Aquaman - The Worst Superhero Movie Ever Made?

welcome back everybody to the worst superhero movies ever made a very original video series where i make fun of movies so yeah for those of you wondering i haven't forgotten about this series i've been busy [ __ ] busy getting 1 million subscribers i've been thinking about what kind of video i should make for this milestone and what better video than a review of a movie that i've been jabbing at for years now aquaman i plan to do a quickie on the movie when it came out but then i realized i wanted to wait and do a full review but by then i had already baited you guys a few times and i figured it was funnier to never actually review the movie and i was thinking about baiting you guys again with this video but i decided to be nice and buckle down and make a real video a full review a deep dive if you will yuck so let's talk about this movie and see what does and doesn't work for me so this movie opens up with a flashback showing us aquaman's mom atlanta meeting aquaman's dad jango fett now i could make a joke about the fact that the queen of atlantis's name is atlanta but at the same time i'm the guy who likes a character named vegeta who's from planet vegeta so i can't really complain now overall this opening scene is kinda cute it has a nice little fairy tale vibe that i kind of [ __ ] with as long as you look past the fact that nicole kidman and jango fett have weird puffy faces so they look younger for the flashback anyway this cute backstory gets interrupted by an explosion and we get a really cool little fight scene and i kind of feel like giving credit to dc for once warner brothers actually lets their directors do whatever they want with these movies for the most part at least compared to marvel movies the marvel movies are kind of bland and they really lack a lot of you know director personality but this does feel like a james wan movie for better and for worse this dynamic single shot action scene is actually pretty cool i have to say this is a decent first impression for the movie so anyway nicole kidman was trying to escape an arranged marriage but the other atlanteans find her and she gets forced to go back home and then they tell us that she was murdered off-screen oh yeah no that's okay don't worry movie i totally believe you anyway after we see this decently cute opening we jump to the present day where these high-tech pirates are attacking a submarine and to prove that these pirates are bad guys they brutally murder people now normally this is fine you can show a bad guy doing a bad thing to prove how bad he is it's a little ham-fisted and cliche but it's not inherently a bad way to write this scene but it gets questionable when right after the brutal murder the two evil pirates have a tender father-son scene out of nowhere we get this ridiculous scene where this man who we've never met talks this other man that we've never met and they have a super meaningful conversation and we're expected to care it's like that scene in pulp fiction with the [ __ ] pocket watch this was your grandfather's he was one of the navy's first frogmen during world war ii way your dad looked at it this watch was your birthright so he hid it in one place he knew he could hide something his ass anyway aquaman's here now permission to come aboard it's hard to be mad at this movie when most of it is just aquaman saying one-liners and looking at the camera while his guitar riff plays [Music] also why does aquaman need to deflect the bullets with this makeshift shield if he's bulletproof i don't know i guess i'm not supposed to think about that so aquaman saves the sailors that weren't brutally murdered and then he fights the pirates and it's kind of funny how much aquaman [ __ ] this guy up he [ __ ] bodies these guys and we get another out of place tender scene where the brutal murderers beg aquaman to save them and i don't really know who i'm supposed to root for here which normally would be kind of a cool idea like yeah these guys are murdering pirates but is it aquaman's job to save them maybe aquaman isn't that kind of superhero but what i don't like is how the movie is trying to make us feel bad for these pirates just because of that ham-fisted ridiculous scene we saw earlier these two scenes being shown one right after the other is just a really poor way to try to manipulate the audience it doesn't work for me i'm all for moral ambiguity but this is not moral ambiguity at all anyway after that aquaman visits his dad and this is something that i actually kind of like i think too many superhero narratives rely on the superheroes being orphans to make you feel bad for them but it's more effective to me if you can write a good father-son relationship that doesn't feel forced and yeah it is weird that we have a really awkward father-son relationship and then immediately we see a good one the scene also has a really cute moment where aquaman meets these tough guys who want to get a selfie with him and when i was re-watching this movie up to this point i started to think maybe it's not as bad as i remember but then the next scene reminds me why i don't really like this movie we