BEFORE: Willem Dafoe carries over from "The Great Wall" and that's the end of the Week of Willem. I'm sorry that it couldn't be a full 7 movies, but 6 with Willem will have to do. Right now I'm moving on to superhero films, and I've got four of them in a row! Yep, they all link together thanks to an actor who's working for both DC and Marvel movies, and also because an industry legend makes so many cameos. Umm, MADE so many cameos. RIP, Stan.
But soon I'll be caught up on this topic, and then the countdown will start to "Avengers: Endgame", which premieres in about 40 days. I'm holding a slot for it that's 42 slots from this one, just in case I don't get to see it on opening day, I can go on the following Monday and still not fall too far behind. At least that's the plan - I'll have to see what's possible as the day draws closer. I'll probably have to stay off all social media for about two weeks before, if I don't want anything spoiled.
Speaking of which, probably SPOILERS AHEAD for "Aquaman", so be wary if you haven't seen it yet. I think it's just coming on to iTunes right about now, but I went to the movie theater in late January, because I wasn't sure how long it would stay in theatrical release, or what date it was expected to hit the digital platforms. Turns out that even the biggest movies are now becoming available for streaming in just 3 or 4 months, but how was I to know that? And who the hell releases a superhero movie in December? Now only was I busy with Christmas shopping and other holiday plans, also trying to wrap up work stuff before the end of the year, but I usually have my November and December movie schedules set in stone, so the year can end the way I want it to. There was just no way for me to re-work everything to fit this one in somehow, so I saw it in January, hoping there would be a way to work it into March's line-up, and then of course I found one.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Justice League" (Movie #2,774)
THE PLOT: Arthur Curry, the human-born heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlanta, goes on a quest to prevent a war between the worlds of ocean and land.
AFTER: How is this not just "Black Panther" underwater? Obviously the two films share a lot of the same themes - like focusing on the royal heir to a hidden, technologically advanced kingdom, who's unsure of his own abilities and has to compete in combat rituals against a relative for the rights to the throne.
Also, the intended heir has to go to a distant, isolated region in order to gain help - in "Black Panther" it was the Mountain Kingdom of the White Apes, and here it's the Sahara Desert, which is a pretty strange place to find the ruins of a lost Atlantean tribe. I was reminded of both "Sahara" and "National Treasure" during this quest. I wish that there had been some more difficulty when Aquaman and Mera went to the desert - why couldn't they have some kind of weakness, given all the dry air and heat in the Sahara? Shouldn't their mer-person bodies have been drying out all that time? Wouldn't that have added an extra element of danger, or given them a limited time to find the artifact?
Given that Aquaman was already bullet-proof and missile-proof (apparently) - yet his body could be pierced by a sword or a harpoon, so I wonder if that's a proper NITPICK POINT - a weakness to the dryness of the desert could have gone a long way toward humanizing him, I don't know why some screenwriter didn't think of this. He's already got so much going for him, like those amazing pecs and the ability to convince fish to do stuff for him. To be fair, they did point out that he occasionally has B.O., which is a bit strange - he spends so much time in the water, isn't that a bit like taking a bath? Or does he use so much Axe body spray that he leaves behind something like an oil slick in the ocean? (EDIT: Following up on the point I made after "At Eternity's Gate", the current technology of movies is really letting me down by telling me that Aquaman smells, but not WHAT he smells like...)
What I didn't like about the Aquaman character in the "Justice League" film was the super-cool "bro-ness" that he seemed to exude, saying "My man!" as he surfed on a missile, then parkour-leaped off of it before it exploded, only to be caught by Cyborg and hurled at the next opponent. Ugh, we get it, you're a super-dude among super-men, already... Thankfully they toned done the "bro" factor here, but instead he's grown his hair super-long and wears plaid shirts on shore, so he looks like the only guy who could fight in a WWE match and then sell you some crank in the parking lot afterwards.
He's also the reluctant king, which seems a bit weird, but maybe what we've learned from electing Presidents lately is that if somebody really really wants to do the job, that's not who we should elect. Maybe we should be seeking out the best candidate for the position, even if he doesn't want it - heck, maybe NOT wanting to be President or King should be a pre-requisite from now on. Mera here says that because he was raised outside Atlantis as a commoner, that's exactly what WOULD make Aquaman a great king. This might be true, but then again, it might not, so please show your work here instead of just jumping to a conclusion.
Another major NITPICK POINT for me is the origin story of Atlantis. The way I understand it, it was a very advanced civilization, but then we all know what happened, there was an earthquake or tsunami or whatever, and the whole city sank. What's surprising is that not everyone died, some of them "evolved" so they could breathe underwater. Umm, that's not how evolution works, it takes millions of years of organisms dying and the occasional mutation to change the way that any species functions. Wouldn't everyone alive in Atlantis have drowned before evolution happened? And then some of the Atlantis humans "evolved" into fish-men (mermaids) and others into crab-people? Uh-uh, not buying it. Some other force had to be at work for this to be a remote possibility, even in a comic book.
As I write this, it's late January and for some reason, lighthouses have figured prominently in several films I've watched in 2019 - one was the central site of action near the end of "Annihilation" and then in "The Light Between Oceans" the lead characters lived in a lighthouse off the coast of Australia, isolated from the rest of society. And then in "Frank", Maggie Gyllenhall sang the song "I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper" at the end of the film. It's a very strange coincidence, why are lighthouses suddenly trending for me?
Also starring Jason Momoa (last seen in "Justice League"), Amber Heard (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "Hard Candy"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Dolph Lundgren (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Yahya Abdul-Matteen II (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Temuera Morrison (last heard in "Moana"), Graham McTavish (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Ludi Lin, Michael Beach (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Randall Park (last seen in "The Meddler"), Leigh Whannell, Andrew Crawford and the voices of Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Natalia Safran, Sophia Forrest, John Rhys-Davies (last seen in "Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made") and Julie Andrews (last heard in "Despicable Me 3")
RATING: 7 out of 10 giant seahorses
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