Occasionally, I take a selection of my favourite toys and play with them in the bath, imagining that they are conversing and battling in a vibrantly computer-rendered underwater kingdom, swooshing them through the soapy bubbles which I pretend are a series of explosions or massive piranhas or something. The subsequent effect is far more satisfying than Aquaman, DC’s latest superhero instalment about a man who can command the oceans with his rod, and a film that openly suggests we should all just drown ourselves.
Partly set on land and partly set on sea, Aquaman follows the life of aquatic superhero Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), the bastard son of Nicole Kidman, who this film finally confirms is an ancient trout in human form. Having spent the majority of his adult life above water, Arthur is now summoned to the deep by a piece of lifeless seaweed played by Amber Heard, in the hope that he can stop his evil brother King Orm from waging war on the surface dwellers. But what the film is really saying is that, just like all the characters we see on screen, we should try our hand at living in the ocean, gulping in huge quantities of salty water until our lungs inevitably become flooded and all our worries fade away.
In the film’s exhausting 143-minute runtime, we see Aquaman and the piece of seaweed chased from Atlantis, where they then embark on a Phantom Menace-esque adventure, filled with clunky and cringe-worthy dialogue, to find a powerful trident that will help the good guy win. However, during one of the film’s many comatose-inducing sea battles, involving what should have been thoroughly entertaining crab people and gilled freaks, I could only focus on the floating bodies, drifting listlessly through the meaningless chaos and blissfully unaware that any of it was happening around them.
Let’s join them.