Welcome, one and all, to our coverage of HBO Max’s new three-part series, Aquaman: King of Atlantis! Let’s not waste any time and jump right into “Chapter 1: Dead Sea.”
1. Wait…this is produced by James Wan?
If I had wandered into this series, removed from context, I’d have thought this was the latest in a series of DC television products to prioritize humor. Teen Titans Go!, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and DC Super Hero Girls, along with many of the short-lived DC Nation shorts, all went the funny route for the tenor of the animation, and it has worked quite well for Warner Bros. Aquaman: King of Atlantis goes that same route, making the show almost entirely joke-based. That’s all well and good, until you realize that this is produced by Aquaman feature-film director James Wan, and is listed on its wikipedia page as ‘stand-alone sequel’ to the film.
Wait, what?
Aside from giving Aquaman a darker complexion than his comic counterpart, there is almost nothing in this book to suggest that this is a sequel to the Aquaman film. Sure, it has Vulko and Mera and Ocean Master in it, but so does every Aquaman comic. The characterization and voice acting is totally removed from the film, and while the film had a little humor in it, this humor has more in common with, well, anything, than it does the bro-humor of Aquaman.
Now, again, this is not a bad thing. This series should be its own thing with its own tone. Perhaps Wan has a clause in his contract that he is a de-facto producer on anything DC does with Aquaman outside of the comics for a period of time, and the ‘stand-alone sequel’ talk is just Wikipedia being dumb.
2. 45 minutes? But I want it now!
My biggest beef with this series is the 45-minute runtime. Yes, I know it is only 3 episodes, but for a show with this tone, a little goes a long way. I’m not saying it necessarily has to be Teen Titans Go‘s 11 minute runtime, but even 20ish minutes would’ve been a much more pleasant sit-through.
3. Tom Lennon should voice everything
The voice cast here is led by The Walking Dead‘s Cooper Andrews as Aquaman and Community‘s Gillian Jacobs as Mera. But the star is Thomas Lennon as Vulko. If you don’t know Tom Lennon than you didn’t grow up watching The State on MTV, or Viva Variety and Reno 911 on Comedy Central. Lennon is a comedy mainstay who walks a fine line, presenting Vulko as a stuffy bureaucrat but also a supremely likable character. It’s great; it is by far the best voice acting this show has, although Andrew Morgado as the evil, faux-Russian king was fun, too.
That’s not to say that Jacobs and Andrews weren’t good, as they most certainly were, but their performances, by their nature, are a little more subdued and less over the top as what Morgado and Lennon were able to do. Andrews and Jacobs aren’t trying to be Amber Heard and Jason Momoa, but they also can’t be so radically different that you prefer them to their film counterparts.
4. Time is (not) on my side
The entire episode is predicated on a divergence of time which is fairly easy to predict from the start, but works as a faux-cliffhanger going into the second episode. I don’t have too much to say about this, but it feels like it is worth mentioning, and will likely play a big part in the second and third chapters.
5. A familiar approach
The last note I want to share is that, while this isn’t the same portrayal or even the same humor, there is something very familiar to this portrayal of Aquaman compared to his portrayal in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. While the lonely, cheesy family man isn’t exactly what we see here, this Aquaman and the Aquaman of The Brave and the Bold do share a certain general goodness and positivity. It’s interesting that the most successful Aquaman adaptations are not, as Geoff Johns tried to do in his run on the title, a darker, more brooding Arthur, but ones that show him smiling and being not such a miserable prick all the time.