have to have a scene establishing our second villain see the bad guy that we set up earlier he's not the main villain he actually really doesn't matter that much in typical bad superhero movie fashion we have to cram in more than one villain also i just now noticed that they have the exact same establishing shot with almost the same musical cue i think one of the only times that multiple villains is done really well in a superhero movie is with the dark knight joker doesn't really need a lot of dialogue explaining who he is so a lot of the core character development goes to harvey dent and we also get to see how him and the main villain bounce off each other but in a movie like this we have one villain with a really boring backstory and a predictable arc and a villain who's just kind of there until the movie forgets about him black manta just doesn't need to be in this movie and you'll see why later so anyway king orum is arthur's half-brother and his plot revolves around how he wants to get atlantis and all the other ocean cities to attack humans because humans are bad maybe we're the monsters but the other fish people are like bro we don't want to kill all the other humans you need to relax but then the scene gets interrupted by an explosion because oren got black manta to secretly program one of those submarines to do a drive-by so the other atlanteans side with him okay so hear me out real quick instead of wasting time developing two super villains why don't we have a scene of oren showing us why he hates humans so much we never get a scene where we see why he feels this way outside of him telling us that pollution is bad like yeah i know it's bad because captain planet told me so but i don't know i still don't think genocide is the next logical step he's never even tried to talk to the humans about his problem with them he's never even been to the surface before so it's kind of funny how mad he is without us ever getting any more elaboration about it and when i first watched the movie i thought that he was just faking with the whole pollution thing i thought he had a secret reason why he actually hated humans but no we don't get any more elaboration he just doesn't like humans there's almost nothing that we know about king orn we know that he's the king we know that he hates humans and we know that he likes to yell a lot [Applause] and this just makes him into like your typical cartoon villain and i'm fine with cartoon villains but since this movie is already a blatant ripoff of black panther a movie with a really good villain you think they'd try a little harder so anyway after that amber heard shows up and wait am i supposed to hate amber heard now is she is she a bad person do we not like her sorry i can't keep track of this stuff guys the thing that jumps out to me immediately about amber heard in this movie is that she is wearing the stupidest costume that i've ever seen in a modern superhero movie it seriously looks like a halloween costume so anyway she tells arthur that he has to go with her to ocean land and be the new king and arthur's like i don't really want to do that but then oren just starts throwing tidal waves at human cities so since orn is actually actively attacking the humans now arthur's like alright fine i'll go to ocean land and solve the problem so arthur and amber heard go to meet with willem dafoe and talk about the plot and willem dafoe is like hey guys humans totally attacked us with a submarine and arthur says this i don't think so i just don't think atlantis is a fairy tale which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the humans totally know who aquaman is and there are experts in this universe saying that he's from an underwater city and doesn't make sense that people wouldn't believe this why do people not [ __ ] believe that there are more people like aquaman i'd accept this if aquaman was just revealed to the public like last week but keep in mind this takes place months after justice league so much wacky [ __ ] has happened and people know superheroes exist so why is the underwater city still a myth when one of the atlanteans is a known celebrity also in this scene we get some exposition on the magic weapon aquaman is supposed to find in this movie a character named arthur has to find a magic weapon that will prove that he is the true ruler of his people what's that doing there did somebody drop this does this belong to somebody so far at this point it really feels like every aspect of this movie is a cliche of some sort we have the hamlet narrative of our hero having to take over the throne from one of their relatives we have the long lost parent who may or may not be dead and now we have a chosen one slash king arthur narrative come on man can we get one single original idea also who told jason momoa that he's allowed to have this insane power stance this is how you stand if you know how to [ __ ] so anyway all that stuff doesn't matter because this scene gets interrupted by an explosion wait a second exposition scene interrupted by an explosion exposition scene interrupted by an explosion and now we have another exposition scene that is interrupted by an explosion