Fresh AquaMan Hot Take

I watched Aquaman today. Spider-Man will be on Saturday. 

Boy is there a lot to unpack.

It's certainly one of the most unique films I've seen in my life, and I'd like to believe that's saying something. I'd have to rewatch it if I want to articulate exactly what I mean when I say it's not quite like anything I've seen before, but it's a loooooooooooooong movie, so I'm not champing at the bit to see it again too soon. And it is a lot like things I've seen before, of course, like watching it I'm going, hey I understood that cinematic technique, I see what you did there, deal, but. It is a pretty unique dang thing here.

Like, TRON is a lot like Star Wars in a lot of ways, but it's the only movie that looks and feels like TRON, you know?

It's not so much throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, as, throwing everything at the wall and not caring if it sticks or not. And it is glorious. The director James Wan got his start in horror films, and people who started in horror are some of my favorite directors, because for some reason they just, first of all have the craft down pat, and know how to work with the artists and craftspeople under them, but also have really fresh takes on everything, know how to maximize the creative potential of any given property and any given scene. Peter Jackson. Sam Raimi. James Gunn.

Aquaman is also unique in that it's very much a product of its time. Like, it could only ever get produced now. This age of cinematic universes, and mass-scale special effects, and learning from what went wrong with other fellow DCEU films and what went right with other competing MCU films and just going gonzo at worldbuilding the way the Mummy did, RIP Dark Universe. While also feeling like the cinema of a decade ago, the Avatars and Dark Knights of the landscape, with 2+ hour runtimes and epic plotlines and dense worldbuilding (the thinking being, the longer the runtime, the more we can monopolize the movie screens, maybe put this movie on multiple screens in your cineplex if you want more showtimes, leaving fewer screens for our competitors. Business! (Show business!)) (Maybe they're doing it here because Aquaman is the only DCEU film to have come out this year, and so they need to cram this one movie to bursting with all the DCEU they can muster?)

And like there's no way this movie didn't cost a billion dollars to produce. Look at the hairs flow! CGI flow like that doesn't grow on trees!