Ricky Church chats with Aquaman producer Peter Safran…
At the end of 2018, the DC universe returned in full force to theatres with Jason Momoa reprising his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League role of Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Aquaman. Not only did the film make a splash (no pun intended) at the global box office, earning over a billion dollars, it has helped shift the mainstream audience’s perception of Aquaman from the butt of superhero jokes to a badass with some fairly good characterization and an intriguing world.
With Aquaman coming to 4k and Blu-ray shelves on March 26 for North America and April 6 for the UK, Flickering Myth got the opportunity to speak with the film’s producer, Peter Safran. In our chat we spoke about the success the film has had with audiences, taking a serious approach to Aquaman as a character and Aquaman‘s technological achievements as well as Safran’s other DC projects, namely Shazam! and The Suicide Squad. Check out the interview below…
Aquaman has always been the butt of the jokes with the mainstream audience as a member of the Justice League, but I think that’s kind of changed with the success of the film.
That was the goal!
For sure! So how did you, James Wan and Walter Hamada go about shifting the public perception of Aquaman from a joke to badass?
I think one of the reasons James Wan wanted to direct this movie and selected it from everything he was being offered was he loved subverting people’s expectations and taking a guy who was the butt of the joke and turning him into the ultimate badass. Now the first step towards doing that is you cast Jason fucking Momoa because he’s the butt of nobodies joke! But then you take things like how they make fun of him talking to fish, you make it cool. You have him on a seahorse, well you place him on a sea dragon riding it into battle. It was just taking a lot of the tropes and turning them on their ear and just making them kick ass. I think the response fans have had and the way they’ve embraced Aquaman as a character really shows that we succeeded.
For sure. I’m glad you actually mentioned the sea horse bit because I was going to bring that up since one of the aspects I really liked about Aquaman was how much it embraced its comic book roots. Between Arthur and Mera showing off their individual powers and the craziness of Atlantis, what made you guys decide to lean so heavily into the comic book feel?
You know, I think that with each superhero movie you want to give it the tone that’s appropriate for it. We felt that Aquaman deserved a fantastical nature and a bright, colourful nature. We just leaned into it with the gold and green for his hero outfit and for Mera’s outfit, we just felt that these were things that people had never seen before, a world they had never seen before, and we got to create it from scratch on the film, but knowing it was influenced heavily by these great comic book artists before. It was always something we knew we would draw from wherever we could.
You’ve worked with James and Walter before on The Conjuring series and its spin-offs so what was it like for you to go from working with them from the horror element with Conjuring to the world of superheroes?
It was interesting. Walter wasn’t in the world of superheroes when I came on board Aquaman. He joined us in post on that, but the idea of working with James again, I would do anything with James. When the opportunity opened up to go produce Aquaman with him, I had spoken to him at length about what his vision was and I was so excited about it. It felt so fresh and different and when he invited me in, I accepted gladly.
Awesome. Now a moment ago, you mentioned just how much of a beast Jason Momoa is in most things he stars in, but in Aquaman he kind of dials it to 11 a lot with the intense fight sequences and how much he yells and screams. He’s starred as Aquaman in Batman v Superman and Justice League, but how did it feel to bring Jason Momoa as Aquaman in his own solo feature?
It’s a character that really deserved it and there’s storylines and mythology behind him that really deserved to be explored. In terms of the character himself, the character is so married to Jason Momoa. Like that character really is Momoa, the character of somebody who doesn’t know where he belongs in life, doesn’t know if he’s of Atlantis or of the land. Momoa’s a guy who is Hawaiian but grew up in Iowa, they didn’t accept him in Iowa, he’d go back to Hawaii, they didn’t accept him there because he felt like a mainlander. Momoa brings so much of himself to the role and then we embraced everything that was Momoa, even in terms of just the way he looks and dresses and the tattoos and the attitude. All those came organically from Jason. I think these movies work best when the superhero and the actor playing them are really well married. Whether it’s Momoa and Aqauman, Gal Gadot and Wonder Woman, Zack Levi and Shazam or Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool, when you get it right and they are just those people, I think the movie sings.
