The character of Aquaman hasn't always been held in the highest esteem by the general public, but Warner Bros. knew exactly what they were doing when they hired Jason Momoa to portray the Atlantean king. No one's going to be making jokes about Momoa talking to fish, well, except for Ben Affleck. Although we did catch a glimpse of the character in BATMAN V SUPERMAN, we'll finally get a proper introduction in the upcoming JUSTICE LEAGUE before Arthur Curry takes center stage in James Wan's AQUAMAN. Wan recently spoke with IGN where he praised Snyder's casting of Jason Momoa and compared Aquaman to a certain popular Marvel hero.
I actually think it's a brilliant move on Zack and co. to cast someone like Jason. Immediately, the whole joke aspect of Aquaman goes out the window. You have such a muscular, superhero-y character and one that is almost, to me, in some ways… I look at him, he's kind of the Wolverine in some respect. He's the outsider who gets pulled into this world and he kind of doesn't want to belong and he was doing his own thing. And he prided freedom above everything else. That kind of plays nicely into who his character is. He's like a reluctant superhero, right? He's the reluctant king, basically, or would-be king.
James Wan also discussed how he plans to approach how the Atlanteans will communicate underwater.
If you have water in your lungs, like these characters do, there's no air bubble. So I don't know… I just think in my movie, I want to kind of create… I love the idea of underwater speaking but with a real sort of sonic, aquatic quality to it. So there's this sort of aquatic, almost sonar/whale thing. Even though it's in a human language, there’s this slight sort of underlay to it, this ping to it, which I think would be interesting for us to design from a sound design perspective. Yeah, it will be fun. Also, Zack has some ideas that he'll be doing in Justice League.
Wan has been collaborating with Zack Snyder as much as possible in regards to Aquaman's characterization, but he's thinking of JUSTICE LEAGUE as "an experiment for me to see what works and what may not work." Although his standalone AQUAMAN film lives in the same DC universe as the others, which is something James Wan wants to honor, he's also aware that you've got to do "what's the best for your film." Wan also addressed the recent rumours that Black Manta will be the main villain of AQUAMAN, saying "dude, you know I can't tell you that! Come on! As much as I want to share this with you, I can't do that this early on."
JUSTICE LEAGUE is set for a November 17, 2017 release and will be followed by AQUAMAN on July 27, 2018.