Aquaman

What I liked: If you have been laying awake at night wondering where you can find a Lord of the Rings style battle sequence featuring lava lobsters, mosasaurs, and lasers,  this is the movie for you. Also if you have been dying to see more of the giant mysterious sea monsters from Phantom Menace (one of the few acceptable parts of that movie besides the light saber dual), you have come to the right place. The movie is packed full of over the top ridiculousness, explosions, and bright colors. I liked the underwater world that they created. All of the modes of transportation are pretty cool. I can't decide if I would rather ride a freaky seahorse dragon or a mosasaur. There were also sea turtle, shrimp, and manta ray shaped boat/car/spaceships. Black Manta had just an ok submarine but he did have awesome armor. Any other villain might say, "oh my super cool laser gun works great in my hand, far away from essential body parts." Not Black Manta. But whatever the high probability of serious brain injury, you have to admit it looked awesome. Black Manta was a way better villain than Ocean Master and his helmet was much much cooler. I liked the absurd poses that were held for way way way too long, especially with fake fireworks. It wasn't the Civil War freeze frames, this was more like seeing someone pose in the mirror. The whole world goes on around them but they are so busy admiring how cool they look to bother fighting the bad guy, climbing the ladder, or whatever they were supposed to be doing. This is the level of silliness that this movie reaches. I really really liked the drum playing octopus, it was like little mermaid but better. If you do not shout "Shark Bait hoo ha ha!" several times during the movie, you're doing it wrong. I liked the scenes of little Aquaman learning to swim, it was pretty much what all of us wish swimming was actually like. Surprisingly, the talking to fish power was pretty cool. Though I do think there could be some draw backs to mind controlling all the fish in the ocean. I am very impressed by the longevity of the Italian statues. Based on the riddle, they were built before the desert formed (~7 million years ago) and are still in great shape. I'm also impressed that they sculptors were able to include historical figures, like Romulus and Remus, from their distant future.

What I didn't: Let's start with the obvious, the main characters had the option to stay forever in the hidden land of the dinosaurs at the center of the Earth. Staying there would solve almost all their problems. Why would you not stay in the magical dinosaur land inhabited only by friendly dinosaurs? Clearly, they were not thinking clearly. Speaking of not thinking clearly, everyone seemed awfully ok with shooting guns and grenades in the submarine. This seems like a very bad idea, especially in the torpedo room. And Aquaman could have avoided a lot of trouble if he had detached the two submarines. The pirates all look just like imperial TIE fighter pilots, just a heads up because the people around me did not appreciate being informed "imperial troops have entered the base, imperial troops have entered the base!" The bottle trick was nifty but I do fell like when you're standing on the beach there might be other more accessible sources of water, like the ocean. For all his knowledge of history I am surprised that Aquaman had never seen a documentary on on angler fish and all the freaky fish that live in the Mariana trench that use little lights to attract its food. So maybe lighting flares in the deep deep ocean would attract more freaky fish than it scared away. Also what do all those freaky fish eat? There were an awful lot of them. Did they consider the releasing the giant sea monster could have negative repercussions for everyone? Or that being in the splash zone over a lava colosseum could be problematic? Maybe I'm over thinking this but if your goal is to send a message that maybe establishing contact would be better than sending one giant wave, you know just for clarity's sake. People change their clothes a lot in this movie and I'm not sure where the clothes came from how they had time to put them on or why they needed to change their outfits. I'm not sure that a dress made out of jellyfish is going to be comfortable and from what I've see at aquariums, it might be rather sheer. That armor looks awfully spikey, maybe you shouldn't hug it. Maybe you should just give it back to How to Train Your Dragon, they might need it for their movie.

Who should watch this? People who like Aquaman, people who like fish, people who like absurdity. There is about the same amount of violence as other superhero movies but instead of just dropping buildings on people there is trident stabbing and shark eating. Just so you know. Also there are some serious strobe scenes so if you don't like the disco this might not be for you.

Would I watch it again? It was pretty fun. I will definitely revisit that octopus.