Aquamamma Mia! Here We GIF Again

Jason and Julian review the GIFs of the Aquaman Trailer

JASON

Well, Julian—here it is! The logo for Aquaman splashing you in the face! I wish the logo for Batman v Superman would come in after this and offer you a towel. One logo washes, the other dries. One logo always tells the truth, the other one always lies!

Julian, would you say you’re more of an Aquaman logo or a Batman v Superman logo? Or some kind of poly logofluid Batman v Superman v Aquaman v Jason v Julian logo??

JULIAN

Jason everyone knows that I’m usually a traditionalist when it comes to logos. McDonald’s, Ford, the Red Cross: I’ve always preferred my logos CLASSIC and DRY. But I’m learning something new about myself today: I like my logos w-e-t WET. Maybe it’s the record setting global heat waves, maybe it’s my commitment to raising awareness of ocean issues (btw you should be aware that the ocean has a ton of ISSUES), but I’m all about this Aquaman logo. Batman’s bat, Superman’s S, these logos are so dry, they may as well belong to the Shamwow. The only fluidity I want in my logos is when they’re covered in fluids, seawater preferably but lord knows I’ve spent more than my fair share of nights in the backroom of a seedy bar, getting fluids all over my personal logo. So there you have it! It’s a stunning upset for the many, many people who regularly follow my logo write-ups, but Aquaman’s wet logo has me dripping… with approval!

JASON

Here’s something we can all approve of, Julian: Aquaman being bullied at the aquarium.

Just wondering: does this shark intervene every time a kid gets bullied? Or is he only stepping in for his future boss? Obviously, he understands the concept of bullying. What is this shark’s deal? Also, sharks eat humans. But Aquaman is king of the sharks? But sharks are sharks, dude—and a shark loves to eat a human!

It would be like if a anthropomorphic pork belly sandwich (cartoon arms and legs, googly eyes, you get the idea) was also my king. And then I see the pork belly sandwich get bullied so I bang against the glass of the restaurant but I’m also like: I want to eat that pork belly sandwich.

And then an angel pork belly sandwich appears on one shoulder and says, “He’s a good king! He’s fair! Let him decide the laws of our nation!” followed by a devil pork belly sandwich who says, “may the only law be the law of HUNGER!” while clapping come barbecue tongs.

I dunno, Julian what do you think? Should we eat Aquaman?

JULIAN

Jason, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Aquaman is, how his powers work, the mental capacity of a shark, a shark’s natural diet, and my opinion of bullying. I’ll be the first to say it: Bullying? NO THANKS. That’s just not how things work in the aquariums of my America! The only person who should be bullied in an aquarium is whichever employee is responsible for whichever beluga whale dying that day and Aquaman would never be responsible for an animal getting killed. Unless of course he used his aquatic creature command power to put them in harm’s way, which now that I’m thinking about it, he does regularly. So maybe Aquaman deserves to be bullied? After all, I’ve heard bullying builds character according to the far-right Southern Baptist school counselors who thought it was fine when I was called “homo” in high school so basically what I’m getting at is I need to hear the tape. I need the audio to hear what’s going on here.

Should Aquaman be bullied? Probably not. Should we eat him? I’d have to hear the tape. Do we, as an audience, really need to see Aquaman bullied to understand him as a character? Absolutely not. But listen, it takes a lot of bench presses to go from a scrawny nerd in an aquarium to a jacked-as-fuck Jason Momoa sending already endangered sea creatures to die in a war they have no say in. Call me a homo all you want, Jason (actually please don’t), but I’m fine with whatever it takes to turn Aquaman into the hard-drinking, poorly-tatted, Mastodon-listening king of the ocean he is today.

JASON

Well here he is, Julian! All tatted up in a submarine and he’s kicking ass! You think it’s weird that Aquaman is also super strong? I do. He’s supposed to be able to commune with fish and swim around. Why would he also need to be incredibly strong? If anything the fish should be doing the heavy lifting for him. Where’s the fish army in this submarine? Like, put this Aquaman GIF out of your mind for a minute. Now I come up to you and say, “Hey Julian would you like to meet my friend who can telepathically speak to fish and has water powers?” Who would you picture, the head Dothraki from Game of Thrones or that fish man that got his dick sucked in The Shape of Water?

