If you’ve been following the saga of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe), you know their film division has hit some rough waters. Ben Affleck allegedly doesn’t want to be Batman anymore. Director Matt Reeves recently dropped out from directing The Batman film. Rumors that Wonder Woman is a mess just won’t die. The Flash is going through directors like tissue paper. Justice League has had to assure fans the trailer is coming soon and the film isn’t in trouble. Just about the only upcoming film in the DCEU stable that isn’t experiencing some sort of drama is James Wan’s Aquaman. So of course, DC fans had to go and look a gift (sea)horse in the mouth, completely misconstruing a tweet by Wan as a slight against Batman and irritating the director to no end.
It all began innocently enough when a fan jokingly asked if the Aquaman movie needed a sidekick. Because, like all great superheroes, Aquaman has an underage sidekick. Pacman_25 probably didn’t expect a response, but Wan saw an opportunity to make sure fans weren’t expecting Aqualad to show up in his film.
https://twitter.com/creepypuppet/status/833493005440933888
To explain his logic, Wan used the most well-known duo in the DC library as a metaphor for the decision to cut Aqualad from this origin story: You have to establish the history of the main hero before you introduce his extended family (and for the record, Aquaman’s wife Meera will be in the film as played by Amber Heard).
https://twitter.com/creepypuppet/status/833507889901756416
End of story, right? Hahaha! If you thought that, you must be new to both the more extreme end of the DC fandom and the Internet in general. Either without proper context or without reading comprehension, some of the replies to Wan’s metaphor quickly morphed into a litany of explanations that Batman has been well-established in DC Film canon over the last two decades and how dare Wan behave like Robin shouldn’t get a fair shake, what is he, some kind of n00b fake fan? Wan, understandably frustrated, made a half-hearted attempt to explain himself before just giving up mid-tweet.
https://twitter.com/creepypuppet/status/833509566679707648
Aquaman is the best thing DC Films have going for it right now. Which in and of itself is proof we live in interesting times. But let’s not ruin the good fortune that will bring us Jason Momoa wielding a trident in defense of his undersea kingdom by “Batman-splaining” at the director.
