The All Encompassing AQUAMAN Movie Thread

[Ultimatehero]

I really don't see why the movie would make fun of him in any way shape or form. The way to cut that is to not do that.

 

[Sub-Zero]

Aquaman could be a really cool movie. Like Lotr meets Thor. A king living among humans fighting to reclaim his birthright. The same could be said for Wonder Woman( more Thor meets clash of the titans(the original)).

 

[SlamAdams]

I really don't see why the movie would make fun of him in any way shape or form. The way to cut that is to not do that.

It is not that crazy of an idea. The jokes are already on the audience's mind, confronting them could be the best way to overcome them. Thats what Geoff Johns tried to do at the beginning of his new series. He did it for longer than he had to, but the series in general has been excellent anyways.

 

[FeedOnATreeFrog]

How do you want them to deal with Aquaman with regards to this movie and the JL movie? When to introduce him, his origin, Atlantis, etc. Do you want him to be an established hero, etc?

If he's going to be in JL movie, I don't think Aquaman should be an established hero. Instead he comes to the surface for the first time in order to eliminate the threat against Atlantis (and the rest of Earth).

The Aquaman movie would be about him re-entering modern society after the battle in the JL movie, becoming a hero in the surface-world, juxtaposed with flashbacks when he left the mainland as a kid and discovered Atlantis. Sort of like the way BBegins dealt with the origin.

 

[Ultimatehero]

The jokes part in a film though just seems like it's breaking a forth wall too much. It's best to keep it contained.

I'm seriously hoping WB doesn't want JLA to be tied with AQUAMAN so that AQUAMAN can avoid that being the set up and the film is free to dive into his origins and use that as the core of the story. Or if they do want it connected, to allow the film to go back in time to tell those origins.

 

[Artistsean]

I don't mean obvious jokes about Aquaman like Robot Chicken or Family Guy
does, but the idea that Aquaman is a hero who saves the day, the world even,
several times and still gets no respect. Not like Superman. It adds to his
character in the comics, the working class hero king.
That sort of angle could be used in the movie, a slant on the character that
would separate him from other comic movies like Thor or Superman.

Plus the jokes are there in the public already. Big Bang Theory doing
a whole episode almost about how Aquaman sucks.

Stuff like this:

Or that joke on Family Guy where he can't go save a woman being attacked
because he cannot leave the water. Like he is only useful in water related stuff.

These are the type of camp and jokes that the public have in their minds already
that the movie will have to fight against and maybe address to get passed them.
Maybe not as obvious or blatent as they did in the comics.
And still the whole concept of a hero who gets no respect might be what the studio
would want to use.

I do want to see something like this in the movie (from the new Johns series):

and I love this concept (but it sort of only works if you know there are more heroes
on land like Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and Flash):

 

[Ultimatehero]

I think something like that would be better suited for a Justice League film than an Aquaman film - in film you'd need those heroes together for the full effect of being seen as lesser than. Like what MARVEL is doing, together apart. Or at least the first Aquaman film. The second could deal more with the reaction from the world at large and that he "still gets no respect" from humanity - it would give him something new and interesting to overcome. A king who has respect from his people yet still not the people at large.

 

[Artistsean]

Yeah, thats sounds right. The idea that he gets no respect might work better with the knowledge that there are other heroes, or after he has been around for one movie. It happens all the time. Someone comes out, an actor or tv personality and everyone love them and eventually lots of people turn on them sometimes just because it seems.
But that would sort of mean that they would need to build their movies like Marvel's. But aren't they planning to go the opposite way? I guess the direction might depend on that.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Nobody at this point knows what WB is doing. Also I'd say it's uncertain if all of the universes will be connected or if JLA will be one thing and solo films a whole different beast. Personally hoping JLA has no impact on Aquaman's origins.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I could see them using the New 52 concept of Aquaman being sort of the hard working Blue collar hero they have made him in the comics. He protects all the oceans, while the surface has lots of heroes to protect it.
But I don't want to see too much of jokes about how Aquaman can talk to fish, and people asking him if his wife is a mermaid and calling her Aquawoman, and asking him how it feels to be the least liked superhero. The whole get no respect thing gets old, in the movie it would anyway.

I think it needs to be done and if they pace the jokes well enough throughout a 1 1/2-2hr movie it should be fine.

They def. dont need to start out Aquaman with an origin movie. I think starting him in the middle of his career would be good and wrap up his origin in the beginning or throughout the film.

 

[Powerman34]

Here are my picks:

Liam Hemsworth-Aquaman

Daniel Craig- Ocean Master

Rachel Nichols - Mera

Chiwetel Ejiofor - Black Manta

 

[The Guard]

There was a time Batman got no respect, too.