And where’s that anti-bullying Melania Trump shark? Aquaman is bullying the shit out of these Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six extras.

JULIAN

Jason, have you ever swum in the ocean before? It’s wild down there. Waves, tides, whirlpools, charybdises, you NAME it. You have to be able to outswim it. Jason, turn your head 30 degrees to the left and look at the Michael Phelps poster you keep next to your computer. Look at the musculature on that swimmy boy. That’s what someone who swims in a POOL looks like. So no, I’m not surprised that Aquaman is jacked as fuck. If anything, there should be a scene of Aquaman leading a geriatric water aerobics class and one of the old guys in the class says “if I start to look like that, can I call you later?” and an old lady in the class says “If you look like that, you can call me anything you want.” Then the old lady drowns herself to get CPR from Aquaman and when she’s revived she looks directly at the camera, grins widely, and says “I just had sex with Aquaman.”

You ask me if Aquaman should look like Khal Drogo or the fish that bakonged the lady from Paddington and Paddington 2. I ask you: why not both? Would it really kill the film to give Mr. Momoa some gills and a retractable dick sheathe? Imagine the benefit of Jason Momoa, wandering around, fully erect, when suddenly there’s an emergency. The sheathe opens, the dick retracts, and Aquaman goes about saving the world. Then, when peace has been restored, he returns to the pool at the senior center, the sheathe reopens and the old lady from earlier looks directly at the camera, grins widely, and says “I’ll have what sheathe’s having.”

JASON

Goodbye, goat! Goodbye, the ocean! Goodbye, water in general! Hello, linen shirt and pants! Is Aquaman skydiving into a Reiki healing class at Burning Man? Raise your goat hoof if you feel like we’re getting as far from the ocean as possible in this GIF?? Like put a bottle of Dasani in the shot or something. I suppose it’s possible an octopus or some sea creature is flying the plane.

Makes me wonder: If you could control an entire school of fish and fill an airplane with water could you theoretically fly a plane using the school of fish? Like make them form the shape of a pilot and work the controls?? Hell you could re-enact Sully if you had enough fish! You just have to find a fish who looks like Tom Hanks to be the head. Then you’d have to fill a courtroom with water and do the whole trial scene. “You didn’t land that plane right!” School of fish in the shape of Tom Hanks as Sully struggling to bang a gavel — you get the idea. Wait, was Sully also a judge? I never saw it!

JULIAN

You know, when I heard they were making an Aquaman movie, I thought “oh great, another ‘fish in the water’ movie” so seeing this clip has me relieved that Hollywood is breaking with tradition and going with a “fish OUT of water” movie. What you can’t hear in this clip is that, when Aquaman realizes he is plummeting into the desert, he utters his famous catchphrase “oopsie-doopsie, I jumpeded too early!” If he had only waited a few more minutes, the plane would have been over the open water and Aquaman would have plunged in gracefully like Michael Phelps if he was a diver instead of the other kind of Olympic pool athlete. Will Aquaman survive? And if so, how?

Maybe there are some lost seagulls stranded in the desert that Aquaman can summon. Is that how his power works? Does it extend to birds? What about cacti? Lord knows they’re just chock full of water. Does that mean they’re within Aquaman’s psychic purview? Can he just order all the cacti in the desert to shed their needles and throw themselves down forming a succulent pillow to catch Aquaman? I know that cacti aren’t animals, Jason, but what about the cacti from the Super Mario video games? You know, the ones with lovable faces that wriggle around and you can throw turnips at them to kill them. Are those animals? Can Aquaman control them? How many turnips would Aquaman need if those cacti decided not to obey him and would Aquaman even know what a turnip is? What about sea turnips? How about a sea cucumber? Those are animals so surely this would work!? Honestly, this GIF is raising a lot of questions that I don’t think the makers of Aquaman are prepared to answer.

JASON

Well, how about this turnip, Julian — here’s Turniphead, the villain of Aquaman, turning up in another non-aquatic location — the Uncharted series, from the looks of it. “I’ll kill you, Nathan Drake!”

They should call this movie Aquaman: Turn Down the Ocean. Get ready for water-adjacent adventure next to the high seas!

