'Aquaman' Spoilers, Update: What to Expect in the Jason Momoa Movie After 'Justice League' Reshoots
"Aquaman" will be the next DC Comics movie to succeed "Justice League," which unfortunately underperformed after being bogged down with major production issues and subsequent poor criticism and reception.
The mythology of the undersea hero played by Jason Momoa was supposed to be explored in the ensemble film, but most of the scenes diving into his backstory down in Atlantis were cut for "Justice League" to make the two-hour runtime mandate by Warner Bros. Pictures.
This includes the limited appearance of Amber Heard's Mira and the no-show of Willem Dafoe as the Atlantis chief adviser Nuidis Vulko, whom fans will first see in the "Aquaman" standalone movie instead — at least if his scenes are not included in the DVD release of "Justice League."
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In an interview with GameSpot, Momoa talked about the slew of deleted scenes that would have fleshed out Aquaman and his world more:
There's a place where [Aquaman] goes down to, and it got cut out of the movie. He knows spots where he can go and he can see these statues, the remnants of [Atlantis]. There's Vulko — obviously we'll have way more scenes with Vulko, Willem Dafoe — in [the 2018 standalone] Aquaman. There just wasn't enough time in this movie.
Momoa went on to say that "Justice League" was supposed to go into Vulko's connection to Atlantis and how he influenced Aquaman, who goes by the name Arthur Curry.
The actor revealed that he and director Zack Snyder planned to show how Arthur went to Atlantis when he was a boy.
He was an outcast, he was a half-breed, and he was built up as a young boy, because he was fed all these ideas by Vulko — that he was the rightful king. And he gets down there, and he's a half breed, he's impure, and I'm just made to feel like I'm this disease. So after that, I was like, "f—you, f— you, I'm on my own."
Forbes points out that since "Aquaman" is the next big film to expand the DCEU, "Justice League" should have done a better job at building up the character.
However, with the limited runtime the movie is given, it can only explore so much of the character, which is a bummer for some since much of the marketing for "Justice League" teased that there will be a lot of Aquaman in it.
Not everyone is upset though. In fact, a lot of fans are of the opinion that the ensemble movie did a good job at making them care for Aquaman enough to look forward to his next adventure.
Momoa's take on the character, who was always mocked for his primary ability being talking with the fishes (the actor has confirmed in the same interview that he can hear the creatures and vice versa), put Aquaman in a whole new light. In "Justice League," he was the tough guy of the bunch.
"Aquaman" will not be released until December next year. Thankfully, to get fans by, Momoa provided more details about this iteration of the hero and what they can expect in his solo movie:
He hates Atlanteans, he cannot stand being on land. He just — he's stuck in the tide. That's what Zack wanted,. He was a blue collar worker. The guy worked in very lonely places, on oil rigs, he'd weld, and he could just be in peace, and he could exist on there and no one would know his secret. But there's things where ships went down and he couldn't save enough people, and he lost friends. The humanity side of him can't deal with this power that he doesn't know how to control yet.
