Aquaman: One of the few great DC Extended Universe movies comes to Netflix

REVIEW: Jason Momoa’s Aquaman is a half-son of Atlantis, raised by his landlubber Dad (Temuera Morrison, getting in a gag about cooking some eggs with one of his very first lines) after Mum – an Atlantean princess, played by Nicole Kidman – is taken back to her watery kingdom for the crime of falling in love with our Tem.

Momoa is a hugely talented comic actor – and he brings a playfulness and enthusiasm to this film which keeps it bubbling along, despite the tiredness and predictability of the plotting.

A support cast filled with terrific character actors helps a lot. Patrick Wilson is bland and unmemorable as Momoa’s brother and foe, but Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen (The Get Down) and – no, really – Dolph Lundgren all act like they’re more than happy to be onboard.

I watched Moana again a few nights after I first saw Aquaman, so maybe I was in the right space to make the connection, but Momoa’s Aquaman reminded me a lot of Dwayne Johnson as the animated Māui in that film. Momoa brings the same mischievousness, comedy preening and enjoyment to the role.

Unlike so many comic book heroes, Aquaman isn’t an orphan looking for vengeance and redemption, he’s a man with a home, a family and a reason to be cheerful.

Or, as Momoa plays him, a Pacifika demi-God, with a shark tooth tatau adorning his arms and chest and a pounamu the size of your Mum’s meatloaf around his neck.

This Aquaman isn’t the Nordic or Viking figure the comics once featured. He is explicitly Tangata o te Moana. And recasting the character as a god of the world’s actual greatest sea-farers and explorers really brings this old material back to life.

Aquaman does everything we expect a big-budget superhero movie to do, but it also remembers to have a heart, a sense of humour – and to give us a real reason to cheer him on. Bravo.

Aquaman is now available to stream on Netflix.