On and off Screen, Aquaman’s Jason Momoa Fights for World’s Oceans

US actor Jason Momoa (R) greets UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for the Ocean Peter Thomson during the Youth and Innovation Forum at Carcavelos beach in Oeiras, outskirts of Lisbon on June 26, 2022. (AFP)
US actor Jason Momoa (R) greets UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for the Ocean Peter Thomson during the Youth and Innovation Forum at Carcavelos beach in Oeiras, outskirts of Lisbon on June 26, 2022. (AFP)
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On and off Screen, Aquaman’s Jason Momoa Fights for World’s Oceans

US actor Jason Momoa (R) greets UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for the Ocean Peter Thomson during the Youth and Innovation Forum at Carcavelos beach in Oeiras, outskirts of Lisbon on June 26, 2022. (AFP)
US actor Jason Momoa (R) greets UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for the Ocean Peter Thomson during the Youth and Innovation Forum at Carcavelos beach in Oeiras, outskirts of Lisbon on June 26, 2022. (AFP)

In superhero blockbuster Aquaman, popular Hollywood actor Jason Momoa plays the role of protector of the deep, but with the world's oceans under threat in real life, he is also taking the fight off-screen.

"Without a healthy ocean life, our planet as we know would not exist," Momoa said with the sea behind him as he took part in an event on a Portuguese beach ahead of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, which starts on Monday.

Around 7,000 people, from heads of state to environmental activists, are expected to attend the conference, which was postponed from 2020 to this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dozens of youth activists from various countries clapped and cheered as Momoa, who will soon become the UN Environment Program advocate for Life Below Water, spoke about the problems facing the world's oceans.

"We must seek to right the wrongs we have done against our children and grandchildren, turn the tide on our irresponsible stewardship and build momentum for a future where humanity can once again live in harmony with nature," said Momoa, 42.

Momoa is known for his role as Arthur Curry, a half-human, half-Atlantean character in DC Comics' Aquaman, which takes viewers to the underwater world of the seven seas. Aquaman 2 is scheduled for release in March 2023.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres joined Momoa at the event and apologized on behalf of his generation for not doing enough at the time to tackle climate change, save the ocean and protect biodiversity.

"Even today we are moving too slowly...we are still moving in the wrong direction," Guterres said, also pointing a finger at the fossil fuel industry. "It's time for these behaviors to be seriously condemned."

The ocean covers 70% of the planet's surface, generating over half of the world's oxygen and absorbing 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions but climate change is increasing its temperature and causing sea levels to rise.

Eleven million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year, a figure that's expected to triple by 2040 unless production and use of throwaway are reduced, multiple scientific studies show.



Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

More than six decades after Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a superhero team to rival the Justice League, the Fantastic Four finally get a worthy big-screen adaption in a spiffy ’60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism.

Though the Fantastic Four go to the very origins of Marvel Comics, their movie forays have been marked by missteps and disappointments. The first try was a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget 1994 film that was never even released.

But, after some failed reboots and a little rights maneuvering, Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the first Fantastic Four movie released by Marvel Studios. And a sense of returning to Marvel roots permeates this one, an endearingly earnest superhero drama about family and heroism, filled with modernist “Jetsons” designs that hark back to a time when the future held only promise.

“First Steps,” with a title that nods to Neil Armstrong, quickly reminds that before the Fantastic Four were superheroes, they were astronauts. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (a soulful Ebon Moss-Bachrach) flew into space but return altered by cosmic rays. “We came back with anomalies,” explains Reed, sounding like me after a family road trip.

They are now, respectively, the bendy Mister Fantastic, the fast-disappearing Invisible Woman, the fiery Human Torch and the Thing, a craggy CGI boulder of a man. In the glimpses of them as astronauts, the images are styled after NASA footage of Apollo 11, like those seen in the great documentaries “For All Mankind” and “Apollo 11.”

But part of the fun of the Fantastic Four has always been that while the foursome might have the right stuff, they also bicker and joke and argue like any other family. The chemistry here never feels intimate enough in “First Steps” to quite capture that interplay, but the cast is good, particularly Kirby.

In the first moments of “First Steps,” Sue sets down a positive pregnancy test before a surprised Reed. That night at dinner — Moss-Bachrach, now an uncle rather than a cousin, is again at work in the kitchen — Ben and Johnny immediately guess what’s up. The rest of the world is also eager to find out what, if any, powers the baby will have.

We aren’t quite in our world, but a very similar parallel one called Earth-828. New York looks about the same, and world leaders gather in a version of the United Nations named the Future Foundation. The Thing wears a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Someone sounding a lot like Walter Cronkite reads the news.

And there’s a lot to read when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) suddenly hovers over the city, announcing: “I herald your end. I herald Galactus.” The TV blares, as it could on so many days: “Earth in Peril. Developing Story.”

Yes, the Earth (or some Earth) might be in danger, but did you get a look at that Silver Surfer? That’s Johnny Storm’s response, and perhaps ours, too. She's all chrome, like a smelted Chrysler Building, with slicked-back hair and melancholy eyes. He’s immediately taken by her, but she shoots off into space. In a rousing, NASA-like launch (the original Kirby and Lee comic came eight years before the moon landing), the Fantastic Four blast off into the unknown to meet this Galactus.

But if the Silver Surfer made an impression, Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) does even more so. Fantastic Four movies have always before gone straight for Doctor Doom as a villain, but his entrance, this time, is being held up for “Avengers: Doomsday.” Still, Galactus, a planet-eating tyrant, is no slouch. A mechanical colossus and evident fan of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” he sits on an enormous throne in space. Sensing enormous power in Sue’s unborn child, he offers to spare Earth for the baby.

What follows casts motherhood — its empowerments and sacrifices — onto a cosmic plane. There’s a nifty chase sequence in space that plays out during contractions. The two “Incredibles” movies covered some similar ground, in both retro design and stretchy parent and superhuman baby, with notably more zip and comic verve than “The Fantastic Four.” That's part of the trouble of not getting a proper movie for so long: Better films have already come along inspired by the '60s comic.

But as good as Vanessa Kirby is in “First Steps,” the movie is never better than when the Silver Surfer or Galactus are around. Shakman, a former child actor who’s directed mostly in television (most relevantly, “WandaVision”), proves especially adept at capturing the enormous scale of Galactus. “First Steps” may be, at heart, a kaiju movie.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive. I was more likely to be moved by a really handsome chalkboard than I was by its vision of motherhood.

But, especially for a superhero team that’s never before quite taken flight on screen, “First Steps” is a sturdy beginning, with impeccable production design by Kasra Farahani and a rousing score by Michael Giacchino. Even if the unifying space-age spirit of Kirby and Lee's comic feels very long ago, indeed.