Aquaman ★ ¹/₂

After a shaky start with its DC Extended Universe (we’re looking at you, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Warner Bros. finally got it right with Wonder Woman, deservedly a smash hit when it opened in the summer of 2017. What a difference a year-and-a half makes. After the travesty of Justice League, now there’s Aquaman to sink the DCEU even further into the murky depths, no matter how colorful Furious 7 director James Wan has made the movie. With a bloated running time, the film is awash in fake-looking sunsets when the camera’s not dipping below the ocean to observe the war on Atlantis, the undersea kingdom that Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa)—the half-Atlantean “metahuman”—is destined to lead. But long before we arrive there, we’re “treated” to the umpteenth superhero origin tale, one that begins at a lighthouse on a rainswept night along the coast of Maine. Battening down the hatches, Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison) spots the female form of Nicole Kidman splayed on the rocks of the shore below. The actress, who looks about as ridiculous as anyone in her Atlantean costume, plays Atlanna, the renegade Queen of Atlantis who’s fled an arranged marriage only to fall into the arms of Tom. One Sigur Rós song later, she’s given birth to Arthur, who she’s forced to abandon, along with her husband, when her former life catches up with her. Arthur grows into a bearded, tatted dude-bro, the type of guy we used to call a “hippie,” only he communes with fish, rather than nature. All this, and he reels in a gill-friend (Amber Heard), too! It’s a shame his film stinks like yesterday’s tuna. (At Assembly Row, Boston Common, Fenway, Seaport, South Bay and in the suburbs.)