JULIAN

The ocean, eh. It’s overrated and overdone. We’ve already had plenty of films about the ocean: Splash, Captain Ron, um, probably some others. Now the land, the land is where it’s at! Think of all the great films we’ve had that take place on land. The Terminator, When Harry Met Sally, Citizen Freaking Kane! Nobody wants to see Citizen Kane flopping about in some maritime riptide! Rosebud was a sled, not a boogie board!

Now I’m not saying that Aquaman is the Citizen Kane of the DC Universe but, well, based on their previous entries, it certainly has the potential to be. Also, in this analogy, Batman v Superman is the Splash of the series, Wonder Woman is the Captain Ron, and Justice League is the All The Money In The World except Christopher Plummer should have been brought in to replace every single actor in the film. Anyways, in fifty years, when your granddaughter is a graduate student at DC University, writing her thesis “Aquaman, Captain Ron and the Shape of Water: Films That Make Me Wet,” you’ll wish you had been replaced by Christopher Plummer and that Rosebud WAS a boogie board because all the money in the world won’t help you boogie board away from the memory of your granddaughter getting all horny while defending her thesis.

JASON

Uhh if anything is the “Rosebud” of Aquaman, it’s the trident. Aquaman don’t need no sled, he needs a trident, okay? Did you see him clap back at that trident? Hey, it’s #clapbackthursday not #tridenttuesday. Weird that everyone underwater is carrying a big fork around with them. Like, everyone. Waiting on that oversized bowl of pasta to fall off the deck of a ship, I guess. Leaving your trident at home must be like leaving your phone at home, except your trident doesn’t turn up its microphone when it overhears you criticize Amazon. Does Aquaman’s world even know what Amazon is or have a shipping system? How do his fellow fish people send tridents to each other on All Trident’s Day?

JULIAN

If you thought buying things online was tough in our world, you won’t believe how it works in Aquaman’s. They don’t have Amazon.com; they’ve just got an Amazon. Basically any time anyone buys anything online, Wonder Woman has to drop what she’s doing, get in her invisible plane, fly to a distribution center, work 12 hours without taking a break or using the bathroom, box up the items, get back in her invisible jet, and drop off Sally Civilian’s instant pot in Sioux City. Then, if she’s not too tired, she’s gotta go back out to finish fighting Cheetah. And Cheetah’s just tied up in a golden lasso, laughing her little kitty butthole off, and when Wonder Woman is like “What are you laughing at?” Cheetah just says “You pissed yourself Wonder Woman” and it’s the truth! Because even though Wonder Woman is the only worker in this world’s Amazon, Jeff Bezos is still the boss.

Do you think Lex Luthor is ever like “Hey Jeff, do you think you could throw on a wig? We can have two billionaire CEOs with no scruples and a desire to crush the common man but you’re cribbing my look!” And then Jeff gets into his Kryptonite-powered exoskeleton but instead of fighting Superman, he just punches his employees for talking to one another. Look, all I’m saying is if there’s a vacuum of power in the Legion of Doom and they have to elect the most evil person to run it, I got a feeling Jeff Bezos is going to be sipping champagne while Gorilla Grodd is stuck doing all the manual labor and pissing his pants because there are no bathroom breaks. BUT WHERE DID HE GET THE GORILLA SIZED PANTS!?

JASON

Well Julian, we’ve come to our last GIF — we had a lot of fun here and we learned a lot about dry land. I feel like a goat in an airplane saying goodbye to all these Aquaman GIFs! Here’s a GIF of us elevating Aquaman GIFs to the status of high art. As usual, Aquaman is not only trying to leave the ocean but he’s taking a submarine with him. I just don’t think he likes being in the water!

JULIAN

Jason, if someone tried to park a car in your home, would you let it just sit there? Or would you use your superstrength to lift the car out of your home and fling it into the open sky? Case closed! Even the Honorable Justice Pilot Sully would have to dismiss this case from his floating airplane courtroom. Would he be happy about Aquaman then pushing his plane out of the Hudson River? Heck no, but from a legal standpoint, there’s nothing he could do! I may not agree with Aquaman pushing miscellaneous vehicles out of bodies of water, but I would defend with my life his right to do so. And in this way, maybe the REAL Justice League was the justice inside us all along!

Jason Mallory lives in Atlanta and considers himself the “Aquaman of La Croix”

Julian Modugno lives in Chicago and also considers Jason Mallory the “Aquaman of La Croix.”