Movie: Aquaman

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Way Down Deep

Plot Overview

Lighthouse keeper Thomas “Tom” Curry (Temuera Morrison) retrieves a water­logged woman washed up on his shore. She introduces her­self as Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) Queen of Atlantis, they make a (half-breed) baby boy Arthur, and her father's minions show up to reclaim her. As the boy (Kaan Guldur & Otis Dhanji) grows older he is tutored in hand-to-hand combat by vizier Nuidis Vulko (Willem Dafoe) and becomes quite the scrapper but a moderate drinker. His super skills, how­ever, enable him to acclimate to an aquatic environment and to talk to the sea creatures.

His younger half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) wishes to unite with three other Atlantean kings to wage a global war on the oblivious surface dwellers. Orm's betrothed Princess Y'Mera-“Mera”-Xebella-Challa (Amber Heard) breaks ranks with her own people to proposition Arthur (Jason Momoa), a.k.a. Aqua­man, to take the throne through mortal combat and preserve the peace. Things get messy.

Ideology

The worldwide flood of Noah has so permeated our collective psyche, affecting our writers, that it has shown up as an arche­type under­lying scads of movies I've reviewed. When “Aquaman” opens with a queen washed ashore, I picture Noah arriving wet on Mt. Ararat. Later in the story when her son Arthur & Lady Mera are flying over the Sahara in a cargo plane loaded with caged animals, I picture the ark. Yet at first blush the surface-dwellers' “myth” of the sunken continent of Atlantis does not seem to corres­pond to the biblical story of the world­wide flood. Noah and his three sons (with all their wives) were all that survived the flood, (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth over­spread.” Noah saved only his own house­hold (Hebrews 11:7) consisting of eight persons, but four or five of the seven kingdoms of Atlantis survived to evolve into the “highborn.”

And yet the main themes of the two tales bear a similarity here. World peace in the one instance depends on which of Atlanna's two sons gets to wear the crown. And Noah selects the prime leader from two of his three sons to make an integrated human society. To wit, after the Flood there was an incident, Gen. 9:20-22, where Noah got drunk on wine and was exposed in his tent in all his glory to his youngest son Ham who brazenly viewed him so. Noah's other two sons, Shem and Japheth, covered him up, Gen. 9:23. Ham had been indelicate, Gen. 9:24. Noah's curse has Ham's youngest son Canaan inheriting a position of servitude, Gen. 9:25. Noah's other two sons Shem, Gen. 9:26, and Japheth, Gen. 9:27, were blessed by Noah, Japheth dwelling in the blessed tents of Shem. Ham's generations would inherit the servant status, having lacked the delicacy of the other two who for their part were integrated for world peace under Shem embodying the Semites.

More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush. Cush was also a son of Ham (Gen. 10:6), settling in Africa. Cush is Hebrew meaning black. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62).

In Atlantis of old, “We became too ambitious, too hungry for power. … [T]he king's mastery of the Seven Seas made him so powerful, that the ocean became jealous, and sent a terrible earth­quake to destroy Atlantis.” Atlantis fell by its pride. In the Bible God sent the flood, because the earth was (Gen. 6:11) “filled with violence.” And yet the ocean too teems with violence, which threatens in the movie to engulf the world. As author Johan Theorin puts it for example, “dolphins are nowhere near as nice and peace-loving as people think. ¶Dolphins hunt in packs and often kill seals and other creatures” (86).

The order of Shem, the Semites, Jesus, having prominence over expansive Japheth for society's integration was peace­fully accomplished by Noah's word, but it was important enough to fight for in the fictional movie. Arthur being a surface-dweller was in a despised class from the perspective of the Atlantean highborn. But he a half-breed was surprisingly humble. As J.B. Mozley, D.D., in a sermon tells us,

[I]t is very well known that generally none are so unjust and insolent illusers of a despised class as persons lifted out of that class by favoritism, as Moses was; and trans­planted into the domineering or oppressing class from the subject and oppressed one. These persons are generally the very foremost in the work of illusage; and the very knowledge that the place in which they are is not their natural place, but that they belong naturally to the despised and illused class, makes them so much the more eager in illtreating that class as a sort of retaliation for their own disadvantage in being, in spite of them­selves, connected with it; and to show their great friends that the ties of blood have no hold on them. (184–5)

Aquaman though half-highborn had no compunctions against helping in the first scene the despised, surface-dwelling sailors on a Russian sub who were beset by pirates. His rescue, how­ever, ended when he forsook pirate leader Jesse Kane (Michael Beach), trapped by some equipment fallen on him as he'd tried to kill Arthur, in order to evacuate one remaining, crippled crew­man and then move all their life rafts out of the way of the sub's suction as it went under. Jesse's son David “Black Manta” Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) went on a vendetta against Aquaman when he saw that his dad's black life didn't matter so much. What gives with that?

Well, Black Manta's grandfather had chosen for his family a heritage of piracy; father and son were just reaping its rewards. A free­booter cannot by definition expect to be integrated into polite society, going to the head of the rescue line, now, can he?

Production Values

“” (2018) was directed by James Wan. It was written by David Leslie, Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall and Geoff Johns. It stars Jason Momoa, Amber Heard and Willem Dafoe. The cast seemed made-to-order. Nicole Kidman made an enchanting queen, Amber Heard a stunning princess, and Jason Momoa a muscular superhero.

MPAA rated it PG–13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language. It was filmed on location in New­found­land and Labrador, Canada. It's almost 2½ hours long. The special effects are over­whelming as in sensory over­kill. The pacing is relentless, the dialogue somewhat lame. There's an additional short scene that plays partway through the end credits.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This is a good popcorn, action movie. I'm not too familiar with the comic book backgrounds but didn't feel wanting. The action got so intense that after a while I just wanted it to be over. We all know who's going to win but we hope he will be a worthy sovereign.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed fun. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print. Software.

Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homo­phobia and Hetero­sexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.

Mozley D.D., J.B. Sermons Parochial and Occasional. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1880. Print.

Theorin, Johan. The Asylum. Copyright © Johan Theorin 2011. London: Black Swan Books, 2014. Print.