I don't want a movie about Arthur having to prove himself. A single joke or moment about him being lame, useless, etc, and then proving otherwise...fine. Anymore and it becomes a bit too self aware.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Exactly. As said, it could work in JLA - just look at AVENGERS. BUT it doesn't belong in the stand-alone film-verse. The only thing that could come close is a dramatic arc. The first one, he comes back and has to regain his throne. The second one could deal with a king who isn't seen as anything really special by the people and has to become a power force in two worlds - in a very Joseph Campbell type way (almost a "refusal of return" type arc leading into being a "master of two worlds.")

 

[Artistsean]

But if the character that has made Aquaman so successful in the comics, where he has struggled to this point even in the comics, has been him being a working class hero who doesn't get the respect he should for saving he city and the world. So if the studios want to make a film using Aquaman wouldn't they want that character to be part of the film? Just like Tony Stark being a narcissist, Aquaman doesn't get respect. It's not like a story plot, (and I don't mean the jokes) but its part of his character.

 

[Ultimatehero]

It'd be way too much for an origin film. Better suited for the sequel. Also really pleased that he's not part of JLA. Should give me a couple of more years to jump onboard. And I will say I do have notions of a sequel now DUE TO the "not getting any respect" from humans notion. It provides a great arc to build off from the first film which sees him having to earn respect from his home world. He's working class already due to who his adoptive father is.

 

[Lencho01]

Have any of you read this?

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/01/18/ask-chris-137-aquaman-super-friends-justice-league/

Jan 18th 2013 By: Chris Sims

Ask Chris #137: Aquaman Is Basically Terrible

Over a lifetime of reading comics, Senior Writer Chris Sims has developed an inexhaustible arsenal of facts and opinions. That's why, each and every week, we turn to you to put his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions!

Q: Why is it that despite the fact that every other character was portrayed as completely useless on Super Friends, people still hold onto the idea of SuperFriends Aquaman as being regular Aquaman? -- @ericafails


A: Because Aquaman is basically terrible.

Okay, okay, maybe that's not entirely fair. To be honest, a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that for Aquaman, Super Friends was his only real presence in pop culture until Brave and the Bold made him a breakout star in 2008. With the exception of the Wonder Twins, who are also pretty commonly (and accurately) regarded as being dumb as all hell, almost everyone else on the show had something else to balance things out. Superman was a more-or-less constant fixture in pop culture from the beginning through the radio show, the George Reeves show, the movies and so on, Wonder Woman had the Lynda Carter show, The Flash eventually got that show in 1990, and Batman is Batman and needs no justification for his actions. Or at least, he had Batman '66 in syndication, and even though that show was frequently as silly as it could possibly be, it also had a charm that Super Friends most definitely did not.

Which is another big point: Super Friends is f**king terrible. Seriously, this was a show that frequently forgot whether or not the Flash could fly, with animation that was only slightly better than a flip book and plots that seemed like they were written, edited and approved in about the time it took to watch an episode. I realize that a lot of us look back on things fondly through the lens of nostalgia, but if you can honestly watch an episode of that thing and think that it is in any way well-made or enjoyable, those aren't lenses. Nostalgia has you in a blindfold and may have slipped a roofie into your drink.

So really, it's kind of unfair that a character like Aquaman, who has such a long history as a DC mainstay, has that show as his one major exposure to the world outside of comics. It's one of the worst possible portrayals of all of those characters, but for Aquaman, it's his only portrayal to a wider audience. That's a huge part of why his reputation is so bad.

But like I said, the other part is that he's not very good, and never has been.

This, incidentally, is an argument that I have at least once a week with comics writer and occasional contributor to this column Benito Cereno, who loves Aquaman and cannot understand why I have nothing but disdain for the character when I am thoroughly enamored with Silver Age Superman, weird old Batman comics and other things that are a hell of a lot sillier. But really, it's not the silliness that's the problem. And despite what you may have heard, there's nothing wrong with the powers, either.

Look, we've all heard the constant jokes about how Aquaman sucks because he talks to fish lol, and I will 100% agree with you that they are terrible, lazy gags that have been beaten so far into the ground over the past three decades that I'm amazed nobody struck oil. Worse, they became a shorthand for superheroes as a whole, so that anyone who wanted to look down on the entire genre of superhero comics -- and frequently the entire medium -- could smirk their way through repeating them ad infinitum as a way of alienating readers. They're persistent and annoying, and while they've gotten less so now that we live in a world in which everyone you know has seen a movie with Hawkeye in it, I still wince every time I run across one.

