Upon climbing aboard Warner’s solo Aquaman movie, writer-director James Wan vowed to overhaul the titular character to such an extent that he would no longer be remembered as the butt of superhero jokes. And Wan is certainly on the verge of achieving that feat.
As Warner Bros. adds the final touches to Aquaman‘s first-look trailer (ETA: Saturday, July 21st), ComicBook.com caught up with Arthur Curry himself, Jason Momoa, to discuss James Wan’s handling of such a legendary, time-honored character. And while he’s made a point of dragging the Atlantean King into the modern day – gone are the luscious blonde locks – Wan has seemingly carved out room for the classic orange-and-green ensemble from DC Comics.
James [Wan] definitely wants to keep it just like the original.
It could well be that this reference amounts to a pair of green pants and an orange shirt for Jason Momoa’s King of the Seven, but at this rate, we’ll take anything we can get. One thing’s for sure: the film’s producer, Peter Safran, still name-drops the New 52 version of Aquaman as the biggest jumping-off point, creatively speaking:
I think that the New 52 version of Aquaman was definitely our touchstone and our starting point. And even though the film is not a direct adaptation of that, that was certainly, in terms of his origin, who he is; that Tom Curry is his father and Atlanna is his mother, who Orm is, etcetera. That all comes from the New 52. And, there are certainly creature elements from it, from the Trench. So, that was our biggest influence.
Safran continued by tracing Aquaman‘s journey to the big screen, along with the moment that Geoff Johns and James Wan cracked the story:
And the fact that Geoff and James [Wan] originally broke the story for this one, and then Will Beall and David Leslie Johnson at different times wrote it. I think that the fact that they [Wan & Johns] broke the story together, Geoff has tremendous creative involvement all the way through, on a day-to-day basis to the present day. I spoke to him this morning. So, he really is a great touchstone to making sure we keep it in the correct world.
On December 21st, Aquaman will plunge into the wondrous depths of Atlantis, and we’ll be able to get our first look at James Wan’s underwater epic in motion this coming weekend.