If the audiences watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s new villain, Namor, without reading the comic books, they can easily pinpoint Namor’s similarities with DC’s Aquaman. However, Black Panther 2 director Ryan Coogler was quick to address this by not only changing some of Namor’s origins, but in ensuring Marvel’s villain is different from DC’s Aquaman.
Related: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Sets Major All-Time Box Office Record
Previously, Coogler shared how he managed to distinguish Namor from Aquaman and one of those things is having to come up with a different name for the Sub-Mariner’s kingdom: Talocan, instead of Atlantis.
Recently speaking with Uproxx, Coogler paints a picture of how Aquaman greatly benefited him in recreating Namor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Read his full quote below:
“I do think that having Aquaman out in the world, in film language, and being successful in the marketplace, I think it was a great bit of indirect guidance for us to lean into the things that made Namor different from Aquaman. Just out of respect to the audience because a lot of people saw that movie. A lot of people love that movie. It was our task to, obviously, put our heads down and blinders on and make our movie, but also a sense of awareness of what the marketplace might want to respond to, and might be interested in.”
The director continues to reiterate that it is always better to give something different to the people, ‘that’s also unique’, which always makes it better.
“We wanted to lean into the things that make those two characters different from each other because they have a lot of other similarities in publishing. He’s got to have his winged ankles, he’s got to be relatively arrogant, he has to be long-lived, he’s got to be a child of two worlds, not really fitting in either one. He has to be very confident and dangerous. In the comics, Namor can always back up what he’s saying.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now in theaters.
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