates. Yes, techno-pirates.

While fighting the techno-pirates we learn that Aquaman is nearly as indestructible as Superman. With pointed blades stopping bluntly at the resistance of his flesh, we watch him deftly dodge bullets but more confusingly, we watch him survive a high-tech rocket launcher that has hit him square in the solar plexus. Although formidable, Aquaman didn’t come off as this indestructible in Justice League. Worse than this is the whole pointlessness of this battle between pirates and our hero.

The battle is yet another origin story. This time of the villain who turns out not to be the actual villain of the story but apparently the villain to come in the sequel. The pirates are led by a father (Micheal Beach) son (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) team. Even with their small army and awesome weapons they cannot defeat Aquaman. The hero leaves the wounded father trapped to drown. The grieving son promises his father revenge.

In the meantime we are introduced to Atlantis and Orm Marius (Patrick Wilson), who is the actual villain of this film.. Those who saw Justice League have already been introduced to Atlantis but here we are granted some of its full glory.  A place where inhabitants ride sharks and giant sea-dragons. Orm has had enough of the land dweller’s garbage and toxic waste and wants to conquer them, but Nereus (Dolph Lundgren) the king of Atlantis will have nothing of it.

Fortuitously for Orm, a land dwelling submarine attacks Atlantis. King Nereus, without a hint of suspicion regarding this coincidental attack agrees to take the war to the land dwellers. This leads Amber Heard’s Mera, daughter of King Nereus and acquaintance of Arthur from the events in Justice League to reach out to Arthur for his help in saving the world and accept his destiny as the one true king of Atlantis.

More myth building ensues but it seems McGoldrick and Beall have little understanding of the purpose of myth and the reluctant hero. All the why’s and where’s of how Atlantis came to be do not need to be rammed all in one film. Especially one that has been clearly designed to render sequels. The recklessness of humanity doesn’t require we get the whole origin story and then some of Atlantis mythology.

This is a hero myth about Aquaman. It’s his story. For all the extraneous Atlantean mythology, Atlantis is still painted in broad brush strokes too quickly to earn the kind of sympathy for Orm the writers assume you’ll give. Patrick Wilson is always a reliable actor, particularly when he is being likable but Orm is not likable.

We learn he is the half-brother of Arthur and holds resentment, blaming Arthur for the execution of his mother. This is done mostly with broad brush strokes making Orm unsympathetic and not very threatening at all. Still, because this is a hero myth and Arthur must go through his inmost cave, Aquaman will suffer a defeat by the meh-fishman Orm. Much yammering about the one true king follows with Mera aligning herself with Arthur offering herself up as a sort of mentor.

Mera is not Arthur’s only mentor in this story and through flashbacks we learn Willem Dafoe’s Nuidis Volko of Atlantis and adviser to the king, is Arthur’s early wise old man training him to become a hero. Aquaman had a wise old man as a kid, has one in the present as an adult but is still reluctant to buy into a call to adventure that includes he being the one true king. This one true king angle might be fine if McGoldrick and Beall knew what they wanted out of that, but instead they just keep throwing out the line to remind their audience that Arthur was born to be the one true king.

There is a scene where Meera and Arthur have traveled to Sicily, Italy (after traversing the Sahara to find out this is where they need to go) to find the Trident that will help Aquaman defeat the not really threatening Orm. While in Sicily Aquaman identifies a statue of Romulus as “the one true king” and from that they’ve found where the Trident is. What is predictable becomes successfully predicted by savvy audiences and either the eye candy is enough or it isn’t to sustain this poorly written story. Certainly sea dragons are cool, but is it enough?

Aquaman, in its silliness is far lighter than Nolan’s Batman trilogy or Snyder’s Man of Steele and BvS, but misses the mark by a fathom. Mamoa and Heard are both engaging and some of the visuals at times are breathtaking. Even so, the film suffers from its own conceits and nearly drowns in its own pointlessness.