Perhaps James Wan's experience with crafting the creepy and grotesque in The Conjuring franchise is the reason why Warner Bros. turned to him for what might be the riskiest film in the DCEU slate, Aquaman. Perpetually depicted in various forms of media as a joke or useless, Jason Momoa's standalone film won't have the same level of pre-existing brand awareness like Henry Cavill's Superman, Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman. For decades, Aquaman has existed on the fringes of the shining spotlight focused on DC Comic's holy trinity. While attending WonderCon this past weekend, Wan stated as much, however his comments hint at what will certainly be an interesting take on the character.
"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."
Will the primary antagonist of the film be a sea monster or sea creatures? Geoff Johns' recent run on the solo Aquaman title introduced The Trench, vicious sea creatures that live in a crack on the ocean floor. Other possibilities would be Creature King, Deep Six and King Shark, just to name a few possibilites. However, if the primary antagonsit of the Aquaman film are sea monsters or creatures, that seemingly rules out Ocean Master and Black Manta, the two most popular characters in Aquaman's rogues gallery.