okay what's going on here guys am i gonna have to start asking you guys some questions so now in aquaman's cliche quest he has to challenge his brother for the throne and again we don't really know anything about king orn and i see cool shots like this and i really just wish i had an emotional connection to the main villain in this movie oh and to add to the cliche counter we get a flashback of green goblin teaching young arthur how to fight and the actor for young arthur is next level bad stop lying to me i've done everything you ever asked does she not love me he's so bad that it's actually impossible for me to feel anything about a scene that is supposed to be emotional and the thing is there's like three other people who aren't jason momoa who are playing aquaman in this movie and two of them are children who are still doing a better job than this guy are you saying they executed her [Laughter] so before this duel for the throne begins oren exposits a little bit about the ancient legend of the kraken i guess cause that's relevant to the situation and it's at this point that i'm starting to really notice the holes in this screenplay almost every single conversation between arthur and another character up to this point has been exposition your half-brother king orm is about to declare war upon the surface world the gateway bridge is a remnant of the old world it's also the only way in or out i believe it contains atlan's final message to his former spent his entire life underwater training to be a warrior her marriage to king orvex was arranged a long time ago so she had to marry him and bear him this movie crams a lot of exposition in and it doesn't stop after these first few acts either i get that exposition is necessary but it's not even good world building and if you haven't noticed the black panther parallels by now then you need to get your eyes checked because we have a scene where our hero fights for the throne before the halfway point of the movie and strangely enough i actually kind of like it better in this movie now i know i am like the resident hater of the black panther movie and i explained in that review how i would have liked for the first combat trial to just be cut so that the later one against killmonger is more significant having your main character do a battle for the throne three times in one movie doesn't really work for me so in this movie i actually kind of like it a little bit better and i know people are gonna think i'm a [ __ ] lunatic for saying that this movie is better than black panther but as far as the pacing of the story goes i gotta admit i'm kinda into it and yes i will let you guys send me to prison for that opinion but please wait till the end of the video i also just think this scene is more fun to watch like it's pretty stupid and it kind of embraces that there's this actually funny joke where they show oren and arthur's obviously biased stats there's an octopus drummer that's fun i'm into that and i've said this when talking about dc movies in the past but i just like the fight scenes in dc movies way more than the marvel ones even when they're stupid like in this movie they're still way more visually engaging than this i also really like that arthur loses this first fight one of my problems with black panther's narrative is that t'challa only loses when the script needs him to and we never really get an explanation as to why he loses the fights that he loses t'challa is shown to be this [ __ ] expert hand-to-hand combatant to the point where he can take on bucky and captain america at the same time but then he loses to killmonger because killmonger has military training this is your last chance throw down your weapons and we can handle this another way i'll have you know i graduated top of my class in the navy seals and i have over 300 confirmed kills this movie goes out of its way to explain that arthur is good at fighting when it's against normal humans outside of the water he's not experienced at beating trained atlantean super soldiers so it makes perfect sense that he gets his ass kicked i think i just complimented this movie way too much this movie's still stupid and a few decent scenes aren't going to change my mind plus now we have a lightning round of cliches to cram into this movie our hero gets his trusty iconic weapon broken so that he can get an upgrade later followed by a high speed chase scene and now for some reason the soundtrack has decided to turn into synth wave which is a more modern cliche but i'm gonna count it anyway anyway now aquaman has to go on a dumb indiana jones treasure hunt for the lost artifacts that will help him find the magic weapon he needs and this whole subplot feels really out of place so i guess we can now add fetch quest to the list of cliches i think i'm saying cliche too many times it's starting to sound weird i think i need to find another word for that hold on shibboleth i like that one we're gonna use that one next another thing that kind of annoys me with this movie is that aquaman is supposed to be shown as the dumb superhero the himbo superhero if you prefer but he only starts acting dumb in the scenes with amber