If I told you a movie reminded me of a mash up between the original "Clash of the Titans" and "Flash Gordon" , you might assume the movie would be awesome, perhaps even more so if you knew that those were two of my favorite movies as a child. I am sure if I was a child that many things about "Aqua Man" would have worked for me. But I think the stories of Aqua-man that I played out in the bathtub with my action figures as a child made more sense than some of the stabs at bringing the myths of Atlantis to screen. When it comes to DC characters Aqua-man is in my top 10. So it's not that I thinking he is just the guy who talks to fish. While I was not convinced with Jason Momoa's performance in Justice League, I was open to giving him a second chance, and this time around it actually might have been worse.
Momoa has some big guns with tired and true acting chops to work off of namely Nicole Kidman and Willem DaFoe. This did not help, nor can I imagine these actors who had to have spent the bulk of the shoot in front if a green screen could take this seriously. The only thing they had going for them were the costumes which did not rely on cgi as much as some DC movies. Mera might have been the most convincing character, Black Manta cane across stiff and really served little purpose for being in the movie to begin with. Ocean Master was two dimensional at best. With "Guardians of the Galaxy" we were taken into a wildly exaggerated worlds with characters who did not take them selves seriously. Here they did take them selves seriously making the more absurd moment wackier.
The plot was pretty much cut and paste all 80s fantasy movies. You ruined my family so I am going to go on a quest to redeem both them and my self. The big fight scenes also borrowed from other movies and here is where some of the Flash Gordon memories factored in. The movie went south fast and struggled to bring in even just the kind of comic book level action that could keep my interest , by time we got to yet another DC climax where the producers one again just wanted to throw the rest of the budget into cgi and give it less heart than the boss battle at the end of a video game. This was also a problem with Wonder Woman. I can say "Wonder Woman "at least just fell apart at the end , but at least made you feel something about the characters. By the time I forced my self to watch the ending of this movie, I could have cared less as the stakes could not have been any lower. DC's next chance of pulling it together on the movie front will most likely be "Shazam".
