Don't Worry - Aquaman's Going To Have An Equally Silly Villain

I'm kinda confused by what DC's doing with Aquaman. The casting and design of the character suggests they want to go full-on badass and trident-poke anyone bringing out Family Guy jokes into submission, yet the Justice League trailer started making those exact gags - "I hear you can talk to fish". It'll be part of that film's major course correction in the wake of DC thinking the main problem with Batman V Superman was its dour tone (it was much, much more), but suggests in some way we're going dumb with this character.

The waters have been further made murky by the recent reveal by The Wrap that the villain of the film is going to be Black Manta. Nothing wrong with picking him - there's some dark psychological trauma to explore there - just that it seems a rather silly choice, by his New 52 origin a regular human with a power suit rather than an ancient Atlantean threat.

I'm sure it'll be fine - James Wan is a very competent, crowd-pleasing director - I just want to know what the f*ck tone he'll be aiming for. Also, there's the question of who's actually playing Manta - expect some rumours of that to start surfacing in the next few weeks. Wow, even with the failure of Suicide Squad it's hard to not get speculating.

Aquaman is in cinemas on 27th July 2018 (otherwise known as the Suicide Squad slot).