But the thing is, they're not exactly crafted from whole cloth. The thing that really makes them sting, that made them the ultimate superhero reader put-down for so long, and the thing that Aquaman's ardent defenders don't want to admit is that they're true. At least, they're true in part. The problem with Aquaman isn't that he talks to fish -- telepathically communicating with animals is actually a pretty cool power, especially when they're sharks and deep-sea fangly fishes and whatever Finding Nemo was -- it's that he doesn't do a whole lot with those powers.

That's what makes Aquaman such a lackluster character for me: He's barely a character at all. He's a set of powers and an environment with the seeds of an interesting backstory that have never really sprouted into anything worth reading. I like Silver Age comics a lot, but while Superman stories from that era have an undeniable charm and a boundless sense of imagination coupled with a bizarre and often arbitrary set of rules that the writers are constantly trying to get around with dream sequences and Red Kryptonite, and Batman stories have these bits and pieces of a unique character and world evolving as they go, Aquaman comics just tend to be bland.

Bob Haney and Jim Aparo are two of my absolute favorite creators of all time, and one of the best teams to ever make comics, but even they couldn't do an Aquaman story that I liked. There's none of the incredible personality that Haney brought into Metamorpho (and that bled over into his jive-talking, adventure-loving Batman), and in its place is just a bunch of generic stories that take place in or near the ocean, with a generic do-gooder using swordfish and sawfish in a way that is not even close to scientifically accurate. If you want a fun project, grab an old issue of Aquaman, take it to an aquarium, and see how fast your local marine biologist has an aneurysm at the sight of a sawfish cutting a hole in the hull of a ship full of "modern-day pirates."

Incidentally, you don't have to worry about issue numbers. Any Aquaman story from 1950 - 1970 has a 90% chance of having that exact scene in it.

That might seem like nitpicking, but that kind of Looneytunesian cartoon logic is something else that makes Aquaman easy to dismiss, even among people who swear that a guy who flies around in red and blue tights shooting laser beams out of his eyes and using Super-Ventriloquism is one of the most important figures in modern fiction. I'm all for creativity, and there actually are a lot of examples of Aquaman doing interesting stuff with animals, but they go off the rails so often that it's hard to find even a shred of that logic that holds an adventure story together. Batman might be able to pull whatever Deus ex Batcave gadget he needs out of his utility belt, but at least it is a belt and remains so throughout the story. It doesn't turn into a wisecracking marmoset halfway through. Unless Bat-Mite's involved, I mean.

Point being, while Aquaman stories are goofy and inconsistent, Aquaman himself is just boring, which is the exact thing he shouldn't be. In our most recent argument, Benito mentioned that he was King Arthur with the powers of Golden Age Superman who fought pirates by mind-controllng sharks, and while my counter was that he's King Arthur without the knights, the rags-to-riches origin story, the Holy Grail, the interesting enemies or literally anything else that makes King Arthur interesting, he's not wrong. That's a solid premise for a superhero comic. The problem is that Aquaman doesn't act like a guy who does that stuff.

It's hard to talk about Aquaman without comparing him to the Sub-Mariner, mainly because Marvel and DC both somehow managed to have two Kings of Atlantis with the exact same origin story that seem completely different in every other respect. The reason? Namor has a personality that you can describe without ever mentioning that he's a fish-man with wings on his ankles. He's a king and he acts like it, he's got this arrogance and swagger that make him fun to read about. He's a guy who will show up to fight a monster with the Hulk and Dr. Strange, but also might roll up into New York, punch the Thing through a wall, try to f**k somebody's wife, and then act like you're the dick when you call him on it. I'm not saying that Aquaman needs to have that personality (more on that in a second), but there's a reason the joke is "Aquaman talks to fish" and not "Namor is a weird horny merman who wears tiny green pants and shouts nonsense Latin all the time."

Namor is defined as a character in a way that Aquaman never was back in the day -- and he's not the only one, either. Green Arrow, despite having the awesome, sells-itself premise of being a Modern Day Robin Hood, was the same way: A bland, boring Batman clone under a different coat of paint until someone came along and figured out how to make the person as interesting as the trick arrows. Incidentally, it's worth noting that both Aquaman and Green Arrow spent a significant portion of the Silver Age living in a cave with a teenage boy, and guys. Really. In the DC Universe, the position of "crimefighter who lives in a cave with a teenage boy" is already filled. Thank you, but we are not accepting applications at this time.

Anyway, while Green Arrow had some success with his rob-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor attitude being taken to the logical conclusion of becoming a cartoonish caricature of a liberal who also shot things with arrows, Aquaman never really did.

