Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Half-human, half-Atlantean Arthur Curry is taken on the journey of his lifetime to discover if he is worth of being a king.
Aquaman is a loud, visually ambitious blockbuster that delivers some genuinely spectacular underwater world-building and colorful action set-pieces, but is weighed down by a formulaic hero's-journey plot, clunky dialogue, and uneven performances. The cinematography earns credit for its ambitious and colorful underwater visuals, which at times are genuinely impressive in scale. However, the story hits every predictable beat of the reluctant-hero-discovers-his-destiny template, the acting ranges from serviceable to wooden, and the ending resolves with little surprise or resonance. Its novelty is limited — despite the underwater setting, it follows a well-worn DCEU origin-story formula without a distinctive directorial voice strong enough to elevate it above the genre average.