Aquaman Director James Wan Likens Arthur Curry To Wolverine

Director James Wan is quietly preparing to dive headfirst into the “wonderful world of Atlantis” for Aquaman, despite lead star Jason Momoa having his hands full with Justice League – Gibson and all.

Eager to fire Arthur Curry back into the mainstream as a compelling superhero, the filmmaker has long made clear his ambition to flesh out the backstory of DC’s King of the Seven and really just make Aquaman “frickin’ cool again.” As he begins to formulate that vision, Wan even went so far as to lump Aquaman into the same “reluctant superhero” bracket as Wolverine.

Word comes by way of IGN, who quizzed the horror maestro about Jason Momoa’s casting, and how the Game of Thrones star perfectly fits the brooding nature of DC’s would-be king.

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.

There are still many questions to be answered, of course, and just recently James Wan outlined how the characters of Aquaman will communicate underwater. That’s a point of contention that was raised once again, with the filmmaker noting that fans will be able to see some of those ideas in play in next year’s Justice League.

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.

Aquaman also stars Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe and, according to reports, could well feature a familiarly terrifying face in Black Manta. It will emerge from the depths on July 27, 2018.