Aquaman

The Aquaman movie is a blast.

It's silly, it's campy, and at its core it's a by-the-numbers standard superhero flick.  But it's also visually stunning and has some great action scenes.  I can't in good conscience claim that it's a "good" movie, but it's definitely worth the price of a ticket.  

DC needed this right now.  They keep trying to reinvent their superheroes, when audiences are wanting iconic versions first.   Marvel's doing it right.  Thor: Ragnarok reinvented the character by taking away his hammer and changing the nature of his powers.  But they waited until the third movie to do so, after they'd already established an origin story audiences were familiar with.

They let him evolve and mature into a new version of Thor, instead of presenting audiences with an unfamiliar character and saying, "Hey, this is Thor, not like the Thor you grew up on, but we're calling him Thor anyway."  DC is trying to rush things.

There's a lot going on in Aquaman, almost too much.  They flesh out his origin with several flashbacks, he fights two of his most well-known villains (Black Manta and Ocean Master) when a single villain would have been fine, there's a war between underwater kingdoms, he goes on a quest to find an ancient artifact, he fights for his birthright, and so on. 

At 2 hours and 22 minutes, it' a little long.  But honestly, I had too much fun to care.  It has more than enough action scenes, but even the exposition scenes are so full of eye candy that they don't slow it down. 

It was also cool to see Jango Fett as Aquaman's dad.  Hmmm... and I just noticed both Batman and Aquaman have fathers named "Thomas".  I can't wait to see the climax of "Batman v Aquaman".

Okay, I suppose I've got to list the downsides:  The script wasn't great, the plot was full of convenient contrivances, and the acting sometimes felt artificial.  Black Manta especially made me laugh, because with his mask on he sounded like Dark Helmet.  

But this is one of those movies where the end product is so much more enjoyable than its flawed parts.  I wish the current DC movie universe was more consistent with its quality, so I could buy them all and be proud to have them on my shelf.  The series is far from great, but Aquaman is definitely one of the standouts.