The 2023 movie that “absolutely baffled” Jason Momoa
Credit: Alamy
What goes on in the hallowed halls of Hollywood studios is enough to have anyone wondering who really makes decisions and why, especially when you get hundreds of millions spent on movies that nobody really asked for, not least Aquaman starring Jason Momoa.
The thing about the 2018 DC Comics movie that is even more surprising is that somehow, it made more than $1.1billion at the box office, which provides you with the exact answer to the question I posed in the first paragraph: the people paid to greenlight movies usually have a decent idea of what will and won’t make a lot of money.
As we’ve seen from the 150 different Avatar films, just because nobody asks for something doesn’t mean that plenty of strange folk won’t hand over their hard earned cash down at the Odeon of a weekend, and so Momoa’s tale of a mer-man who basically just shouts and splashes about a bit with a giant fork was deemed a hit, although I’ve no idea what actually goes on it because it looks dreadful quite frankly.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like Jason Momoa, though, because he, on the other hand, seems absolutely ace in all manner of ways. He’ll get leathered with people interviewing him, he takes the piss out of himself constantly, and he loves what he does, which comes through in his performances in everything from Dune to the Minecraft movie.
He’s also surprisingly honest about Aquaman, once telling Men’s Health: “Well, to be perfectly honest, I was absolutely baffled that Aquaman was received so well. I’ve done things that are amazing that no one sees and no one gives a shit about. You just don’t know in this business.”
This is very true, but what you do know was that once the film made a billion dollars, a sequel was inevitable, and so sure enough in 2023 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrived, which also wasn’t very good, but this time it didn’t make even half what the first one did, and that’s why there’s no talk of an Aquaman 3, because people have frankly had enough.
But Momoa doesn’t seem to worry too much about how much his movies make, adding, “For a good 20 years, no one knew who I was. I worked on TV shows and wanted to be on something better… I don’t go do things and think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna get $1billion on this one’. I go in and do my best job…Aquaman is probably the hardest character in comic-book history. He’s made fun of and ridiculed, but I tried to give it heart and soul, and I’m proud of it in certain ways.”
Which is fair enough, and so far, he’s done a decent job making pretty entertaining movies, including The Wrecking Crew, his double hard man movie with Dave Bautista that came out earlier this year via Prime Video. He’s also going to be starring in plenty of the biggest franchises around over the next few years, including the latest Fast and the Furious movie, Fast Forever, plus Dune Part Three, another Minecraft movie and an adaptation of the Street Fighter video game.
All of those will be much, much better than Aquaman.
