Aquaman Mid Credits Scene:
For most of the world, Aquaman is finally out for people to witness while the US has to wait for one more week. Although Amazon Prime users may get to see it 5 days before the official release. But for those who have seen the film can acknowledge the fact that this movie is surely a grand visual spectacle. It is just picture perfect even though the plot of the film is just a little better than what you may call generic.
WB seems to have finally understood what the larger masses want with these kinds of films. They are focusing on making movies that are supposed to let the audiences have a great time than actually endure boredom through the complexity of the film. It will not be too harsh to say that Aquaman is an awesome dumb movie.
In that category, it is certainly better than Venom, and probably every MCU Phase 1 movie other than Iron Man and The Avengers.
It was a good origin story come continuation of Aquaman’s story arc in the DCEU. A lot of things that Director James Wan brought into the film ended up working out pretty well. Patrick Wilson gave us a remarkable performance from what he had to work with.
Mera was awesome even though we would have liked to see a little backstory for her (but let’s let the sequels dive into that). The supporting characters including Vulko, King Nereus, Tom Curry and Queen Atlana were great as well. But at the end it was Jason Momoa’s charismatic performance that actually stole the show.
Another aspect of the film that was good was Black Manta. But the character was not without its problems. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gave us a pretty bad-ass Black Manta and his suit was pretty comic accurate as well. But the problem with his character was that the dialogue when he turned into Black Manta was super generic video-game-ish. Manta aka David Hyde’s character motivation to go after Arthur was delivered pretty well, as that story arc was set up right in the beginning of the film.
From Here on out, Spoilers follow so move forward by your own choice.
We get to see the Submarine sequence which is supposed to mark Arthur’s grand entrance as the bad-ass Metahuman. The Submarine here gets high jacked by Manta and his father’s pirate crew on the orders of Orm aka Ocean Master.
But then Arthur shows up to save the day, and at the end their fight leads to Manta’s father being stuck while Arthur being the only one left with a choice to save him. Arthur then elects not to do that, which results in making Manta his life-long enemy.
Things then lead to David Hyde getting a new Atlantian armor and weapons that he transforms into the Black Manta suit. The story then follows Manta to attack Arthur and Mera along with a bunch of Atlanteans, and we get yet another over the top amazing fight montage.
The long battle between Arthur and Manta leads to Manta being smashed and tossed into the Mediterranean Sea. Here we are lead to assume that Manta is indeed dead, but that doesn’t seem to be the case afterall.
As the film ends with Arthur being the new king of Atlantis, we are taken right into the mid-credits scene, where Black Manta is found adrift in the Mediterranean. It is Doctor Stephen Shin that finds Manta in a battle-worn stage with his head stoved in and the iconic helmet smashed. Later we see Dr. Shin helping Manta to heal. As soon as David Hyde wakes up, he finds Dr. Shin trying to figure out the Atlantian tech, which almost leads to his head being fried with the plasma beam from the helmet.
Dr. Shin then makes a deal with Manta that he’d tell him how he found this Atlantian tech, to which Manta agrees with a condition that Shin would help him find the Aquaman. This is played as a way to set up a villain for the sequel. So, the sequel to Aquaman could actually play out with the same villains. The story arc of Orm is certainly not done, and neither is Manta’s. Now, Dr. Shin has also come to Manta’s Aid, so there’s a lot of unfinished business.
For those of you who don’t know who Dr. Shin is, throughout the movie he is portrayed as a scientist who believes that Atlantis exists but no one is ready to be certain of that. At the end, he ends up being a step closer to finding Atlantis.
In the comics, Dr. Shin knows Arthur from the time when he was a kid as he is friends with his father Tom Curry. He even helps Arthur develop his powers, but later he turns his back against him as Arthur denies telling him the location of Atlantis. But it seems that the movie has altered the backstory of Dr. Shin.
A sequel for Aquaman is set up pretty well, and hopefully, WB will not take a lot of time to bring it out. Aquaman comes out in the US on December 21.
