AQUAMAN

 

Publicity poster for Aquaman (© James Wan/Warner Bros Pictures/DC Entertainment/Cruel and Unusual Films/The Safran Company/Mad Ghost Productions/RatPac Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 11 January 2019, I visited my local cinema to see the DC Comics Extended Universe (DCEU) super-hero movie Aquaman, the sixth in this DCEU franchise, which was directed by James Wan and released in December 2018.

A decidedly hirsute, muscular Jason Momoa plays the, well, decidedly hirsute, muscular title character of this movie for the third time on film (see later), with Nicole Kidman as his exiled Atlantean mother Queen Atlanna – whose goldfish-swallowing scene unexpectedly recalls Diana from V: The Visitors for me. The storyline concerns a youth named Arthur Curry who is mysteriously able to communicate with sea creatures – but with good reason. For he eventually discovers that although his father Thomas, a lighthouse keeper, is human, his supposedly deceased mother Atlanna was an Atlantean, i.e. an inhabitant of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, one of seven such kingdoms in existence but all hitherto remaining unknown to our own land-living species.

Atlanna had been rescued from a storm by Thomas many years earlier, and had fallen in love with him, choosing not to go back to Atlantis but to live with him in the lighthouse thereafter instead, and ultimately bearing him a son, Arthur. However, Atlanna was not just any old Atlantean. In fact, she was of royal stock, and when armed Atlantean soldiers had abruptly appeared at the lighthouse one day to seize her, she had been forced to abandon her life on land with Thomas and Arthur, and return to Atlantis, in order to save the two of them from being killed by the soldiers. As if all of this is not already bizarre enough and bad enough for Arthur to comprehend, however, even worse is to come. For he also learns that once the soldiers had captured Atlanna and taken her back with them to Atlantis, she was summarily executed for disobedience.

Furthermore, Atlanna's other son, a full-bloodied Atlantean named Orm Marius (played by Patrick Wilson) and therefore Arthur's half-brother, eventually becomes king of Atlantis, after which, not only in revenge for what he sees as humankind's desecration of the ocean world by way of pollution and the killing of its wildlife, but also to secure for himself the coveted title of Ocean Master, he sets out to unite the other undersea kingdoms and launch a concerted attack upon our surface world and destroy it utterly. One of these kingdoms is Xebel, ruled by King Nereus, who is played by none other than good old He-Man himself, Dolph Lundgen. What a small super-hero world it is!

But who is there to put a stop to Orm's dastardly plans? Why, none other than what he refers to as his hated half-breed brother – Arthur. Trained by his mother's Atlantean advisor Nuidis Vulko (Willem Dafoe), who despises Orm and his unquenchable bloodlust, Arthur becomes a formidable warrior in the hope of saving his adopted terrestrial world from his power-crazed kin's wrath, and combines his human and Atlantean talents to such exceptional unified effect that he ultimately becomes known as Aquaman. He also gains an equally forthright companion in the very shapely shape of flame-haired rebel princess Mera (Amber Heard), daughter of Nereus and betrothed against her will to Orm. But for this initially uneasy, reluctant duo to be assured of success in their ultimate goal of defeating Orm Marius (and which, incidentally, would then mean that Aquaman would become the new king of Atlantis), they must also locate the magical Trident of Atlan, hidden for countless ages, and guarded by a truly monstrous leviathanesque abyssal entity named Karathen…

At the risk of being accused of hyperbole, I can say without any hesitation or reservation that Aquaman is not just action-packed throughout but also one of the most visually spectacular films that I have ever seen! It is par for the course nowadays to comment upon how amazing the CGI effects are in sci fi and fantasy films, but in Aquaman they are not just truly incredible, eye-boggling, and jaw-dropping, they are also astonishingly, indescribably beautiful, especially the outstanding underwater scenes in Atlantis – and particularly when viewed in all their full-sized glory on the big screen.

A majestic hippocampus (© James Wan/Warner Bros Pictures/DC Entertainment/Cruel and Unusual Films/The Safran Company/Mad Ghost Productions/RatPac Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Equally, this movie's heady and exceedingly eclectic mix of mythological marine beasts such as hippocampi and merfolk with prehistoric reptilian sea monsters and modern-day underwater fauna writ (very) large like gargantuan crabs, plus the colossal afore-mentioned Karathen (voiced by Julie Andrews!! – I kid you not!!), as well as a hidden world at the Earth's core populated by pterosaurs and diminutive non-avian dinosaurs, means that my cryptozoological cup did and will always definitely runneth over whenever I watch it, and then some!

Moreover, in February 2019 Warner Bros announced that an entire spin-off monster movie focusing upon these spectacular subaquatic life-forms was in development, provisionally entitled The Trench. Bring it on!!

I do wish that most of the principal actors and actresses in Aquaman hadn't mumbled some of their key lines, however, leaving me guessing at times as to what plot-driven exposition or sardonic quip had just been uttered. I can't help but wonder whether there is an exclusive Marlon Brando School of Elocution and Enunciation tucked away somewhere in Hollywood that all movie stars are required to attend nowadays, such is the prevalence of mumbling delivery in modern-day movies.

