Aquaman (4½ Stars)

I have to admit that after the awful mess called "Justice League" I had low expectations for "Aquaman". It's a film I thought I have to go to just because it's a super-hero and I have a duty to see super-hero films. It's even a DC super-hero film, and I gave up on DC 50 years ago.

I don't want to go into the whole Marvel vs DC thing, because I've written about it elsewhere. I'll just sum up my attitudes, past and present, briefly. When I bought my first comics in the early 1960's it was a mixture of Marvel and DC. My choice was based mostly on the covers, and DC's covers were slightly more appealing to me as a child. As I remember, "Batman" and "Justice League of America" (JLA) were the DC comics I bought the most frequently. "Batman" had the flashiest covers, and "JLA" had the most heroes. Within a few years I realised that Marvel comics had better stories, so by the mid 1960's I only bought Marvel. By 1965 I was having passionate debates with my school friends about which was better, Marvel or DC.

In the mid 1970's I made two exceptions. I started to read "Wonder Woman" and "Detective Comics",  but that's getting off the subject. I'll stop here.

Now let's get back to Aquaman. I knew him from the JLA comics. He was the least prominent of the JLA members. As I remember the comics, Superman and the Flash were the main tier characters, Batman and Green Lantern were the mid tier characters, Wonder Woman and Aquaman were the minor tier characters. Please don't criticise me if you disagree, that's just my subjective impression based on comics that I read more than 50 years ago.

I liked Aquaman. He was a cool looking character who swam in the sea. I wanted to know more about him. I wished he could have his own comic book, which didn't happen until the 1980's when I'd already given up reading DC.

The next time I saw Aquaman was in "Justice League" in 2017. It wasn't just the film that disappointed me, it was the character. He was brash and arrogant, nothing like the quiet background guy from the 1960's.

Now to today's film itself. It should really have been made before "Justice League". DC doesn't plan film releases as well as Marvel. It shows Aquaman's origin story, which we should have known before watching "Justice League". Yes, he's still brash and arrogant, but the film tells us why. He was bullied as a kid, so he reacted against it as an adult. That makes his attitude acceptable.

I'm an outsider, as far as the Aquaman mythology is concerned. Never having read any of his solo comic books I don't know how he came to be. I can't compare the film with the comics, which is probably an advantage for me. It makes me less critical.

What I can say is that there are parallels with Marvel's leader of Atlantis, Namor the Sub-Mariner. The two characters are so similar that someone has to be accused of plagiarism. Only history can tell us who is guilty. Timely Comics (later renamed to Marvel) first featured Sub-Mariner in 1939. Aquaman was invented by DC in 1941. That answers the question: Aquaman is a Sub-Mariner clone. They're both half-human, they're both exiled rulers of Atlantis, they're both torn between their loyalties to the sea realm and the surface world.

Sub-Mariner is a character that needs to be added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). We could have a film about him being sent on a quest to recover the trident that would prove he's the true king of Atlantis. That's not copying "Aquaman". Marvel did it first, way back in 1965.

The film is very well made. It's a glorious CGI feast. The underwater realms look surreal and enticing. The battles between rivalling kingdoms look confusing, but they don't take up too much of the movie. When Aquaman himself is fighting the battle scenes are spectacular. The film is enjoyable, even if it's a clone of Marvel stories.