Aquaman is rarely at the top of the list of anybody’s favorite comic book characters but he’s still one of the most well-known names in the genre. Even those who don’t know comic books well can tell you who Aquaman is, and what his primary superpower is. He can communicate with sea life. Director James Wan sees this as a huge opportunity, because our oceans might as well be an alien planet.
James Wan, the man who will direct the standalone Aquaman movie, was at Wondercon over the weekend and while he was primarily there to discuss The Conjuring 2, he also answered media questions regarding his thoughts on his upcoming DC universe film. He told Slashfilm that he was really excited about the project because the character of Aquaman is so unique. He’s human, as opposed to being from another planet, but we know so little about the place he comes from that Wan can be as creative as he might otherwise be in building an alien world.
There’s always something kind of cool about Aquaman still, the idea of creating a huge world that is on our planet. That’s the thing about Aquaman that’s cool is he’s not an alien, right? He’s from our planet and he’s from a society that we’re not privy to in the context of the story. Isn’t it crazy to think that we’ve explored space more than we have explored the depths of our ocean? That just fires up my imagination about potential sea monsters and cool creatures, that kind of stuff.
So if you’re expecting Aquaman to just call on dolphins and sharks to do his bidding, you can forget it. The Aquaman movie could include the Loch Ness Monster for all we know. It is true that we know comparatively little about our oceans considering how close we are to them and how long we’ve been exploring our planet. We discover new sea life all the time, so if you take the fact that there is a lot we don’t know, and combine it with the idea that this is, after all, a comic book movie, we could get some quite interesting, and unusual creatures. It certainly opens up the possible directions that an Aquaman movie could go. Just because the movie will take place "on earth" doesn’t mean it will be required to look anything like the world we recognize.
Are you excited by the potential of an Aquaman movie, or is the oft-maligned character still mostly a joke to you? We got our first tease of Jason Momoa as the lord of the deep in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and will see him again next year in Justice League: Part One ahead of James Wan’s directorial effort in 2018.
