Aquaman

Do you remember Aquaman? Don’t be too surprised if you can’t. He’s not one of the more popular superheroes, he hasn’t really made many waves, even if he was created back in 1941.

At best, he’s been a supporting character to the really big guns like Superman and Batman. If you’re old enough (like me), you probably remember him as the guy in the orange shirt from Super Friends. But you probably don’t remember him doing much of anything. Heck, he often had to hitch a ride with Wonder Woman in her Invisible Plane. Batman’s spare seat in his pimped out car, helicopter, and jet was reserved for Robin the Boy Wonder. He’s routinely spoofed and lampooned for his lame powers.

However, the character has loads of untapped potential as this pilot shows. It’s clear that the writers had tons of big storylines in the works and were merely setting the stage so to speak as A.C. (the future Aquaman) discovered the truth of his Atlantean origins as well as explaining the secrets behind the Bermuda Triangle and his mother’s murder and disappearance. Learning how to use his untapped powers while being hunted by vicious Atlanteans and evading a secretive U.S. intelligence organization? I found it interesting enough with some interesting mythic and tantalizing mysteries thrown into the mix. The whole story came off as a modern day retelling of a fairy tale as the orphan boy discovers that he is in fact, a Prince who will become a King.

As far as actors go, the core characters of Justin Hartley (Aquaman), Ving Rhames (McCaffrey), and Lou Diamond Phillips (Tom Curry) gave all extremely solid and interesting performances. I thought that Denise Quinones (Lt. Torres) and Amber McDonald (Eva) weren’t quite as impressive, having mainly been chosen for their looks but they were competent enough.

I did think that Adrianne Palicki (Nadia) was a rather good villain, seductive yet also menacing enough but one of the few weaknesses in the pilot was that they killed her off too quickly. Considering how large a role she played in Aquaman’s past with the killing of her mother, I would have left her wounded but alive to return again to threat Aquaman. Of course, they might have reworked the whole thing and revealed that Nadia had been lying about killing his mom in a future plot twist and had just been trying to jerk him around.

The special effects were rather well done. I did think that the plane explosion though could have been improved but for the most part, the CGI parts were performed seamlessly and I rather liked Nadia’s morphing sequences. I didn’t notice any major problems with the camera shots either; sometimes you can see water beading on the lens of the camera during water shots but they didn’t have those kinds of mistakes here.

But what impressed me the most about this pilot was that they actually managed to do something that I long thought impossible. They made Aquaman cool. It was a real shame that they never had to chance to finish what they started and resolve all of those future plot threads that they left dangling. I genuinely think that if the studios had actually picked this series up, I would have watched it on a regular basis. It had genuine potential to be a good if not great series.

RATING: 3 and 1/2 STARS.