Common Sense Media Age: 10+ Violence 3/5 Language 3/5
My Age Recommendation: 10+ (For some sci-fi action violence and mild language)
One of the first movies I have ever reviewed was the first Aquaman film, and I wasn't a huge fan of it. Now that the sequel has released, I was surprised to see that the Rotten Tomatoes score was a 35! I still wanted to see this for myself, and I have to say it's more like a 60 than a 35. The story follows Aquaman as he is now the King of Atlantis, however he is trying to keep the sea from waging war with the 'land-dwellers' and it is going nowhere. Black Manta has sworn revenge on Aquaman after he killed his father in the previous movie, and Black Manta finds the Black Trident and wants to use it's power to find the Lost Kingdom to destroy Atlantis and Aquaman. Aquaman has no choice but to recruit his imprisoned brother to hopefully stop Black Manta. Let me say, this was not terrible at all. It was a bit better than the first film since the acting is much better and the story is bit more clear, but there are some issues. The pacing was really fast and led to less impactful moments throughout the movie. The dialogue (and this was bound to happen) was riddled with cliches and sometimes corny one-liners, but it didn't affect the story too much. For positives, Jason Momoa plays Aquaman really well in this film, and the CGI (even though the internet hates it) was not bad at all. The story itself and the villain was a bit more established than the previous movie, and this made the action scenes fun to watch. I did see this movie in IMAX, and as I said before I am going to start reviewing the PLF (premium large format), if any, I saw the film in. IMAX definitely helped this movie since it was filmed entirely for IMAX (1.78 aspect ratio), and all the fight sequences and cool water visuals looked great in IMAX. I will say if you do not go to a real IMAX theater (check my movie format review on this site for what this means) then you will only see the film in 1.90 aspect ratio which is still smaller than the 1.78. The sound was also great in IMAX and it utilized the 6-Channel sound system really well. Overall, this was a decent and fun DC entry that should be seen in IMAX for the full effect!
