Aquaman - The Success Of A Film

Hey you all, welcome back to the channel. And guys, today I want to talk a little bit about the Aquaman trailer we got here recently. A lot of people who watch the channel know this is primarily a cryptocurrency channel, but every so often we get a little bit of some of my hobbies and other activities and a variety of things that go on in my life. And so sometimes I talk about some cinema some gardening, some farming, various things like that. And obviously, number one, my love of cryptocurrency. However, um, special show for you comic book lovers today. We're gonna talk about this upcoming Aquaman movie, right? We had reviewed the first trailer we got, and now I just want to talk a little bit about— from seeing this trailer, wasn't just any trailer. This trailer was a 5-minute long trailer, uh, and I, I got to get a lot more to feel for this film. And so I'm gonna talk about why I think it's gonna be successful. So we know that, uh, DC has had a bumpy ride, uh, started with Snyderverse, Snyder's, uh, take on how DC should be led, and then it went on over to the suits over at Warner Brothers who oftentimes, um care about, you know, how much money a movie makes. And so a lot of this, I think the pressure was obviously trying to catch up to Marvel. Marvel had perfected these type of movies that they did, but I always kind of felt like Marvel had captured the success of doing a special type of movie with characters in the comics I thought would be difficult to pull off, and Marvel just would hit a home run every time. You know, I remember when the first Thor movie came out, I said, oh, this is going to be probably a little bit cheesy and corny, and, and that's— and in that point, even though it looked that way they were still able to pull off a great film directed by Kenneth Branagh. And, you know, he had been well known for doing Shakespearean movies, and I think that's why the Thor movies fell apart after that, because Kenneth Branagh had left. But he was big on doing a lot of Shakespearean films and directing them, and I could feel a lot of elements from his experience in those years ushering in over to what he did with the Thor movies. But the point I'm making is, whereas many of us have loved to have been entertained with the Marvel movies, Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as I've been, uh, I've always walked away from many of those movies and not really feeling a lot of depth of characters, right? And to their credit these were some very difficult characters to pull off. And, uh, you know, in the comics, maybe some of them, their storylines weren't that deep or compelling as well. But Marvel did a good job of loading up a lot of characters on screen when it comes to them working as a team and various things like that. Marvel is excellent at that. Where I always felt Marvel had kind of dropped the ball was when it came to a lot of character development and, uh, storylines and film. I, you know, I— to me, uh, a lot of what happened with Marvel was good acting, just good, just really good actors, and, you know, just the director being able to somehow gel this together. Uh, but they, they were really good at that. When DC attempted it it just didn't work. They were trying to rush it, it seems. They hadn't really been working on it. But for a lot of people who go, oh, you know, DC is crap, you know, the movies are crappy, and various things like that, I think what you have to keep in mind is if we go back, we go back kind of to the beginning, you go back to the first Superman movies back in the '70s, the Donner films, Uh, you know, that's— that was DC, that was Superman. And at that time, watching that movie, it felt like watching an Oscar-nominated movie. And what bothered me a great deal in the Snyderverse was that, uh, the Snyderverse version of Superman: Man of Steel, it didn't have that same feel. It didn't have that emotional spark. It didn't have that— didn't grab me, not even cinematically. It was just a lot of— well, some of it did. Some of it was good, actually. Uh, there are things in that film that could have been good, Man of Steel, uh, that were good. And, and there were things, elements I think messed it up. But, but, um, you know, I was convinced at that point that Zack Snyder didn't really fit into, into the, to the direction DC need to go into. So, so, so Let's fast forward now to Aquaman. I just thought all that was important to set up the legacy of DC, that they were the first to do films of superheroes that I thought had great storylines. They were the first people I felt to perfect superheroes on film. If that's not enough, we can go through all the Batman series, right? Even the Tim Burton ones from Batman, you know, Michael Keaton. Uh, to the Christopher Nolan, uh, Dark Knight, uh, films. And so you see there's a legacy there where DC could