Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is a half-breed. His father was a human lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) and his mother the Queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman). When his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) decides to declare war on the surface he needs to rally the other ocean kingdoms to his cause so that he can be The Ocean Master. But Princess Mera (Amber Heard) and Vulko (Willem Defoe) have other ideas and insist Arthur should take his rightful place as King of Atlantis in Orm’s place. All of this whilst advanced pirate Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) wants Arthur dead.

Phew, did you get all of that? Just to be clear from the start, I’m a huge fan of Geoff Johns Aquaman run as part of DC’s New 52, a comic run of approximately 30 comics in the early part of this decade. I just didn’t expect them to try to squeeze almost every plot line of a roughly 700 page comic series into a 143 minute film! This is the sort of film that comic nerds will be excited to see has time for Dr. Shin (played by Randall Park with his typical brilliant humour!)

How much you like Aquaman will probably be a combination of a couple of things. Firstly, whether or not you are a fan of Director James Wan’s “go big or go home” attitude to film making. He is best known for horror films such as Saw and The Conjuring, but more recently did Fast and Furious 7 which is much more this films style. And secondly, how much of a stomach you have for overblown dramatics mixed with wooden dialogue. Think Flash Gordon.

So what’s good here? The imagery is pretty stunning. The worlds on display look like a mash-up of Avatar’s Pandora, Thor’s Asgard and underwater versions of Star Wars Episode 1-3’s cityscapes. Momoa is great fun as Aquaman. Physically imposing but pulling off the comedy really well. The faithfulness to the comics is pretty great too, The Trench are a brilliantly realised feral species of underwater dwellers and Mera and Arthur sport great versions of the comic costumes. And as mentioned earlier, if you are familiar with Geoff Johns comic run you should be able to spot quite a lot in here (he gets a story credit).

On the flip side though there are some big issues. The opening 10-15 minutes with Queen Atlanna meeting Tom the lighthouse keeper are pretty dire, with awful dialogue and an unlikely romance. Elsewhere there are some pretty terrible lines, but all credit to the actors, they are delivered with gusto. Black Manta also feels like an under cooked villain, perhaps one too many for the film? There is also an awful lot of grandstanding posing and superhero landings!

DC’s attitude to its superhero films are very interesting. This virtually disowns the Justice League movie, with literally one line referencing it just to let us know that this film takes place after that film. Otherwise this is solely in Aquaman’s world. There is a mid credits sting (nothing at the very end) that also only relates to Aquaman as well. So it will be interesting to see if Aquaman ever integrates with the League again.

Is this a good film? I’m on the fence. My head tells me no. That it’s too wooden and too overblown. But my heart says that Geoff Johns Aquaman rocks and this is a pretty good effort. And heck, everyone likes Flash Gordon now don’t they? And Aquaman even features a musical montage (it features pretty much everything!)