Criticizing a superhero movie for being ‘unrealistic’ is usually a losing game, not just because it seems to miss the point of the genre, but also because fans will generally be able to come up with an explanation for how a film’s less true-to-life elements fit in just fine with the logic of its fantastical world. Such is the case with Nicole Kidman’s recent rebuttal to claims that she’s too young to play the mother of Arthur Curry in the new Aquaman movie.
Speaking to Variety, the issue came up that the 51-year-old actress is portraying the parent of a character played by 39-year-old Jason Momoa, to which Kidman offered a concise, in-universe justification:
“In the context of the superhero world, it all evens out. Atlanna doesn’t really age”
Well, that settles that. When your lifespan’s a whole lot longer than the average human, what difference is a few extras decades gonna make?
Granted, we’ve still yet to learn about the specific logic of life in the DCEU’s Atlantis, with James Wan seeming pretty proud of the world-within-a-world that he’s created. Earlier this year, the director even claimed that he talked Zack Snyder out of introducing Atlantis in last year’s Justice League, leaving him with more or less a clean slate to work with.
As it stands, there’s still almost a month to go before most of us will find out what Wan’s been putting together in the depths of the ocean, but so far, the buzz has been pretty strong, with several early viewers praising the work as the DCEU’s best movie to date. And we’ll find out if this underwater realm is one worth revisiting when Aquaman hits theaters on December 21st.
