When it came to building a shared universe, Marvel Studios took its time. Warner Bros., on the other hand, has been nowhere near as patient in the build-up to Justice League, deciding to instead bring the team together before heroes like Aquaman and the Flash get their own solo outings.
Rather than putting those origin stories on the big screen beforehand, they’re all going to take place in a post-Justice League universe, and now, producer Charles Roven has explained that the upcoming movies will make use of both flashbacks and flashforwards to give us the background on these heroes. However, his comments don’t exactly clear things up and actually make Aquaman and the rest of DC’s projects sound awfully confusing.
“For example, the Justice League movie will take place in a universe that’s post-Batman v Superman, just like Batman v Superman takes place in a universe that’s post-Man of Steel. When we’re dealing with either The Flash or Aquaman, since they will take place in a universe that has happened after Justice League, the characters and the world will be informed by the movies that preceded them, except that there’s flashbacks or whatever within those particular movies, [and] flashforwards within those particular movies.”
“When we talk about who Arthur Curry is, and we talk about the universe when that movie starts in terms of him and where he is, obviously Atlantis exists and has existed before the timeline of his movie, but both [Justice League director] Zack [Snyder] and [Aquaman director] James [Wan] collaborate on what the look of both movies will be.”
Get it? We know that Wonder Woman is going to make use of present-day bookends, but it’s unlikely that every future DC release will do the same. After all, constant flashbacks to explain the characters’ origin stories could end up really bogging these movies down, while flashforwards just sound like a bizarre addition which will make the films quite hard to follow.
Ultimately, time will tell whether this strategy works out for Warner Bros., but it’s certainly a pretty unique way to go. On the plus side, everything we’ve heard so far about Aquaman has been really positive, and it’ll likely be that movie which proves whether or not this approach is a feasible one. Fingers crossed then, eh?
