Aquaman

You may remember Aquaman as the hulkingly charismatic, slightly drunk wildcard of the Justice League pack given nothing to do other than occasionally whooping whilst holding a trident.

Giving him an entirely solo film then (before Batman and The Flash, no less) appears a brave decision by DC and one to be applauded after the triumph that was Wonder Woman, a chance for them to throw off the dark and dingy shackles and inject some fun into this ailing superhero universe.

Pleasingly, this succeeds in the fun stakes but is still symptomatic of DC’s issues in the eternal struggle against their rivals in the red corner at Marvel.

This is their attempt at Thor: Ragnarok; an utterly bonkers, anything-goes, origin-cum-crowning story which gives flavour to a character already introduced but does nothing to impact the rest of the Justice League.

The plot is bafflingly nonsensical, a veritable smorgasbord of Macguffin-Exposition-Explosion (repeat ad nauseum) literally anytime anything of supposed ‘significance’ is explained and it looks like we may be back on track, there’s a huge explosion and a swift foray into bash-em-up fight scenes.

Aquaman himself gets as little to say as he did in Justice League, barely able to anchor his own film as Willem Dafoe (under-served in a boring role) and Amber Heard (good enough to make you forget about her Little Mermaid red hair) are laboured with much of the explaining of ‘true Kings’, ‘lost tridents’, ‘different breeds of underwater creatures’ and other exposition.

Jason Mamoa brings his shrugging charisma again and holds our attention throughout in a Jack-Sparrow-slightly-drunk kinda way. He looks the part and I’m sure will continue to be the most entertaining member of the Justice League. If we could stop the James Bond-quips though please DC.

What James Wan does bring though is some fantastic action sequences. Some of his tracking shots and one-takes are visually incredible, particularly when we venture on land. A bravura sequence with a beautiful Sicilian backdrop will rightly go down as one of the best action scenes of the year and these go a long way to alleviate any plot grievances.

It’s almost like watching 10 films at once at times as there are stolen sequences from everything from Star Wars to The Mummy and Jurassic Park. We also need to have a word about the soundtrack here DC; what the hell were they thinking?! Random and unnecessarily loud club-pop (including an excruciating Pitbull remix of Toto’s Africa) do not a good superhero film make.

It’s predictable, random and old-fashioned as with all of DC’s modern output but can at least be applauded for throwing some new and original elements at the wall. Not everything sticks but it’s an endlessly watchable movie with even the inevitable and veritable CGI f*ck-a-thon of an ending sequence working in this context.

Marvel can still sleep soundly at night then but it’s at least another jot in the ‘improving’ column at DC.

3 stars ***