Let’s begin with a spoiler-free review of Aquaman. It’s not going to be very long. Ready? Here goes: Aquaman is like a fight at the dinner table, a pimple-popping video or The Bachelor: It is not fun to watch, but it is very fun to talk about. Aquaman is bad, but there are so many completely incomprehensible and totally mind-numbing things about it that it demands to be discussed in minute spoiler-y detail, so that’s what we’re going to do.
*spoilers below*
Here are 25 Bonkers Things that Actually Happen In Aquaman:
1. Nicole “Academy Award-winning Actress” Kidman is in Aquaman. That’s INSANE.
2. They give Nicole “Four-Time Oscar Nominee” Kidman an intensely-CGI’d action scene. At the end of it she flips over a couch and hits a guy with a trident like Brick in Anchorman.
3. At the end of that action scene, I leaned forward in my seat, clutched my face in my hands, and for the first of roughly 45 times during the movie, I mouthed “what is going on.”
4. Jason Momoa, who plays Aquaman, makes his first appearance in the movie by breaking into a submarine with his shirt off. He has his back to the camera and he turns around like it’s just the two of you and he says, “Permission to come aboard?” and I swear like 15 women in the theater moaned aloud.
5. During an action scene that takes place on board the submarine, the fight makes it into a room that houses a bunch of nuclear weapons. Jason Momoa picks up one of the warheads and hits a guy with it. It doesn’t blow up, thank goodness, but what a baffling fight decision from Jason Momoa.
6. Oh, and the guy who’s hit with the warheads? He has swords that come out of his arms.
7. Oh, and Jason Momoa this whole time? Wearing a pair of soaking wet jeans. Brah, you’re a superhero who swims 95 percent of the time. Why are you wearing jeans??
8. Later in the movie, there’s a meeting between a couple undersea factions from the Lost City of Atlantis. One faction rides sharks and the other factions rides armored seahorses. The leader of the shark-riding faction doesn’t ride a shark, but one of those megalodon things from the dinosaur days. He’s the leader of the evil faction. The evil faction rocks.
9. Another action scene is a giant trident fight in the middle of an underwater ring of lava. Do not ask me how that’s possible because this was the 11th time during the movie I was bent over, head in hands, mouthing “what is going on.”
10. Aquaman uses a narrative technique called the “Interrupting Explosion,” in which a sentimental moment—a confession, a kiss, information very important to the plot—is interrupted by an explosion out of nowhere. Then bad guys come in and break everything up and the sentimental moment, the kiss or the special info is put off until later. There are four Interrupting Explosions in Aquaman. F-O-U-R.
11. Willem “Three-Time Oscar Nominee” Dafoe is in Aquaman. He appears in numerous flashbacks in which he is de-aged through CGI. It’s tied with “Nicole Kidman, Action Star” for the second-most bonkers use of CGI in the movie.
12. The first-most bonkers use of CGI in the movie goes to the parts when they had to animate legit anyone’s hair to make it all floaty underwater. Dolph Lundgren’s hair (yep, Dolph Lundgren!) receives the worst edition of this treatment.
13. Oh, and in this movie, Dolph Lundgren is a ginger for some reason.
14. There’s a bunch of crab people in Aquaman. They are called “The Kingdom of the Brine” and some of the crabs can throw fireballs.
15. One of the secondary villains in Aquaman is called Black Manta. He’s a black guy in a manta suit.
16. The main weapon of Black Manta is a giant laser beam that comes out of his eye holes.
17. Amber “Zero-Time Oscar Nominee” Heard is in Aquaman. At one point she’s fighting a guy in a wine cellar and she uses her Atlantis powers to draw all the wine out of the bottles, form them into wine spears, and hurl them at the bad guys. She kills like three people doing this.
18. At one point, Jason Momoa and Amber Heard are running from the bad guys and they hide inside a whale.
19. At another point, Nicole Kidman learns how to drink tea.
20. At another point, an octopus plays the drums.
21. The best part in Aquaman involves a thing called the Trench—you know, that part of the ocean where the fish are blind and can, like, hear with their tongues or whatever. Jason Momoa and Amber Heard have to dive down there and they’re attacked by all these monsters, but they use a flare to fend them off, and it’s right then when the director of Aquaman, James Wan, decides he’s gonna stop phoning it in and do this really beautiful color thing with the red light and the darkness. It’s neat. A lot of people oohed in the theater.
22. There’s another place in Aquaman called the Uncharted Sea. Dinosaurs live there. When I saw the dinosaurs, instead of mouthing “what is going on,” I threw up my hands and said another phrase starting with “what” that would probably make you upset to see it printed in RELEVANT magazine.
23. Near the climax of Aquaman—this is post-dinosaurs—Jason Momoa has to go find a special trident that’s protected by this huge undersea monster. The best way to describe the monster goes like this: giant hermit crab, but with tentacles, and a little Godzilla, plus a beak, kinda, and it can talk with its mind.
24. If you’re wondering at this point, “Yo, but does Jason Momoa ride that undersea monster into battle for the movie’s big final fight scene?” You bet your bottom dollar he does.
25. And if at this point you’re wondering, “Yo, but does that giant undersea monster rise up out of the ocean at the end of the movie, roaring in triumph, while the sun flashes behind him and the movie goes in slow motion as if to say, ‘look at my beautiful sea monster?’” The answer is also yes, yes it does. I was clapping at this point. I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. That’s what it was like going to see Aquaman.
