So this image of hunky action superstar Jason Momoa has been doing the rounds of social media in the last day or so:
Brooding action superstar seen here posing with trident and self-important caption
Positives up front. I think Jason Momoa’s a great piece of casting: he’s good looking and cut in the right shape for a superhero movie, and he’s got a great sly wit and natural charm about him that sneaks through even dull or downright terrible productions (I’m looking at you, unnecessary Conan remake!). I’ve never seen him be the worst thing about a scene he’s in. And despite the best version of Aquaman in decades being the boisterous, over-the-top adventurer and singing enthusiast from the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon of a few years ago, I’m pretty happy about this sea-swept brooding King of the Oceans look.
I had several Twitter conversations about the plausibility of an aquatic civilisation developing tattoo technology, which basically came down to “eh, it’s probably sea urchin quills and squid ink”, but other than that I think this is probably the best possible look for a live-action Aquaman. If you were to go the route of making him less than 100% badass, you’d run straight into jokes about talking to fish.
But – oh jeez, there is just no getting around the fact that the architects of the upcoming Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice [1] , Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer, are not my favourite film makers. They contrived through a series of deliberate choices to make the worst possible version of Superman in Man of Steel. One where Superman does not take the slightest joy in being Superman, one where Superman makes a choice not to save someone (his own father!) because it might compromise his secret identity, and one where, after utterly demolishing his adopted city in a battle with a super-villain, kills the same super-villain because he has no choice.
Ugh. No. Superman always has a choice. Superman is Superman because he makes the choice to do the better thing, every time. He always –
You know what, forget it. The point is, if you are going to spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars making a movie starring a character called Clark Kent who is secretly an alien from the planet Krypton who flies around in a (sort of) blue and red costume and then you change everything else about the character, well, you haven’t really made a Superman movie, have you? You can give a guy laser eyes and the ability to punch holes in the moon – that doesn’t make him a hero. And gratuitous destruction and a neck-snap finisher is the climax of a crappy eighties action movie with Dolph Lundgren, not a Superman story. Ugh.
But apparently everybody involved was happy to conflate the idea of a superhero adventure with hardcore war-porn in spandex. I don’t really trust that the same people who think Superman should be a mope who doesn’t know how to take the fight outside can make a Justice League movie I will care about.
Man of Steel gave us one dour, humourless arse with a colour-leached costume design and nearly forty minutes of harrowing disaster simulations as entertainment. BvS: DoJ is going to feature up to seven of them (that ‘Unite the Seven’ catchphrase refers, one presumes, to the seven original members of DC Comics’ all-star superhero team, the Justice League). Right there in the title, we are promised a throwdown between two characters who have been best friends for about 70 of their 75+ years of existence.
Yeah, no thanks.
Make the obvious comparison: The Avengers had a collection of serious people in fanciful outfits scowling at each other for more than an hour before an alien invasion trashed dozens of city blocks in an orgy of violence. Why am I cutting that movie some slack when I could just as easily have been describing Man of Steel then and probably Batman/Superman to come?
Because The Avengers included some jokes, that’s why. And characters capable of finding the humour in their often terrible lives. Even Bruce Banner – whose life basically consists of the crushing certainty that sooner or later he will Hulk out and be responsible for deaths in the hundreds or thousands, and who openly talked about his own suicide attempt, and whose every scene involved self-recriminating misery – even that guy was allowed to have a sense of humour and some funny lines. Nobody in Man of Steel so much as cracked a wry smile. (Okay, maybe Russell Crowe did, but I am doing my best to forget everything that happened with Papa Krypton).
So how does this all tie back to Aquaman?
Hands down the best version of Aquaman in any medium in the last decade or so (arguably ever) is this guy from Batman: the Brave and the Bold. He’s loud, boisterous and overbearing. He’s the undisputed ruler of Atlantis. And every Tuesday he takes the night off from being the king of his undersea empire to go and have crime-fighting adventures with Batman because that’s how he loves to unwind. (He also breaks into song at the least excuse, but that’s kind of a thing with everyone on that show).
Outrageous!
Seriously, I love this guy. He doesn’t care if people think talking to fish is kind of stupid, because he can lift an oil tanker and ride bareback on killer whales and he’s the king of three-quarters of the planet. He’s happily married, loved by his people and Batman is more or less his best buddy. Why wouldn’t he be the happiest guy on Earth?
The problem with the upcoming DC Justice League tie-in films is that nobody is allowed to be happy in them. Superman mopes. Batman broods. It’s not just that they aren’t going to give us the happy-go-lucky Aquaman of the BBatB cartoons, it’s that it’s obviously a choice that was never in contention. If we’re lucky, they’ll pick out a character to be the wise-cracking rookie who gets a few witty zingers (I’ll bet Green Lantern, but Flash is also a possibility) but I’m predicting they will also make that character a mostly-unlikeable arsehole at the same time.
And Aquaman will be brooding, and serious, and almost certainly the butt of at least one joke about talking to fish.
Screw that.
[1] A shoe-in for the ‘Most Pompous Title of 2016′ award at next year’s Oscars
