James Wan seems, on paper at least, an unlikely choice to helm a superhero film, let alone “Aquaman.” But after the success of “The Conjuring,” and films like “Saw” and “Insidious” before that, Wan was looking to take the leap into superhero films, but he wasn’t just considering “Aquaman.” There was another DC hero in the mix, as well.
In a new interview in The New York Times, Wan describes his early meetings with the top brass at Warner Bros. and DC films about what projects they’d like him to consider tackling. You see, after “The Conjuring” took off and opened up Wan as a mainstream, commercial director WB was eager to lock him up for one of the studio’s upcoming superhero films. So they gave Wan a choice – Flash or Aquaman.
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Wan said, “A few months [after ‘The Conjuring’ premiere], I was in a general meeting with DC and they floated two properties that didn’t have filmmakers on board: the ‘Flash’ and ‘Aquaman.’”
When asked why the director chose the fish man movie starring Jason “My Man!” Momoa versus the speedster film with Ezra Miller, Wan says the choice was fairly easy. “I felt the ‘Flash’ had been done before. It had been on TV twice at that point. The one that had not been done was ‘Aquaman,’” explained Wan.
He continued, “I realized, wow, his character resides in this crazy, big world, and I could do something very interesting with it. I look up to people like [Steven] Spielberg, [James] Cameron, [George] Lucas, John Carpenter. I’m a fan of genre filmmaking, naturally. So I thought I could make ‘Aquaman’ a genre film, meaning a horror monster movie. DC basically said, yes, you can make Aquaman versus sea monsters if that’s what you want.”
And the rest is history. As our review points out, Wan did exactly what he intended, filling every inch of the screen and second of the run-time with absolutely bonkers creatures, action, and set pieces.
But the director also says the reason he wanted to work on “Aquaman” wasn’t just the fact that he could create a monster movie, but also because he wanted to work under the radar and let other directors carry the load of expectations with characters like Superman, Batman, and the Flash. However, with the creative implosion that happened during Zack Snyder’s time directing the early DCEU films, suddenly Wan’s fish man movie became the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I was definitely aware of [the reception of ‘Justice League’ & ‘Batman v. Superman’]. The irony is, I picked ‘Aquaman’ because I thought, here’s a superhero I can make that is fully under the radar,” said the filmmaker.
Wan continued, “No one’s going to [care] about this film. I can just do whatever I want. Make it easy with no pressure. Fast-forward to three years later and now there’s a massive spotlight on it. So, to answer your question, obviously there was a sense of pressure. But I try not to let any of that cloud my vision for the film. I just plow ahead and continue to make the movie I wanted to make.”
“Aquaman” hits theaters December 21.