make good superhero films. So, um, you know, we want to kind of always go back there because I know DC's been getting killed a lot. And, um, you know, it's made many, many mistakes, a ton of mistakes, right? Uh, but DC, uh, to me were always good at getting me to invest in their characters, right? A lot of Marvel characters, I've kind of liked watching them on screen, but I've noticed I haven't got heavily invested in them, with probably the exception of Black Panther. Now Black Panther to me was the only real, uh, Marvel film that contained all of those elements. I thought Black Panther did a really good job of that. And to me, Black Panther was on the level of the legacy of the writing of DC. Now, the writing— I'm saying the writing, not the directing, but the— and so, um, yeah, and so, uh, Black Panther is the exception to that. And I'm not saying Marvel doesn't do fun films, you know, and that they aren't there, they aren't exciting to watch. Like, you know, the last Avengers film, Infinity Wars, right? I thought that was pretty good. But I think DC is starting to find their groove again. I think they hit a home run with Wonder Woman. You know, I did like Wonder Woman. I think it was, I think it was it was going to be a lot of pressure on Superman, Man of Steel. It was just too many demands coming from too many places. They wanted him to be a badass, they wanted him to be the Boy Scout, uh, it was just— and everybody's, uh, they tried to satisfy everybody and they threw everything together. So then we had Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman Uh, it was kind of really our first time seeing her on the silver screen, and so that was exciting. Same as like what we're getting with Aquaman, right? And so that, that was building up. We want to know more about these characters and we want to see them transition over to, uh, live action. And so with Wonder Woman, um, you know, she, um, they did a real good job of giving us a history of Wonder Woman, her origin story, and, and it was a, it was a, it was It was a great time period it was set in, and I just thought that they, they, they hit a home run with that, uh, and I thought they did a great job, uh, with Wonder Woman. And so now we're at Aquaman, and what I'm seeing with Aquaman automatically is that it has many similarities to Wonder Woman, right? Uh, DC seems to be very good at these standalone films. And I think what DC should do in this particular case is that they should stick to that. I think— I don't think they should try to keep up with Marvel. I don't think they should see Marvel's success with something to try to copy that. I think these standalone movies are the best. I think I would much rather see DC have me focus on one character so I can, I can understand and be invested in that character. Than how Marvel has managed a successful recipe on how they do what they do. So, uh, so if you've seen the 5-minute trailer, uh, which many of you probably have, you, you already know that, um, you know, it's— we're not sure what the time frame is this happening, but it's obviously when, when, um, Aquaman Arthur gets recalled back to Atlanta I don't know if he goes there, uh, because he's asked to come there or he just kind of finds his way there, but either way, um, you know, it— we can, we can see that, uh, it's setting up to be this very, uh, interesting, uh, uh, origin story as well as a journey of him becoming this hero. Um, and of course we get to see the scale armor here, uh, the, the Aquaman scale armor, um, from the comics, and it looks great. It looks awesome, and I was excited to see that. Um, but I'm not going to do a trailer review on it, you know. Uh, that's what I'm trying to avoid to do. I don't want to do the trailer review so much, uh, because I've already done a trailer review. As much as I just want to talk about why I think this Aquaman movie will be successful and it's starting to get DC back on the proper path I think it should be on. Still don't know what's going to become of Superman, but I'm going to be happy now exploring Aquaman's story here. Interesting enough, Marvel's going to release a Deadpool movie the same time as this Aquaman film. That's something that they love to do. Uh, they, they love to do that. They love to toy with DC that way. But I think they're gonna fail. Uh, I think they're gonna fail because this, this— what I saw in this 5-minute trailer, it really captured me, right? We got to see, uh, just some great shots. And, and that came from, um, James Wan, who does the— did the Fast and Furious movies. And in the beginning, when he used to make his transitions into other movies besides those Fast and Furious movies. I used to be like, well, I don't know if that's gonna work. I wasn't a big fan of the Fast and Furious movies, and I know I don't, I don't know if he's gonna know how to direct these actors in certain ways. But from what I can see in this trailer, this 5-minute trailer, he looks like he's doing a real good job of directing as well as the camerawork. Now, you know, obviously he's a prodigy with that camera. He has some awesome shots, some of the best I've seen in a superhero film. But, uh, I wasn't sure about how his directing work because I believe he was the same person, if I'm not mistaken, who did the Star Trek Beyond film. And some people like that. I wasn't a big fan of that. I think that's probably the first Star Trek film I fell asleep— I start to fall asleep on. And that, that's really weird. Um, I didn't think it was bad. I just— it just wasn't— it just didn't capture me. Um, and so, uh, I was a little bit iffy about that, but I think this is going to work well. I like how Jason Momoa is being Jason Momoa. Sometimes I think what happens with actors are they try so much to become into this role that it doesn't feel— seem natural anymore, that there is a natural acting going on. And Jason Momoa, it's just— it's kind of like Jason Momoa's Aquaman Aquaman, but it's working. It is, you know, it seems to be working and it seems to be natural. I, I especially like that last part of the trailer where he's asking, uh, Mera, what can be greater than a king? And she goes, a hero. And then of course we get to see him walk out his scale armor, uh, his traditional comic book Aquaman armor. And so I think this is going to be a great movie, guys. Uh, I didn't want to like do shot-to-shot trailer reactions. I don't I don't like to just do trailer after trailer after trailer after trailer, but I just— and I'm not gonna do that. And they're probably gonna release one more before Christmas, but I just want to do this video in closing about Aquaman until I get to see it and do the review, hopefully. But I wanted to, I wanted to just say that I do think this is gonna be successful. I have a pass of predicting some movies as being successful. So far, I think I've done pretty well. Predicting them. Well, I take that back. I predicted that the— it wasn't a movie, so maybe I'm half safe, but it wasn't a movie. If you go back in my history, I predicted that the Star Trek television series, Star Trek Discovery, would be great, would be probably one of the best Star Treks. And I apologize on that one, guys. I couldn't have been more wrong on that. I do think season 2 is gonna be I think they learned a lot from season 1. I think season 2 is going to be pretty good. I'm going to tune in for that. But I just struggled through— I was just— the kind of money they invested in that. Some people like it, some people don't. But, uh, anyway, guys, I think Aquaman is going to be different. Why? Because it's a standalone movie. We've never seen Aquaman, uh, on the silver screen before. We've been wanting to see that. We've been excited to see that. Um, it's got a great story. It's, it's got a very similar story. It, it feels like if you look at Aquaman, right, this is another reason I think it's going to be good, because for some reason these stories don't, don't play out. But if you look at Aquaman, he's battling his brother for the throne. You go to Black Panther, he's battling his cousin for the throne, right? You go to Thor, he's battling his brother basically for the throne. And it's always this Shakespearean type mold to it. And he— and, and the hero on the Discovery, to be a hero, to be a king, to be both. And so it's got that elements, and a lot of us love that type of, uh, that type of film. And so it's gonna be good because of that. It's gonna be good because the cinematography, I think, looks awesome. Uh, it just— it looks fantastic to me. I, I just liked how it looked. And I was always wondering, I was like, how are they gonna do these underwater scenes? Because, uh, from Batman v Superman when Bruce Wayne gets the taste, you kind of see Jason Momoa looks like he's in a little lake underwater. His eyes are flinching a lot like he's not used to water. He kind of takes his trident and hits the camera. And so, uh, I said, okay. And so I don't think I— you know, so obviously these, the scenes when we get the CGI in there and the various things, it looks pretty darn good. And Black Manta looks awesome. And we're going to get to see you know, him deal with Orin and all the Atlantean technology and the history of Atlantis. So anyway, guys, that's all I want to say about this Aquaman film coming out. I like it. I like what I'm seeing. I did make the Wonder Woman prediction. I think I got the Wonder Woman thing right way back when. So we'll see what happens, guys. See if I'm right. I hope I am. I don't think Deadpool will be Aquaman at the box office, even though they're— Marvel's releasing it the same day. Guys, that's all I wanted to say. If you like content like this, don't forget to like, subscribe, and until next time, take care.