We recently learned that James Wan was actually given the choice to helm either The Flash or Aquaman for Warner Bros., and chose the latter. Over the past week or so the director has been discussing his reasons for this, and in a new interview with CBR, he explains that he wants to try to do away with the perception that the character is a bit of a joke.
Aquaman has always been seen as something of a punchline to many because of the misconception that his only superpower is that he can chat with the fish (the costume probably didn’t help, either), but that all changed after Geoff John’s New 52 reinvention of the character. Now, Wan is hoping to be able to do the same with his live-action incarnation.
I’m a big fan of what Geoff Johns did with his new take on ‘Aquaman,’ with the New 52. I think for the first time, we get to see Aquaman as a superhero that definitely isn’t the butt of superhero jokes, right? I think that there’s something very exciting about that. I actually do think there’s something kind of fun, as well, to take a character where people don’t quite know what to expect from him, or rather the expectation of him is quite low.
I always say, it’s very difficult when you’re tackling something like ‘Spider-Man’ or ‘Batman’ that has been done so many times before. Whereas, it’s actually really refreshing to take on something like ‘Aquaman,’ that no one has really seen before in this context, and make it your own.
Some might say Wan is going to have an even harder time after the lukewarm reaction to the introduction of Jason Momoa’s Aquaman in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but we’ll see what he’s able to accomplish when the King of Atlantis’ solo outing hits theaters in 2018.