Again, part of the problem was that he ended up getting rebooted, and in the DC Universe, rebooting a character means squeezing it until every last drop of fun has been excised so that you can replace it with mopey symbolism. Thus, Aquaman got some powder blue underwater camo and an origin that involved cursed blonde hair (?), before eventually growing out his hair and his beard in case you forgot he was supposed to be King Arthur and replacing one of his hands with a hook in case you forgot he lived in the ocean.

You know, like a pirate? Who has a hook for a hand? Because pirates live on the ocean? It's pretty subtle, you can take a minute to think about it if you need to.

It's also during this time that the emphasis shifted to talking about how tough Aquaman had to be to survive in the depths of the ocean and how he was hella strong and was absolute ruler of 75% of the entire world so yeah I guess he does a little more than talk to fish, man. This came up a lot in the '90s, and while it's all pretty true to his character and his powers, it always sounded like someone desperately trying to convince someone that Aquaman isn't dumb, a shrill, constant "Is not!" to the joke about how talking to fish is a stupid power. And as we all know, nothing shuts someone up like loudly bringing up something to contradict it, as that never, ever devolves into a constant "is too!" from the other side. Never ever.

To be fair, Mark Waid and Grant Morrison both had success writing an interesting version of Aquaman in this period, in JLA: Year One and JLA, respectively. Waid put the emphasis on Aquaman as a literal fish out of water who was uncomfortable on the surface world, who spoke softly because he was used to sound carrying further underwater. That's more than a little on the nose, but it's also an interesting character development that gives him an underlying structure that can come out in his interactions.

Morrison ran with it, too. The Aquaman of JLA still did a lot of posturing and growly reminding about how life under the sea had made him tough and strong, etc., etc., but there were also moments where you could see beneath the posturing to someone who was still a little uncomfortable.

Most of Aquaman's lines in that book involve some variation of "I think I can..." or "what should I do?" rather than the definitive statements that you got from guys like Superman, and it really works well -- it shows him as a guy who's still uncomfortable in this world, but for whom being in the League is a relief. It's the one place where he doesn't have to be the leader, where he's not the guy wearing the crown with all the responsibility on him, and it's also the one place where he trusts the people around him enough to do that. He still has this desire to prove his worth, but they come from that discomfort and the nobility that drives him to defend people. It's all internal -- there's character, even if it's a character that relies on being part of a larger ensemble to really come through.

And then there's the latest reboot, which is just awful.

Aquaman's reintroduction in the increasingly inaccurately named "New 52" is just mind-blowing in how little sense it makes, because it is nothing but a reaction to the Aquaman Sucks joke. Everyone in that comic who is not Aquaman or sleeping with Aquaman is constantly telling Aquaman how awful he is, despite the fact that there is absolutely no reason for them to think that. Aquaman is presented as a superhero who is reasonably capable, but he's constantly being reacted to by people who apparently have the same jokes in a world where Aquaman actually exists and helped save the world from an alien invasion by brutally stabbing Parademons with a trident as we do in a world where Aquaman was a character on a stupid cartoon thirty years ago. There is a scene in Justice League where a bunch of people watch Aquaman rescue every passenger on a capsized cruise ship, something that would be impressive as hell and is presented as such, and they stand around cracking jokes like they're the writing staff of Robot Chicken.

It makes. No. Sense. And believe me, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. It's the weirdest kind of proselytizing, where there are a bunch of characters -- including the hilariously hipstery reprsentation of The Internet in #1 -- straw-manning around the story contradicting everything that's actually happening, so that the petulant "NO IT'S NOT!" mentioned above is now accompanied by an equally grating "AND YOU'RE STUPID!" And keep in mind, these are themes being directed exclusively at people who are already reading a comic with Aquaman in it. Those aren't the folks you need to convince, and the people who hold Aquaman sucks because he talks to fish, lol, as an unshakeable conviction aren't going to read the comic anyway. Just write him as a character and it'll all work itself out.

The big recurring mistake through the modern incarnations, I think, is that they try way too hard to pretend that Aquaman isn't inherently silly, and end up trying to stress that rather than crafting adventures and personalities. And he is inherently silly. He's a crime-fighting merman. That might not be quite as dumb as a plutocrat who makes his butler sew up highly inaccurate costumes with a big picture of a bat on the chest so that he can go get into anonymous karate fights, but it's up there. The trick isn't to talk about how serious these things are and draw attention to them, but just to accept them as part of the world these characters live in.

That's why the most successful and interesting version of Aquaman is, for my money, the one who showed up on Brave and the Bold.

