eyes tend to glaze over in superhero movies—typically, as the villain goes nuclear and a portal to another dimension opens, threatening to destroy the planet—Wan unleashes a massive deep-sea battle on par with The Lord of the Rings." Germain Lussier of io9 wrote "Aquaman is all about spectacle. It's filled with ambition. It's always about trying to put the coolest, most imaginative sequence on screen at every single turn of the story, no matter what the cost." Writing for TheWrap, William Bibbiani called the film "a weird and wonderful superhero adventure that strives—and almost succeeds—to be the most epic superhero movie ever made." Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film out of 5 stars, praising Wan's ambition and Momoa's performance but criticizing the plot and dialogue, writing: "Aquaman is a mess of clashing tones and shameless silliness, but a relief after all the franchise's recent superhero gloom." Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly graded the film a C−, writing, "It can't decide if it wants to be silly or serious—a superhero movie or a parody of one...Unfortunately, the bloated, waterlogged film is loaded with crummy CGI, cheesy costumes, and groaner dialogue delivered by actors who are too good to traffic in such nonsense". For the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4, criticizing the film's script and Wan's direction, saying, "Watching this movie is like spending two hours and 27 minutes staring at a gigantic aquarium full of digital sea creatures and actors on wires, pretending to swim." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave Aquaman three-and-a-half out of four stars, positively comparing the film to SpongeBob SquarePants in its lack of concern for scientific accuracy, along with praising the treatment of characters crying as "a normal byproduct of pain or joy" instead of "a shameful loss of dignity". Seitz stated that "It takes skill to be as ridiculous as this movie.... [Aquaman]... feels simultaneously like a spoof and an operatic melodrama. Any film that can combine those modes is a force to be reckoned with." Accolades Sequel In December 2018, it was reported that Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich had the studio start developing a sequel. Discussions of a follow-up film had begun during post-production, when director James Wan stated to TotalFilm that the first film purposefully left room for further stories. Jason Momoa told Syfy Wire that he had the beginning