I still don't see how you can say Momoa looks at all like Aquaman.
"He has a beard! So did Aquaman twenty years ago!"
That doesn't cut it.
Therein lies the problem. Comic books is one of the biggest, most consistent visual mediums out there. That word again: Visual. Even when you were a kid and you didn't quite get the deep themes within the book, the visuals were still enough to get a lot of points across.
How a character looks is part of that.
And no, the Jackman comparison is a false one, tbh. Wolverine has been drawn tall plenty of times.
Nah, Wolverine is highly known to be small, which is why everyone calls him runt or whatever. A lot of people never pictured Jackman to be Wolverine in the beginning of the franchise, but ultimately grew on people, because he could translate Wolverine's personality on the big screen.
I know you won't agree, but it's not always about looks, IMO.
listen on baywatch, acting wasn't a requirement as men wanted to say the hot ladies running around in slo mo, and the ladies wanted to see the men running at slo mo.. I watch and enjoy Game of Thrones but this post says it best..
Wolverine is supposed to be small, and yet artists, tons of times, have drawn him at comparable heights to the other characters. It isn't the same thing as what's happening with Momoa, and it had precedent for Jackman.
In general, artist draw him small for decades. That's not really debatable. It's lazy on the artist to draw him Jackman like, IMO or they're doing it for the movie.
Momoa (if he is playing Aquaman) will do fine, IMO. He's not an elite actor, but you really don't have to be.
They did it before Jackman came along, and they did it after. I'm not saying they never drew him small. They did. Most of the time. Yet at the same time, there are tons of instances of him being "prettied up" because of how popular he was. They made him taller, less hairy etc. I'm not just making this up; they really did do this shit, especially as he got more popular. Jackman being Wolverine isn't REMOTELY close to Momoa being Aquaman, looks wise. Come on.
I still believe he's a bad choice. I had no problem with Affleck, and I was willing to give Eisenberg and Gadot a shot. But this is pushing it, imo, and it's a ****ing disappointment, to me.
I know, but it defeats the purpose of why Wolverine is cool and unique, IMO. Just because they drew him tall before, doesn't mean it's right. Wolverine is SUPPOSED to be short. Says it in his bio, his cards, and countless characters like Sabretooth have pointed it out in history.
And we will disagree on Mamoa, I guess, but saying WB has made crappy casting choices is stupid. Not saying YOU are saying it, but a few people on this board will complain about anything.
Are you going to tell me Affleck doesn't look like a Wayne or Batman? Or Gadot as WW? Or Jeremy Irons as Alfred? Or what about the casting in the past? Amy Adams was fine, Fishburn was fine, same with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as the parents. Shannon killed it as General Zod and Antje Traue was the BEST part as Faora. So far, under Snyder ALL the cast has been good to great. And obviously Henry was damn good as Superman.
With all that said, I have no worries outside of Gadot and even I will give that a shot.
Oh, and the Lex Luthor's of the past haven't really looked liked Luthor in the books. Gene Hackman is considered a classic and he wasn't very intimating. Same with Kevin Spacey.
And Michael Keaton got some huge slack when he was cast as Batman/Bruce Wayne, yet he was the best Batman in my book.
I said the exact same thing about the human torch casting. The image is about 75% of what a comic character is to the real world. How many people would recognize Captain america but not be able to say one thing about his backstory or mythos? Most people.
He's supposed to be short, true, but are you honestly equating adding a few inches of height with changing a character's entire ethnicity? Cavill is shorter than Superman, but do we rag on him for it? No, because he looked enough like Superman that it still worked.
I get that you think Momoa is a good choice. I don't understand the why, but I get that you do.
That said, I'm going to have issue with what you went on to say.
Affleck does look like versions of Bruce that have been drawn before. Many of them, in fact. Bruce is a handsome, tall, white guy with dark hair and a strong jawline. Affleck has all of that. He's also an actor with talent that we've actually seen on-screen, and though not everyone is okay with him being chosen, there's still every reason to think he can pull off the character.
