While the rousing success of Aquaman at the box office may have helped calm the waters of the DC extended universe for now, many fans still have a lot of questions about where that universe has been. For the year prior to Aquaman's release, the topic of conversation was Justice League, more specifically, how the work of two different directors changed the film. Now we appear to have some answers. Neil Daly, an actor who oversaw test screenings of both Justice League and Aquaman says that Zack Snyder worked with James Wan to help shift the character of Arthur Curry away from some of the changes Joss Whedon made in the team up film, specifically, regarding Aquaman's more adolescent humor. According to Daly...
We could have gotten a whole movie about Aquaman just basically fawning over Mera the whole time and making all kinds of dirty jokes and things like that and they had to really kinda get away from that, which is all what Whedon had done, so Snyder had a little bit more of an influence on Aquaman. James Wan was showing Zack Snyder - against the studio's wishes - James Wan was showing Zack Snyder cuts of the movie and early test screenings and storyboards to make sure that they're on the same page with what he originally wanted and Snyder gave his blessing of approval, liked everything that he did and kinda brought it back to the charactert that he wanted it to be all along.
According to Neil Daly, who says he has first-hand knowledge of this information, though obviously can't go into too much detail about from whom, says that much of the humor in the film, such as the sequence where Aquaman sits on the lasso of truth and makes several leering jokes at Wonder Woman, were the creation of Whedon, and James Wan, in directing Aquaman had to make a course correction in order to shift away from the character acting that way.
James Wan had spoken previously about the fact that he had shown Zack Snyder an early cut of Aquaman and had received Snyder's blessing to move forward, the idea that this was done against the wishes of Warner Bros., however, as Neil Daly tells the Fire and Water Podcast, is new information.
Almost since Justice League was released there has been a vocal contingent of fans who have wanted to see the version of Justice League that Zack Snyder would have created if he had retained complete creative control. While it's highly unlikely that we will ever see that, this does give us some insight into at least some of the elements that would have been different.
It's certainly true that the Arthur Curry that we see in Aquaman, and the movie as a whole, doesn't cash in on sexual jokes quite as much as Justice League. The existence of the jokes in the one movie isn't the entire reason the film reviewed poorly, and the lack of them isn't the entire reason that Aquaman did well, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
