‘Aquaman’ Director James Wan On Adding Dark, Scary Sequences

Aquaman director James Wan knows a thing or two about dark, scary sequences which is probably why they work so well in his DC Comics movie.

Wan’s film background includes creating such titles as Saw and The Conjuring. While he keeps Aquaman light-hearted and family friendly, he did manage to inject it with one intense and dark sequence which offered vibes of his horror films. In one particular sequence, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) and Mera (Amber Heard) are forced to face the creatures of the Trench, in what plays as a cinematically beautiful scenario loaded with terrifying moments.

“I mean, listen, I’m well aware of the movie that I was making, and I never think go darker in terms of visuals, but I didn’t want to go darker in terms of tone, if that makes sense,” Wan told Comicbook.com. “I feel like I can get away with it because they’re sea monsters, and I can have it be a flash of a scary moment in there and have fun with that, but ultimately, I didn’t want to do anything depressing with it.”

The praise from fans and critics calling Aquaman “visually stunning” spawns from Wan’s aim for creating fresh and beautiful scenarios for moviegoers to feast their eyes on. “That was a big goal of mine,” Wan said. “In that sequence, and it was my mantra for the movie. My philosophy for the whole movie was to create a world that we haven’t quite seen before, and if I’m going to work with digital filmmaking with CGI for the first time at this level, I want to do shit that we’ve never kind of quite seen before. I want to create a different looking world, and yeah, and that was my goal.”

As a result, Aquaman has already boasted impressive hauls with its international release. Fans and critics who have seen the movie have been pointing out its impressive visuals endlessly.

Aquaman hits theaters on December 21, 2018.