After a glut of Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) movies lately, it is good to see this DCEU super-hero outing, especially as it stars a character that previously had barely registered upon my comic book radar. A mid-end credits scene suggested that Aquaman would be back for more maritime - and terrestrial – adventures in due course, which is fine by me, as long as there are plenty more CGI monsters to look out for. And indeed, a direct sequel to this present movie is currently in the planning stages.

Also, DCEU fans will of course be well aware that Momoa's Aquaman had already appeared in two previous movies within this franchise – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), as a fully-fledged member of the Justice League's roster of super-heroes. However, his full origin story had not featured in either of these.

To catch a glimpse of the extraordinarily beautiful, exotic undersea realms brought so vividly and vibrantly to life in Aquaman, not to mention action a-plenty and spills that thrill (or should that be the other way round?), click here and here to view a couple of very dramatic official trailers.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

A selection of underwater marine humanoids (© James Wan/Warner Bros Pictures/DC Entertainment/Cruel and Unusual Films/The Safran Company/Mad Ghost Productions/RatPac Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

SAVING MR BANKS

Publicity poster for Saving Mr Banks (© John Lee Hancock/Walt Disney Pictures/Ruby Films/Essential Media and Entertainment/BBC Films/Hopscotch Features/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 21 April 2019, I discovered in time that a movie I'd long wanted to see was being shown on TV that afternoon here in the UK, so I made sure to watch it. The movie was Saving Mr Banks, the poignant, bittersweet Disney/BBC-collaboration directed by John Lee Hancock and released in 2013 that recalled the often-fraught, difficult working relationship between Walt Disney and Mary Poppins authoress P.L. Travers during the Disney Studio's production in the early 1960s of what turned out to be one of their most successful and best-loved of all movie musicals, Mary Poppins. This live-action/animation extravaganza of the most marvellous kind starred Julie Andrews as its eponymous practically perfect nanny, a role that deservedly won her an Academy Award as Best Actress.

As a lifelong Disney fan, I had already read a lot about the Disney-Travers conflict. So although certain aspects in this film were fictionalised in order to create more of a story, it is well-documented that Travers (her first name was Pamela), played stupendously by Emma Thompson, was indeed exceedingly fractious, stubborn, intransigent, and often jaw-droppingly rude both to Disney himself and to others involved with the film, including Richard & Robert Sherman, two songwriting brothers who went on to become among the most famous, celebrated composers in the history of film musicals.

Exceptionally, Disney (played here in a very avuncular manner by Tom Hanks) actually gave Travers script-approval rights in order to secure her agreement to selling the Studio the rights to her books for the making of their 1960s musical adaptation. In response, she certainly made the most of it, critiquing everything to an inordinate degree, especially the animated sequences that she particularly loathed.

Nevertheless, Saving Mr Banks ends in a somewhat upbeat manner, at the Disney musical's premiere, during which Travers is visibly moved by the film's portrayal of the children's father, Mr Banks. In real life, conversely, after seeing the film she allegedly insisted to Disney that Dick Van Dyke who played Cockney chimney sweep/pavement artist Bert be replaced and the animated sequences be deleted, only for Disney to point out that her script-approval rights only existed up to the film's completion, not afterwards.

What I never realised until watching Saving Mr Banks is that Mr Banks in Travers's original novels was actually inspired by her own father. In this movie, the Disney/Travers sequences are interspersed with sequences featuring Travers as a child in her native Australia, living with her mother and father, the latter of whom (played engagingly in this film by Colin Farrell) she absolutely adored (even her pen name's surname is actually her father's real first name, Travers), despite his being an incorrigible alcoholic who caused them to descend into poverty and her mother to attempt suicide before he died young of TB. Moreover, Mary Poppins herself turned out to have been based upon a great-aunt who came to stay and help her mother during her father's final decline - changed in the film to an aunt.

Most insightful of all for me, however, was the belated realisation that when Mary Poppins arrived at the Banks' home, it wasn't to save their children from their rebellious, unfocused lives. Instead, it was actually to save Mr Banks himself, from his inability to relate to his children (which had resulted in turn in their rebelliousness), thereby explaining the film's title and paralleling an extremely traumatic time, the slow dying of her father, in Travers's own life.

Altogether, Saving Mr Banks was a very affecting, thought-inducing, memory-stimulating film, one that moved me far more than I'd anticipated, not having previously been aware of Travers's childhood back-story. Certainly, this fine movie was definitely worth missing out on the unseasonably warm weather outside in order to sit inside and watch it.

I have since purchased the official DVD of Saving Mr Banks so that I can rewatch it and re-enjoy it all over again, whenever I choose, as I certainly shall do. Meanwhile, if you'd like a glimpse of what to expect from this magical movie, click here to watch its official trailer on YouTube.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!