Aquaman: James Wan on Having Fun with the Title Character

Now that Batman v Superman has debuted around the world, Warner Bros. can shift the focus forward to their wider cinematic universe. The foundation has been established, the characters have been introduced--however briefly, in some cases--and the doors have been thrown wide to allow future directors room to explore their respective heroes' various worlds.

Enter James Wan, the acclaimed horror movie director who has made one successful genre jump already with Furious 7, and looks to repeat that success with Warner Bros.' Aquaman. That film isn't due to hit theaters for more than two years, so clearly Wan didn't have too many details from pre-production to offer at WonderCon 2016 over the weekend. He did, however, talk quite a bit about his take on the character--as played by Jason Momoa--and his plans to shepherd the film.

IGN chatted with Wan about Aquaman in an interview at WonderCon in which the director briefly talked up just how fun even his horror films have been. Wan kept that fun factor in mind has he got right to the heart of the matter with Aquaman: it's title character:

“I think Aquaman is a character that is, you know, a lot of people have made fun of over the years, and I just think it’s fun to actually show a really different, cool, badass side to this character, but at the same time, let’s not forget to have fun with it.

/Film has more from Wan's musings on all things Aquaman:

“I think, like most people, we are familiar with Aquaman. We grew up reading or watching this character on the peripheral. I was never so in depth with Aquaman as, let’s say, I was with X-Men. I grew up loving X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman. Those are obviously the key big ones, but there’s always something kind of cool about Aquaman still, the idea of creating a huge world that is on our planet. That’s the thing about Aquaman that’s cool is he’s not an alien, right? He’s from our planet and he’s from a society that we’re not privy to in the context of the story. Isn’t it crazy to think that we’ve explored space more than we have explored the depths of our ocean? That just fires up my imagination about potential sea monsters and cool creatures, that kind of stuff.”

james-wan-aquaman — Image via Warner Bros.

It was also clear from Wan's comments that he considered Aquaman sort of an underdog among the DC superheroes, but liked that he was getting a chance to be the first to bring the under-dweller to the big screen in his own standalone movie. But what remains to be seen is just how much of Aquaman will be Wan's vision and how much will be overseen and sculpted by Warner Bros. producers and Zack Snyder himself.

Here's what Wan had to say in response to being asked just how much control he has over his own standalone Aquaman film (via CBM):

"Well, I think the story that I would like to tell is still at the end of the day my story. And that’s what’s cool with Zack, is that he’s actually very respectful of that. He’s actually helping me out in some ways with certain things that he’s doing with his [films] so that I can have better groundwork with the standalone Aquaman story."

Check back later for Steve's interview with Wan from WonderCon. In the meantime, check out some of our recent coverage on Aquaman: