‘Aquaman’, Lord Of The Crab People

I saw the Aquaman movie. Nicole Kidman, the Queen Of Atlantis, washes up on the beach in Maine, where she is discovered by a Maori lighthouse keeper who fills her with love. Their brief but tender union leads to the birth of Arthur, a hairy man who likes to drink beer and who can communicate with fish. Willem Dafoe, wearing a wetsuit and a man bun, emerges from the deep to teach Arthur how to swim and wield a trident. Tada, Arthur becomes Aquaman!

Soon enough, Aquaman gets into a fight on a submarine with a bunch of black pirates. Then a hot red-haired princess who wears turquoise armor that barely covers her breasts appears to tell Aquaman that his brother is trying to seize power and it’s time to go home to Atlantis. The princess can control water with her mind and she also has magical healing powers and drives a spaceship that looks like a catfish.

Keep in mind that I quit smoking pot more than a year ago. I did NOT imagine any of this. I’m describing the actual plot of an actual thing that will appear on Friday. Nothing will be able to stop this from happening. The Aquaman movie is real.

According to this crazed mythology, The Lost City Of Atlantis exists. Fine. But apparently the blond Atlantis people don’t make up the entirety of the forgotten population of the ocean. There are also red-haired people, crab people, hella xenomorphs, giant monsters, and, if I’m not mistaken, sharks that shoot lasers out of their eyes. People wear dresses made out of jellyfish. Somehow, no surface dweller has ever discovered any of this, including Jacques Cousteau and Steve Zissou.

AQUAMAN ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: James Wan
Written by: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall
Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman
Running time: 143 min.

Not everything takes place under water. There’s also an extended sequence in the Sahara Desert and a fairly long and evocative excerpt of the Roy Orbison song “She’s A Mystery To Me“. Because Aquaman also apparently gets to be James Bond, an amazing fight goes down on the rooftops of Sicily. The resulting damage will really annoy historical-preservation fanatics.

I spent most of Aquaman screaming with hilarity, which I can’t say about many movies I see. Jason Momoa and Amber Heard couldn’t act their way out of an introductory improv class, but they’re game and smokin’. Kidman and Dafoe seem in on the joke. And if Warner Brothers miscast Patrick Wilson as King Orb or whatever the hell his name is, he doesn’t seem to care. Much like the Aquaman, he’s seen his destiny, and it’s to say the line “Call me Ocean Master.”

The arrival of the Aquaman truly brings back the 1980s in all their moronic glory. This picture contains the good-natured cheese of something like Flash Gordon, but with a 2018 budget and at least a small amount of self-awareness. At last, everything that has ever been in every movie is in one movie at the same time. I believe they call this The Singularity, a phrase that doesn’t get used in this movie. But maybe it does, who knows?

Aquaman rips off Mission: Impossible, Thor, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Aliens, Jurassic Park, The Phantom Menace, and Hong Kong action flicks. Watching it feels like eating 10 boxes of Junior Mints while drinking a 64-ounce Icee. It cements the idea of a DC Cinematic Universe that people actually enjoy, and also the end of human sanity. Only one man will rule the crab people and the creatures of the trench and also the glowing seahorses. I will never be able to eat fish again.

This concludes my review of the Aquaman movie.