Warner Bros. has been doing a pretty stellar job keeping the hype alive for Aquaman, James Wan's colorful underwater adventure starring Jason Momoa as the aquatic hero himself. The super-sized trailers tease a surrealist CGI feast for the eyes, Wan is teasing an ambitious take unlike anything we've ever seen from the DCEU, and Momoa—through sheer inhuman force of charisma—even managed to make the classic green-and-orange costume look cool. But all the effort seems silly now that we know the studio could have just released an image of Willem Dafoe sitting astride a massive battle-shark, which is the hypest sentence I have ever written and will ever write.

Wan took to Twitter to show off two new images from the film, one of which reveals Dafoe's Vulko navigating an armored hammerhead shark through the deep. The other sees Wan's longtime Conjuring collaborator Patrick Wilson as King Orm—current ruler of Atlantis and half-brother to Aquaman—riding the hell out of a Tylosaur. Yes, Patrick Wilson and his wonderful underwater manbun are going to ride an actual gosh darn dinosaur into glorious battle.

Vulko appears pretty frequently in Aquaman comic book stories, serving as Atlantis' top scientist and an occasional consultant to the king. Dafoe was supposed to make his premiere in the role in Zack Snyder's Justice League, but Momoa revealed that the character was completely cut from the finished product. #ReleaseTheDafoeCut

Check out the images below. Aquaman—which also stars Amber Heard, Nicole KidmanYahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Dolph Lundgren—hits theaters on December 21.

For more on Aquaman, check out the links below:

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.