Now despite all the spectacular action Aquaman boasts with its underwater battles and the awesome Aquaman/Black Manta fight, which is one of my favourite bits of the movie –
Sure, it’s my favourite!
Despite all the action, the film actually has a lot of heart to its with its story and character arcs. Can you talk about how you, James and the cast approached the character aspect of Aquaman?
You know, these movies work to the greatest effect when you’re telling a terrific human story. When you’re telling a family drama in my opinion. In this case, it is about a man discovering where he belongs in the world. Finding his place in the world. It’s his relationship with his mother, it’s his relationship with his father, what he discovers with his relationship with his half-brother and their adversarial nature. I think if you can really embrace the human element – the smaller, human, dramatic element – then the larger, world-changing elements become more impactful because you really get a sense of who they are impacting.
A couple minutes ago you talked about putting Jason in the classic gold and green costume in the comics, which is another thing I liked about the film about how amazing the costumes look and how diverse each character’s look is. From Mera’s various dresses to the Atlanean troops to the sea-life. I was just wondering what kind of process did you guys go through in translating the costumes through the costume design?
It was a very long and intense visual development process with James Wan at the helm of every element of it. He is a remarkably, remarkably visual guy and he was in there sketching himself sometimes. You trident Arthur would hold, the curve of the swoosh of the gauntlet, how high it would come up on the elbow. He was incredibly involved in every aspect. All the gadgets on Black Manta’s equipment, he was really in there designing what it should be. I think its one of the most satisfying elements of the film is how incredible these costumes are and they’re practical. We really shot these. A lot of superhero movies ends up mostly being CG costumes. That’s not the case with us. We really built these things.
That’s really cool. And speaking of the technology, Aquaman, sorry for the pun, really tests the waters of how much the technology has evolved and you guys try taking it further with all the underwater scenes. Its pretty impressive from a technological standpoint. How did you accomplish and try to build off the underwater sequences?
I really don’t think the movie could have been made at any kind of real price a decade ago or even five years ago. I think the R&D and the technology that has occurred over the last couple of years allowed us to shoot so much dry for wet, which is very complex. To give actors natural, neutral buoyancy and really feel like they’re floating and moving in the water in a natural fashion was very, very tough to achieve. But with our stunt teams, the tuning forks and the rigging and the camera movement, it was a really delicate dance between James, the DP, the visual effects department, the stunt guys, everybody working together to give it that natural feel. It was a lot of interesting stuff that we took and applied to the flying stuff in Shazam! because we really learned a lot about how to most effectively work the tuning forks and the rigging and the cameras.
Cool! You’re also a producer on some other DC movies coming up like Shazam!, The Suicide Squad, even the potential Trench spin-off. What draws you personally to characters like Shazam or Suicide Squad?
I think that the unifying theme that draws me to any of these properties or any movies I’ve made of late is is it a story I want to tell? Is there some interesting element to the story? For me, I loved the core concept of Aquaman being about a guy who can’t find his place in the world. I love with Shazam! it’s a family story of a boy who thinks that if he can just find his birth mother it will complete him and ultimately discovering that family isn’t about blood, it’s about bond he can find family in the most unexpected place. The Trench, without being able to get into it, has a great central story to it as well. The Suicide Squad, my favourite movies growing up were those kind of The Dirty Dozen-type films so to be able to tell a story like that with an amazing filmmaker like James Gunn, it’s a dream come true. It’s just looking for that which really speaks to you and each of these projects.
You can listen to the interview in full here…
Thank you to Peter Safran for speaking with us!
AQUAMAN is out on Digital Download April 6th and available on 4K UHD, 3D, Blu-ray™ and DVD April 8th.
Ricky Church