Gadot is a relative unknown talent-wise, but she actually looks a little Greek, which helps her look more like Diana. She was also in the military, and if that doesn't help her portray a warrior, I don't know what will. She could suck in the role, but she has enough pluses that, for the moment, she's given the benefit of the doubt. But to go back to the start, yes, she looks like the kind of woman Diana could look like.
Alfred has not got a defined look to the extent that any member of the Justice League does. That's why so many artists take liberties with him. The extent of the "direction" an artist needs when drawing Alfred is "older, proper, british butler". There aren't NEARLY as many restrictions on drawing him as there are on Aquaman, and it does allow for more flexibility. That, and Alfred is a supporting character for a superhero; considerations of his appearance will always be secondary to those of the primary characters.
Amy Adams was a Caucasian woman that looked at the right age to play alongside Cavill. Give her dark hair, and she looks like any number of versions of Lois Lane. She also gave, imo, a decent performance.
Perry White is also a supporting character, with less of a defined look than any member of the JLA. Making him Laurence Fishbourne isn't that big a deal, as Perry isn't a character that is, honestly, important enough that it would matter. His appearance is not something that is iconic about the character. I even liked Fishbourne, truth be told.
Jonathan and Martha were played by older, American, white people. That's literally the only criteria required for the characters' looks.
Shannon's Zod actually looks like how Zod appeared in several Superman comics over the past few years (even before the movie; we're talking preboot stuff here). So his appearance is actually mostly accurate.
Faora looked, in general, like several iterations of the character that came before, so she's consistent.
Spacey looked more like Luthor than several of the comic versions. And acted more like current Luthor than some of them too. Luthor has actually been redesigned several times over the years, and if you were to line Spacey up against several of them, he'd actually seem more accurate than a good deal of them.
Hackman played up the businessman side of Lex, that's true, but it's not unheard of in the comics either. As far as how he looked, which is what i'm mainly talking about, the dude was a haircut away from looking like Lex Luthor.
--
Momoa, if he has been cast as Aquaman, has been cast as a character that had a consistent, defined look for decades. His ethnicity, his costume etc, have all been specifically chosen by the writers and the artists that have worked with them.
When Snyder writes a Batman comic, does the artist he hands his pages over to, have to consult a sketchbook to make sure he gets Alfred right?
Or when Jim Lee draws Lex Luthor, does he really have to worry about making him a certain way, or does he have the leniency to work with a very broad "white, bald, and well dressed" set of outlines?
Even when Aquaman had his hook hand, which he only had for a few years, it was a look that was specifically maintained across several comics under different writers (PAD and Morrison at one point).
And then there's his character. As I said before, I like Momoa as an actor. I liked him as Ronan Dex, and I liked him as Kal Drogo. He's a solid actor, and he does seem like a genuinely nice guy from the interviews I've seen him in.
Is he right for Aquaman, though? I just don't see it. Even taking away the looks, which I seriously maintain he doesn't have, he's never shown the kind of range required for the character. The core of the Aquaman character is that he's a child of two worlds that will never accept him because of what his parents did, and his struggle to maintain balance between both lives. Sure, you can have him do cool shit in a team movie, but in a solo one, you need someone with presence, and when it comes down to it, this is what really pisses me off about the casting:
I don't believe Momoa can carry a solo movie as Aquaman. I really don't.
He's been in some low budget stuff, sure, but tbh, this is one of DC's tentpole characters. This is one of the founding members of the Justice League, one of their most "unusual" members due to his unwillingness to be a team player at times. He's also one of the few DC comic characters that has actual exposure in the GA, for better or worse.
I'm genuinely worried that, if they change too much, it will just reinforce the ideas of the people that think that Aquaman underwent some sort of massive revamp with the reboot, and that the guy in Injustice and the like wasn't around for the last twenty years, when he was.
Ugh, I'm writing too much. Okay, time to wrap it up.
Maybe you don't care if a character looks like their comic version; that's your right. But I really don't agree with the sentiment that it's okay to make drastic changes to how a MAJOR (emphasis for emphasis) character looks when they come from such a visual medium.
KMC Community Forums
Jun 17th, 2014 12:08 PM
