James Wan’s Aquaman will not only give fans a much closer look at Jason Momoa‘s Aquaman but also Amber Heard‘s Mera. While there are romantic elements between them, don’t expect your typical superhero love story.
During our time on the set of Aquaman Producer Peter Safran and Mera actress Amber Heard were asked about the love story between the two heroes, and if it is similar to some other superhero films. From Safran’s view, the film doesn’t really fit into that category though.
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“I wouldn’t necessarily call it in this movie a love story,” Safran said. “It’s very much in the vein of Indiana Jones. James wanted to tell this swashbuckling, fun, quest movie. It’s a great time for everybody to see. So, the relationship is a little bit Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, which is ultimately a romantic action movie. But, I wouldn’t say it’s actually a romance.”
“There is a great antagonism, because of the places they come from,” Safran said. “She is all about duty and honor and he’s all about looking out for number one. And, I think what they both realize over the course of their journey, he harbors such anger toward Atlantis for killing his mother. He learns that he shouldn’t judge the entirety of Atlantis based on the actions of one man and she learns that the surface world is a place that’s really worth preserving and finding a way to coexist.”
For Heard, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an attraction between the two characters, but neither character is supporting the other, as both are truly equal.
“That’s the thing, I know what you mean,” Heard said. “He is really hard to look at, you know? We all know that. But you know, the thing I really like about this is I feel it has a more modern approach, I think, to what would otherwise be a more classic superhero formula. This is very much a story where they are equal partners. Because they come from different worlds, their strengths are very different.”
“Where one excels in one world, the other is a fish out of water,” Heard said. “Pun intended. [Laughs] I guess I’ll be saying that a whole lot. Just gonna get used to owning it! But it’s true. Mera, when she’s on the surface world, it’s very much an alien world to her. Same way that when Arthur is in Atlantis, he’s completely out of his element. But we both excel at being in our own worlds, and because we have our own identities and because our identities are tied up in who we are in our respective worlds, we share equal responsibility in the journey.”
Don’t expect Aquaman to come to Mera’s rescue either, as Mera is not someone who needs to be saved.
“Never. And what I really love is that it does not rely on this whole damsel in distress formulaic thing we see all the time, we’ve seen a million times,” Heard said. “He doesn’t rescue the girl and then save the world. He doesn’t — in fact, I save him. Like I said, they go on this adventure as equal partners and they end it that way. There is an element of attraction there, but it is not the thing — because they have a job to do, they have a mission to fulfill and are equal partners in the success or failure of that mission, that takes a back seat to this. Their relationship, that element is not the driving force or what brings them together.”
Aquaman hits theaters on December 21st.
