Late To the Party: Aquaman
Welcome to “Late To the Party”, a new series where we geek out over pieces of pop culture that we missed the first time around, because a thing doesn’t have to be new to be exciting!
Today, Arezou takes a look at the December 2018 entry into the DCEU - Aquaman
Oh boy.
Where do I start?
Well, I loved it would probably be the best place, and also I’m extremely mad at myself for missing this when it was in theatres. I’m not even sure why I missed it. Like, what was I doing that was so important that I couldn’t go see Aquaman in theatres?
I checked my Instagram and the answer is nothing. Literally, I was doing nothing. Shame on me.
OK enough of that. Why is it that I liked this movie so much?
Most people might guess that it was the easy - and shallow, not that there’s anything wrong with that - answer: because Jason Momoa is a beautiful man. And yes, yes he is. But as my complete lack of interest in Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman would show, that’s not enough to actually hold my interest in anything beyond the poster. I’m sorry Henry Cavill, I really do love you and I hope you can forgive me. To make it up to you, I’ll watch Stardust again and just root for Humphrey the whole time.
What I think it actually comes down to with Aquaman for me is that it feels like three completely different movies. When someone says that about a movie, it’s usually meant as a bad thing but believe me when I say it works in this movie’s favour. At 143 minutes, there is a whole lot of movie in there, and the constant flipping from one plot to the other helped keep things fresh for me. Just as one part started to drag, the switch was flipped and we were in the other plotline.
The reason these feel like three (more like 2.5, since one of them is really short) separate movies rather than an A, B and C plot is because I truly believe that any one of them, with some minor tweaks could function as a compelling narrative on their own. But I’m going to stop talking around it and really get into why this movie works so well for me.
Let’s dive in - pun intended.
Aquaman is divided into three parts, each with their own nickname that I have assigned them. We have the Superhero Quest, the Mermaid Politics and the Love Story.
What I called the Superhero Quest is what we would call the A-plot, the main story of the movie, which is Arthur Curry’s journey to find the Trident of Atlan and take his place as the king of Atlantis. Pretty standard stuff. Arthur Curry must put aside his attempts at a normal life - or as normal as it can be when you talk to fish and regularly patrol the seas to stop pirates - and assume the role he was destined to fill. It is a little weird that this comes after his appearance in Justice League rather than before, but it’s addressed in Aquaman as him thinking it was a one-and-done type deal. I don’t know how the Snyder Cut changes this at all, since I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m not going to dwell too much.
The Superhero Quest was the fun, action romp part of the movie, featuring my favourite trope in this kind of setting - international travel. Look, I haven’t left my neighbourhood in over a year, so please let me have the random Indiana-Jones-style temple they visit to get the clue from the cylinder. Give me their extremely self-indulgent trip to Sicily where they wander old cobblestone ruins. I need it. Throw in an island covered in dinosaurs. Why the hell not? It’s all fun and games here.
The Mermaid Politics, or the B-plot, is concerned with Arthur’s half-brother Orm, who is currently on the throne as King of Atlantis and wants to unite all the remaining ocean kingdoms under his rule to assume the title of Ocean Master. His plot was absolutely bananas in the best way, because it was all the seriousness of political alliances but, you know, everyone involved is a fish. Or fish adjacent. Mermaid politics! The only area I feel this suffers is in the way it is conveyed to the audience. Usually big exposition information dumps need to be repeated once more in the movie, to remind the audience what’s going on, and I feel like every time Orm sought out a new ally he was repeating himself over and over. I get that it’s new information to the prospective allies, but it’s not new information to your audience.
And then there is the C-plot. The framing device. The little snippet that bookends the movie.
It’s also my favorite part.
When I mentioned on Twitter that I was watching Aquaman for the first time, The Geeky Waffle’s very own Candace questioned my motives for doing so. She outright accused me of only watching this movie because Temeura Morrison, Boba Fett himself, has a small part in it playing Arthur’s father Tom. Which was just so patently untrue of her to say.
That was only 40% of the reason. 50% at most. (Candace’s note: I KNEW IT!)
I’m a sucker for a good love story, and I would say the romance between Queen Atlanna and Tom Curry is exactly that. Anyone who has ever heard me talk about the kind of media I enjoy knows these kinds of tales. And when I say a “good” love story, I mean one that has it’s fair share of angst, sure, but also a happy ending. The world is miserable enough.
A queen fleeing an arranged marriage only to fall in love with the lighthouse keeper who saves her life and gives her a sense of normalcy? Yes please. Adding on the sadness of her being forced to leave, but promising to return one day, and him waiting on the dock where they met every day at sunrise for 30 years for her to come back, even though they all think she’s dead? And then we find out she isn’t dead and the first thing she does - once she tells her sons to stop being stupid - is go right back to that dock, at sunrise, where Tom is waiting for her.
My heart.
It also has not gone unnoticed by my friends and I that this subplot, Temeura Morrison saving a lady with an abdominal injury and subsequently falling in love with her, is not unlike our hopes for what we want to see in the Book of Boba Fett when it comes out this December. So that may have contributed to my enjoyment of this particular storyline. #BonnecForever
But back to my main point, that this feels like three separate movies that somehow works as one coherent narrative. I think it all comes down, at the end of the day, to Jason Momoa.
He manages to thread the needle between playing the superhero on a quest for power, a son worried for his father and mourning the loss of his mother, and a...um...mermaid politician? He remains so wholly himself no matter what gonzo fish-fighting is going on around him that it somehow makes the more ridiculous parts of the movie absolutely believable.
Take the moment where he’s left his mother behind on the dinosaur island where she’s been exiled (y’all, I can’t with this movie) and passes through the waterfall to claim the Trident of Atlan. This scene is a culmination of all three storylines: he’s found the object he was searching for (A-plot) that will help him quell the mermaid political dispute (B-plot), and it happens to be on the island where his presumed-dead mother is living (C-plot).
The way he obtains the Trident is by having a conversation with the Karathen - essentially a gigantic mythological fish - and proving his worth. The thing that makes him worthy of the Trident is, ultimately, his heart and his determination to keep everyone safe. That undercurrent of sincerity is consistent throughout his performance, and really sells it for me.
You know what Aquaman reminds me of? The first Thor movie. I know a lot of people cite Thor: Ragnarok as their favorite, and the movie is an absolute delight from start to finish, but my personal fave of the trilogy will always be the first one. It came out at a time when I wasn’t totally sold on the concept of regular superhero movies. It completely drew me in by starting off in the kind of strange mythological fantasy setting that I wouldn’t have expected in a superhero movie meant to appeal to mass audiences. It then straddles the line, bouncing back and forth between Asgard, with it’s high stakes family politics and tragedy, and New Mexico, with its humorous superhero fish-out-of-water story. Each narrative is compelling in their own right and almost feeling like their own story.
Aquaman does the exact same thing. The Superhero Quest is...well, the superhero part, and the Mermaid Politics is the mythological fantasy.
So how does Tom and Atlanna’s Love Story fit in? Well, that was a special nugget designed to appeal to me, personally. Naturally.
Have you seen Aquaman? What did you think? Let us know on Twitter @ Geeky_Waffle