heard halfway through the movie aquaman drops like 20 iq points there's one scene where he doesn't know that the pinocchio movie is based on a book and then right after that he's talking about the history of the roman empire his level of intelligence fluctuates constantly we continue our dumb treasure hunt where aquaman and the little mermaid must stand in the exact spot and use the secret spy glass to find the location of the secret weapon and then we get that moment where they look at each other and they almost kiss right before another [ __ ] explosion interrupts the scene i'm not kidding this is the strangest trend in this movie i kind of want random explosions to become the new superhero movie cliche sorry i meant the new superhero movie shibboleth now i gotta say i actually do like this action scene even if it comes out of nowhere and features a useless character i actually really like the camera work during action scenes like this because this director really uses the camera in dynamic ways that allows us to see everything in the fight part of filming a good fight scene is balancing visual clarity with exciting camera work and that's why fights like this are really bad the action scenes in this movie are kinetic and they utilize the environments really well also i've said before i like scenes of superheroes saving people so aquaman saving this little girl by tackling debris like a linebacker is exactly the himbo superhero energy that i wanted out of this movie the one thing that i really can't criticize too heavily in this movie is the action it usually works for me like i said whenever there's an action scene i almost start to think that i like this movie but i don't okay i know it sounds like i like this movie but i don't like it okay i promise now this fight scene actually ends in a pretty funny way i joked before about how aquaman [ __ ] decimated black manta's dad and in this scene black manta gets even more [ __ ] up why would you kill him like that and that's it that's the last time black manta is going to do anything in this movie i'm glad he was included in this film what an iconic and beloved character after this fight we actually get another cool scene where these lovecraftian monsters attack our heroes and i like weird conceptual [ __ ] like this i also really like how the lovecraft aspect is teased earlier in the movie like this doesn't come out of nowhere and now out of nowhere we have actual cool shots hey that's pretty good i really like what's going on here now is this like a different movie and then they go into like this really cool prehistoric alternate ocean dimension this is actually cool world building finally after constant waves of cliche [ __ ] we get some unique original ideas wait a second do i like this movie no no no no i do not like aquaman this movie's stupid you can't change my mind stop trying to change my mind so now aquaman is in the magic ocean dimension and if you guys haven't seen the movie this is a huge spoiler okay his mom is alive the prophecy is true [Music] so she tells arthur that he has to go do his hero trial to earn the magic weapon and in order to earn this weapon he has to face a fearsome monster no no go away this is an original movie get out of here however it's actually pretty interesting how arthur passes this little hero's journey test the giant monster comes in and it just starts talking mad [ __ ] and everything seems insurmountable and scary and it starts kicking his ass but then it's revealed that normally people can't understand the monster because they don't speak fish language you understand me i do this is actually a creative way to have him pass his cliche heroes trial i mean shibboleth heroes trial okay no that word just doesn't work i'm not saying that anymore this scene puts into account arthur's personal abilities and i like that he wins without using the brute strength that he's relied on this is actually kind of cool do i like this movie no no i don't like this movie i have said for years that this movie sucks i stood by it i'm an internet reviewer we are not allowed to change our opinions it's against the youtubers code if i change my mind now on a movie that i have previously said is bad i will be exiled by the council see look his new costume is dumb it's goofy and ugly the movie's bad in fact i'm actually gonna say that all the costume design in this movie is pretty stinky she looks like a stupid sci-fi little mermaid aquaman looks like his suit was bedazzled and these guys look like yeah so anyway arthur passes his test and oren is now suddenly in a war with crab people i feel like we missed a scene where did this epic battle come from i think the screenwriters went down their hero movie checklist and realized oh dang it we didn't cover the epic battle scene yet like who the [ __ ] are these crab people this is our first time ever hearing about them a few seconds before the battle begins we get the most minimal exposition explaining what's going on here doesn't it make sense for orn to stage the final battle against humans again if we just had scenes explaining the human side of the conflict and scenes further explaining why oren hates