What went so right?

she did method acting with Johnny Depp, to practice for her fight scenes.

Honestly they just did a decent adventure packed origin story over a rehearsal of dark and broody origin stories.
The adventure part is what sold most people, as a DCfag what drove me in was Black Manta just because I love that asshole in almost all his appearances.

China bucks are a weird topic, everyone pander to them as some untapped market, they can try the praise China transformers approach, the CGI trademark that sells well on brand recognition or the less successful "muh diversity" approach.

Aquaman did the second and it did it well, it is a popcorn 7/10 flick by all means but I consider it a return to form on the freaking hero journey and by God that shit was refreshing, we have had a lot of movies either avoiding it or subverting it while trying to be more serious that I honestly forgot we could have a fun popcorn super hero adventure, especially coming from DC.

In China it did well, to be honest the worst sins you can make on the Chinese market is to make a boring propaganda film or have ugly actors, they are paying to see pretty people doing cool stuff, researching the rise of the Baizou phenomenon taught me that.

If you want china bucks make an action adventure with hot chicks and buff dudes, they are OK with blacks as long as they are "handsome" but by God don't try to pander to China with an empowered manly woman or an every girl, your movie will fail if you misscast for the Chinese market.

It had no competition in December. There was no Star Wars film. Bumblebee lost because the Transformers brand was still recovering from Bay and TLK. Spiderverse wasn’t Pixar or Disney so Parents didn’t drag their kids to see it fifty times. And Mary Poppins is Mary Poppins (seriously, did anyone expect bloody Mary Poppins to make a billion dollars? That’s like making a sequel to Bedknobs and Broomsticks and expecting a billion!). It came out at the prefect time. Also the trailers made it look cool.

Though I am afraid for Shazam. He has to go up against Pet Semetary which is riding off the high started by It. And Avengers Endgame is close after that. WB should have moved Shazam elsewhere like July or June.

>Pick an attractive actor
>Drop the retarded DC grimdark.tm
>Remember to turn the brightness up
>Copy Marvel's comedy / light hearted way
>?????
>Profit

For real though, the movie was just decent at best, around 7/10. Nothing too outrageous Still better than Captain Marvel

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Because James Wan is actually a good director who can make a fun movie that doesn't attempt to simulate suicidal depression like every other DC movie.

>Aquaman
>Anything but outrageous

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>propaganda film
Chinese people LOVE propaganda films. Why do you think there are so many chinese mythology films and maybe like a dozen or so Monkey King films? Hell, a Monkey King film topped their box office maybe a few years back? They are all supported by government funding.

Are you completely oblivious? Captain Marvel just made over a quarter of it's earnings from China and most MCU movies have special added scenes just for them.

Comparing DC films to Marvel films isn't really the greatest defense you got there bud, especially high grossing ones in China like Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron

They've realized that instead of trying to be original it's easier to just copy MCU.

>relying on the Chinese
Aquaman made over 845 million without China

Blackwashing sells. If in BvS Batman was maori and Superman was black, they'd get bunch of Oscars, and not only because of costumes.

Plenty of chinese live outside of Mainland

There's a difference between 'look at this ancient folk tale brought to life in a spectacular fashion' and 'look at this ugly girl be better than all your favorite characters for no reason.'

The Chinese consumer doesn't give half a shit about gender politics, female empowerment, trans representation, or any of the other political soapboxes Hollywood keeps trying to climb onto in order to try and appeal to a market that doesn't consume their product. They want their heroes to be beautiful, their women to be gorgeous, their elders to be dignified, and the action to be spectacular. Once the entertainment industry realizes that they don't have to kow tow to a vocal minority of screeching harpies parroting opinions they got off twitter, they'll be back to form and we can have movies again, not political statements.

As a side note, I really liked the music and sound design in Aquaman. And I was surprised to see so many HP Lovecraft references in the movie, it worked surprisingly well.

It didn't do much for me. I actually really liked Batman v Superman and found everything to come out of the DCEU ever since pretty garbage. I somewhat respect Aquaman for trying to find a compromise between Snyders gothic, painterly visuals and all the people calling for something that's lighter and more colorful ending up with something that's obviously meant to resemble a 70s Prog Rock album cover but the overreliance on CGI makes it look tacky as hell.

The story is okay, I guess, it's pretty much a King Arthur movie but it came out feeling more like a slighty better version of Black Panther. Also, Amber Heard wasn't a compelling love interest at all. She was a stuck up bitch.

I want to breed amber heard and put that bitch in her place.

Movie was shit.
Another example of media shoehorning a black man with a white female love interest. Brainwashing countless young white girls into wanting to fuck blacks.
Meanwhile you'll never see a white male with a black female love interest. It's considered raping their culture if they did. You saw this in into the spiderverse, bunblebee and countless others.

Lack of competition and China's love of shitty movies

Good luck getting another DC movie to get anywhere close to a billion

>Meanwhile you'll never see a white male with a black female love interest

It is because black females arent attractive

why would that matter when they got everything right anyway?

i like how they make the costumes
i'm glad they didn't change size of Black Manta helmet and gave waterboy his shiny gold/green suit at the end

>And I was surprised to see so many HP Lovecraft references in the movie, it worked surprisingly well.
because chink wanted to make HPL movie his whole life but nobody gives him opportunity to do so

It...was it good? Seemed like a 6/10 for me. Heard was awful and Momoa was just GRUNT BADASS WHOO HOO.

People expect an Aquaman movie to be 2/10. So a 6/10 is surprising.

>Heard was awful
we're talking about the film