James Wan Attempts To Explain How The Aquaman Characters Will Speak Underwater

If the title hadn’t already given it away, DC’s Aquaman will focus on its titular hero whose life experience is mainly based…. underwater. While animated movies like Finding Nemo have established the possibility of crafting realistic environments beneath the water, it’s a different matter when it comes to live-action. It can either be a groundbreaking work or a hideous flop. For the Jason Momoa-led flick, one of the biggest queries is answered by director James Wan in a new interview.

During his chat with the folks at IGN, Wan revealed a glut of interesting little details on the aquatic superhero movie including a rather pivotal one: Just how will we be able to hear Arthur Curry and his subaquatic cohorts speak?

“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’s mention of pings and an “almost sonar/whale thing” is an unusual approach, but hopefully it will blend well with the remainder of the movie’s English-language portions.

What the rest of the film entails is still relatively secret. Momoa’s leading character will drive forward the story, and we know that he’s joined by Willem Dafoe as his advisor Vulko and Amber Heard as his wife Mera. But what about those rumors that Black Manta is the movie’s villain?

“Dude, you know I can’t tell you that! [Laughs] Come on! As much as I want to share this with you, I can’t do that this early on.”

Ah, Wan. You can’t blame him for keeping quiet on the topic. Pre-release details on every major comic book hit the the web on an almost daily basis, so it makes sense that he’d want to keep the film’s big bad under his hat. We’ll find out for certain on July 27, 2018 when Aquaman swims into theaters.