Aquaman was a vast departure from the DC Comics Universe (DCU) average, but it was nothing special.
The movie was blessed with a star-studded cast, including big names such as Willem Dafoe and Dolph Lundgren, and visuals were great, but the film got a bit tired towards the end.

The cast was, unfortunately, not used to its full potential; instead, the casting director focused the attention on casting the supporting roles rather than into for the main character, played by Jason Momoa. Momoa, to his credit, lends himself well to a superhero role, but he does so for all the wrong reasons. Mom normally has one character that he plays and adapts to each of his roles: the tough, funny, but harsh loner. This character clashes with any scene in which he needs to portray the bad romance between Aquaman and Mera, often having a “heartfelt” moment followed by ruthlessness.

The Computer-Generated Images (CGI) in the movie were completely over the top and not nearly good enough to justify the reliance on these effects. The CGI team spent months working on Aquaman’s hair alone, and I’m just not sure it pays off. The giant fish are acceptable, but they are nothing special.

Aquaman’s logic in this movie is completely unacceptable, however, often having the hero doing horrific things at the bat of an eye. Most glaring was causing the death of the Crab People kingdom, who were helping to fight King Orm, the villain of the film. They are all murdered by Aquaman during his entrance to this battle. Aquaman also releases Charybdis, a monster that has no problems with eating innocents and was trapped by the dead king, who was superior to Aquaman and still scared of the beasts.

Overall, Aquaman was an okay superhero movie, “leagues” above the normal DCU movie, but nothing to write home about. It was the last hope for the DCU franchise as it was preceded by many poorly-received superhero films. I think that with good direction, the DCU can salvage its movie universe with Aquaman as a cornerstone.