When a making-of “Behind The Scenes” promo plays better than a film’s actual trailers, well, that’s not a good sign, but that’s where I’m currently landing right now with Aquaman, the latest desperate attempt to save the floundering (pun intended) DC Extended Universe.

The vision and scale on display here is impressive, and you can’t help but admire the effort. But what’s absent in this promo is what’s glaring in the trailers thus far: an unintentionally cheesy tone, one struck by a movie trying way too hard to hit the Marvel formula while still wanting to have its own identity.

We’ll see soon enough if the final product feels more like this (which would be great) or thuds like the ads that we’ve seen so far. Aquaman opens on December 21, 2018.