Home Entertainment James Wan shares his thoughts on what to expect with AQUAMAN's villains

James Wan shares his thoughts on what to expect with AQUAMAN's villains

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Any aficionado of super-hero movies will tell you that the film will only be as good as its villains. Except in the case of Captain America: Civil War, which somehow was able to survive largely because there was no real clear villain at all. So, it’s important that if we are looking into a super-hero film being successful, we can’t just focus on the hero alone, but also need a strong villain to bring out the best of our hero – otherwise every super-hero movie will just turn into yet another rendition of Superman.

Okay, enough of my dislike for the underpants wearing alien who struggles to beat an enemy with no special abilities whatsoever and lets focus on a more interesting DC Comics super hero – Aquaman, who made a brief debut in the latest BvS film and will be appearing in his own film after the Justice League films. The director of the solo film is horror maestro James Wan, who has recently wrapped up production work on The Conjuring 2 (by the way, have you entered our cool competition for the film yet) and is now starting to focus on the development of the Aquaman movie more.

In an interview with Cinema Blend at the Conjuring 2 premiere the director was asked about how he intends to make the film different from the myriad of movies we are getting these days:

I gotta say, one thing I love about the Aquaman world is all the really different, really interesting characters. They are interesting characters, including the villains – I’m not going to tell you which villains I’m going to play with! [laughs] But they’re super cool. They’re very larger than life, but they’re unique.

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Wan is certainly no stranger to creating creepy villains in his films and that he is getting excited not just about the potential of the lead protagonist, but the villains as well, which makes me hopeful he will be able to produce something quite powerful for the characterization of the villains in the film. He goes on to further mention that it was the uniqueness of the whole Aquaman world that really excited him about the project and which will hopefully set it apart from the rest of the crowd:

That’s what I’ll speak to – the uniqueness of the Aquaman world. There are so many superhero movies now; I don’t want to make a superhero movie now for the sake of doing it, but there’s something unique to the world of Aquaman. There’s a reason why they’ve never made a movie about this until now, because technology has never allowed us to tackle something this complicated. And so because of that it feels like something different, and that uniqueness is what I’m excited about.

What we didn’t know was that before he was announced as the director for Aquaman almost a year ago, he actually had a choice as to which DC hero he would like to film, as revealed in another interview with Uproxx:

They asked me which of the two characters I’d be interested in and it was between The Flash and Aquaman. This is how I weighed it: For me, we’ve seen various versions of The Flash… There’s a popular show on TV and there was a great one in the ‘90s… But the thing that ultimately pushed me more towards Aquaman is I love the possibility of creating a whole new world. I’ve always wanted to do a world creation story and visually create this amazing, incredible, magical kingdom. And also, I love the fact that Aquaman is an underdog character. I love the fact that people like to make fun of him. [Laughs.] I feel the bar is a lot lower and I can have fun with him!

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I’m not so sure I would call Aquaman an underdog character as he is pretty powerful as a super-hero, but the world he lives in is certainly unique and as the character hasn’t really been adapted much in the cinematic and TV worlds, you are guaranteed the film is likely to appear fresh to audiences when they view it.

However, although Wan is known for his horror prowess, he also recently directed the $1.5 billion smash Furious 7 and many thought the reason he was able to land such a big DC Comics film was largely based on the success he had with that. However, he reveals this was not the case and that it was his horror credentials that secured him the gig after all.

I had already had a lot of conversations with Warner Bros. and they knew very early on that I had said I would love to be a part of the DC Universe… This is back in the early days when The Conjuring was just about to come out… We’ve been talking about it for awhile

I wonder if that means we can see any of the dark scary stuff he has worked on in films like The Conjuring creeping into the film, especially in creating a dark terrifying atmosphere for whatever mystery villain he is going to try and send our way? Aquaman development is only just getting started and we still have a host of other DC Comics films to look forward to before its planned release date in July 2018, which includes Suicide SquadWonder WomanJustice League and The Flash. It might be a while before we get much news on this project, but let’s hope Wan can really create some strong villains for Aquaman to do battle with.

Which Aquaman villain would you like to see make the cut for the film?

Last Updated: June 8, 2016

3 Comments

  1. LegionZA

    June 8, 2016 at 16:25

    Black Manta will be a pretty good villain.

    Reply

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