the humans outside of pollution is bad then we could have built up to a battle that actually makes more sense narratively anyway now it's time for the funniest line in the entire movie ocean master so now arthur shows up riding the kraken and he's like no stop fighting we must unite and to really get his point across he kills a few thousand atlanteans and crab people i don't know maybe he was right when he said that he would be a bad ruler at this rate there won't be anybody left to rule also i gave it a pass earlier but him being able to communicate with fish is something that i wish was fleshed out a little bit more in this movie they show us that he can do it earlier in the movie but nowhere in the countless scenes of exposition do they tell us that he's the only person who can do this because in this movie it's like his legendary secret ability but we don't find this out until it's actually relevant there's a scene earlier where he talks to a whale and amber heard just kind of dismisses it like it's not important i don't know i guess i just assumed it was something other people could do if they like learned how i didn't know it was unique to him until the kraken told me it was also amber heard has like water magic and i guess only she can do that but maybe not i don't know i can't tell nobody ever told me it's just weird to me because this movie wastes a lot of time on exposition and the stuff that might be significant is just ignored we have a million [ __ ] scenes reminding us that the person who controls the magic trident is the true ruler of atlantis they go out of their way to remind us of this at every opportunity and the trident could only be wielded by the strongest atlantean legend says the trident was imbued with the power to command the sea in this trident resides the power of atlantis it would unite all our kingdoms above and below it's true the half-breed wields king atlanta's trident he commands the sea okay i take it back that's the funniest line in the movie also if you look at this action scene it's like all of my praise from earlier is completely thrown out the window i don't even know who arthur is supposed to be fighting which faction of enemies is he fighting right now because it looks like he's fighting the lovecraft monsters but he controls the lovecraft monsters they're on his side now and now we have oh wait this actually looks kind of cool i don't know what's going on but i think my lizard brain just got activated i may not know anything about orn but as a viewer i still want to see arthur win and it's really cool conceptually that the rematch happens on arthur's term since the previous battle was shown to be stacked in oren's favor i like how all the water is used to show the force and speed of the attacks this is a movie where the characters use tridents for combat and i like that the choreography actually makes the trident combat pretty cool and then we have reincorporation of arthur mastering the technique willem dafoe taught him and even more reincorporation with arthur splitting oren's trident the way that horn did to him earlier yeah it's a really simple way to show that our hero has bested the villain but sometimes simple narrative devices are effective god damn it i like this movie this pisses me off because by all accounts i should hate this movie it is so by the books it's so i'm not saying that word but you know what i mean you can predict almost everything that's going to happen in this movie but it rips off so many things that it's kinda cute and endearing i don't totally hate this movie anymore it's stupid as [ __ ] but it's actually trying and unlike other bad superhero movies i've watched on this channel i actually really like some parts of this movie so does this movie belong with the rest of the worst superhero movies no not really sorry to disappoint you guys but this movie is kind of cute i like the dumb action i like the dumb love story but i admit the stupid [ __ ] makes it hard to watch this movie without getting distracted sometimes but i promise after this movie for realsies we are finally gonna get to the actual bad superhero movies the ones that i know i hate when i watched this movie for the first time i would have probably given it a three or a four but maybe i'm bored in quarantine and i just needed some stupid superhero escapism because this time i'm gonna give aquaman a very surprising six out of ten hey guys i just wanted to thank you all for watching the whole video this one took me longer than i expected so i hope you guys liked it i also want to thank everybody for supporting my channel and getting it to 1 million subscribers i am not a very sappy person so i'll just say that i really appreciate it and as an added thank you to my patrons every single patron that is currently donating to the channel is listed here for this special occasion usually we only put higher tier patrons in the credits but i wanted to thank everybody just this once and if you too want to be a patron just head over to patreon.com cosmonaut variety hour the link is in the description and over there you can find full uncut audio and video tracks for all of our cosmonaut picture show episodes and lately i have been dabbling in posting video previews before i release like full videos i'll put like just a little snippet on the patreon i did it with the warhammer video and i was gonna do it with this one but i kind of wanted this to be a little bit of a surprise for those of you who didn't know what i was reviewing yet lately the videos have started to take a lot longer than they used to because i've been putting a lot more work into them so unfortunately you guys do have to wait a little longer for the videos to actually come out but the bright side is that you actually get better videos at least i think they're better than they used to be what do i know i'm not the one watching them the next larger video is probably going to be a review for the avengers game and i also have a few smaller bonus videos i'm going to be posting next week so keep your eyes open for that um some other videos i'd like to do at some point are a video on one piece if you guys have been following me on twitter you know that i've kind of been getting back into one piece lately trying to catch up and i kind of want to make a video on why the manga is better than the anime we of course have some cosmonaut picture show videos that are in the works we have a few that we recorded a while ago and we just have them in the backlog but i wanted to focus on this series right now because i haven't done one of these in a while so yeah i did tease that i would be doing a rise of skywalker full review at some point and i've kind of been having a hard time watching that movie like willingly so once i can muster the strength to do that i'll think about doing that video again and as for the worst superhero movies ever made series i'm probably gonna do man of steel and batman be superman in one video because i don't think that i could do them individually i think it's better to just put them together but as you guys know warner brothers does not like when i make these videos and that's why this one is probably going to get delayed by a few days so you know it's up to them when they come out it's not up to me but keep in mind none of this is set in stone sometimes i just scrap videos if i work on them for a little bit and i realize that i'd actually don't really like the topic all that much i just won't bother anymore which is exactly why those infamous scott pilgrim and hollow knight videos never came out i actually worked on them and i realized that i wasn't really feeling it so i didn't make them at least with the scott pilgrim video i might end up doing that one day but it's not really a priority of mine oh and we've been working on that new merch that i promised forever ago so i'll let you guys know when that's ready the pandemic kind of slowed us down on our merchandise production but we're getting it sorted now okay so just wait for that also since we still have time to kill i'm going to go ahead and plug our podcast again we do a tabletop role-playing podcast called cosmonaut tabletop we play a dungeons and dragons campaign as well as a star wars edge of the empire campaign and you know what i gotta say it's pretty good so you should go listen to that you can find it on spotify google play and itunes and also i get a lot of people asking but i do actually stream a lot more nowadays on twitch over at twitch.tv cosmonaut underscore variety underscore hour lately i have been trying to stream with other content creators and me and dan have actually planned on bringing back our old podcast where we just used to talk about movies and shows and stuff but what we'll probably do is live stream that podcast on twitch and then post it online afterwards you guys seem to like when i do collabs with people go figure so i'm probably gonna have guest stars on that podcast pretty frequently but i'm still working on that we're trying to make sure that production of it is going to be as smooth as possible so we're doing a lot of prep work for it anyway that's all i have to say i will see you guys in the next video thank you for subscribing thank you for being my friend bye bye you

Channel: The Cosmonaut Variety Hour

Views: 2,909,747

Keywords: cosmonaut variety hour, cosmonaut, commentary

Id: fnGRjwAst7o

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AdCartoonEnthusiast]

I agree with Marcus’a commentary and it described exactly how I felt coming out of theatres. It’s a DC film that stopped trying to be dark and edgy and acknowledged as well as embraced the stupidity and campiness of the superhero genre which made it actually fun to watch.

[u/AKenjiB]

Seeing Marcus jokingly fight back against his changing opinion on the film was really funny but also a great element to put into the review. Sometimes people change their opinions on a film upon rewatch and there’s nothing wrong with that.

[u/DrivenTuna246]

You know, they do explain who those crab people are and the people Arthur is fighting at the end. And they do bring up the fact he can commune with fish. The scene where he was talking over (Mera?), she even asks “How are you even doing this anyway?” then Arthur replies “I don’t know. I can hear them sometimes and they can hear me.”