That dude had personality to spare, but more than that, he had a personality that made sense. He had the confidence of a king, but his driving force was the love of adventure. It was clear without ever being said that he wasn't on the surface because of a begrudging obligation to the Justice League, but because he wanted challenge, fights, adventure worthy of his station, and there just wasn't much going on back in Atlantis. Admittedly, he was essentially just Marvel's Hercules, but it worked. It embraced that inherent silliness and made it work by making him a boisterous, larger-than-life character to fit his boisterous, larger-than-life world.

BATB also tweaked his powers just a little, and giving him Mera's ability to create swords and shields out of water is a really smart choice. It's visually interesting and dynamic, it gives him something to do that doesn't just rely on a Bugs Bunny understanding of electric eels and seahorses, and it helps tie him thematically back to King Arthur. It's a good fit, and how an Aquaman reboot happened without all of us just saying "Okay, this is Aquaman now" is a mystery I can't even begin to solve.

That's all we have for this week, but if you've got a question you'd like to see Chris tackle in a future column, just send it to @theisb on Twitter with the hashtag #AskChris, or send an email to [email protected] with [Ask Chris] in the subject line!

 

[Hush]

I disagree with the majority of what he said, that guy just flat out doesnt like the character. He has bias going into every statement he made. It seems like he won't even give him a chance, comparing Arthur's superdickery to Supermans and saying that Aquamans wasn't as good? That's like comparing my morning dump to my evening dump, at the end of the day they are both ****. The guys seems very close minded.

 

[The Guard]

It sounds like the ravings of a lunatic.

Also, apparently he missed the fact that Aquaman's hand isn't just a hook...it's a harpoon.

 

[NosfeRomas]

Saying that Aquaman never really had any succes is so stupid and ignorant especially when the next picture is Peter David's Aquaman.

 

[Lencho01]

The points I really agreed with was the Super Friends hurt Aquaman in regards to the general public and that jokes about him within the comic (or in this case film) don't need to be done.

 

[Artistsean]

To just flat out say Aquaman's new series is just awful is not accurate. I personally love it, its one of the few New 52 comics I get regularly and I think its one of the most successful reboots of a character. The idea that he gets no respect despite how powerful and cool he is has become a major part of the character in our world so they are addressing that fact in the comic as if it was part of his world. It makes the character more interesting I think. Plus the art is great and he no longer has a harpoon hand or a water hand. Some of the jokes get too be too much or they do them too much, but the concept is good for me. I like the idea that not everyone knows everything about every superhero in their universe. Like in Hawkeye, someone thought his name was Hawk-Guy. In Aquaman some think his girlfriend is a mermaid named Aqua-Woman, and some think he talks to fish (telling the reader in that joke that Aquaman doesn't actually speak to fish was important). Its a good idea. Plus there is an over all feeling that Aquaman sucks and he doesn't. its mostly because of Super Friends I guess. Maybe also because he was created after Namor (maybe in response to Namor) while using the whole DC thing of all their good guys being really good and having no real differing personalities. So for a while he struggled to find his, JLU made him a Conan the Barbarian of the Sea, Brave and the Bold made him an action adventurer like the classic Hercules movies who is jovial. This comic makes him a powerful hero who gets no respect.

 

[metaphysician]

Thing is, its still a case of "the lady doth protest too much." If you have to spend all your time saying "no, he doesn't suck", then yes, he does suck. Its also a downright bizarre creative choice, because the people reading the comic are the people who don't need convincing. We already *know* Aquaman doesn't have to suck, you can stop trying to convince us!

 

[The Guard]

I think people are overreacting a bit. The whole "Aquaman sucks" thing was just a running joke in the first issue of The New 52, wasn't it? At which point, the creators said "Ok, we dealt with it, now shut up about it, because this man is a complex, interesting badass warrior king".

 

[Lencho01]

I think he should just be treated like any other comic superhero we've seen where the writers don't actively make fun of him.

Maybe something like this could work where they're really making fun of the audience that still holds onto the idea that he's useless due to some 40 year old cartoon...

[YT]KK6ls__DY9I[/YT]

 

[FeedOnATreeFrog]

In the new 52 comics the writers don't make fun of Aquaman.

Characters in the story make fun of him. There's a difference, as these characters are clearly shown to be ignorant, uninformed, while the audience is privy to all the information that makes him a badass.

I like it personally, and I think it's unique.

Aquaman by nature ('fish powers') is going to receive flak. When the material doesn't acknowledge it, it's almost like it doesn't even know what people are saying about it, or why they're saying it. That is practically the definition of 'nerdy'.

When it does acknowledge it, it puts it to rest, especially when the characters who make fun of Aquaman are shown to be idiots. It in turn makes those real-life audiences who make fun of Aquaman look like uninformed idiots.