Warner Bros. knew it had some very big guns walking into Hall H for its 2018 San Diego Comic-Con presentation. Shazam!, Wonder Woman 1984, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and Godzilla: King…
Warner Bros. knew it had some very big guns walking into Hall H for its 2018 San Diego Comic-Con presentation. Shazam!, Wonder Woman 1984, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters all had impressive showings. So it when became clear that Aquaman, the upcoming DC movie from James Wan, was being saved for last, expectations couldn’t help but increase.
And yeah the first Aquaman trailer does feature tons of action-packed, visual inventive undersea spectacle. We totally want to see it. But we also can’t help but ask the question, why isn’t there more Black Manta???
We here at Geek.com maintain that Black Manta is the DC character with the most ongoing squandered potential. He’s more than just a guy with an awesome evil scuba suit who shoots lasers of out his big bug head. He’s more than just a great Injustice character. He’s a Black man who fled white oppression on land to lead free Black people under the ocean, only to discover the oceans were under white rule, too. He’s basically Killmonger, who audiences agreed ran away with Black Panther this year.
Now we never expected that level of racial politics in Aquaman. For one thing casting a Polynesian Arthur Curry in Jason Momoa (which is a great move!) muddies the waters a little bit. But if we must have a surface-level Black Manta at least show me a little more of him. This trailer opens with Aquaman presumably beating up Black Manta’s pirate goons. A later shot shows actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II removing his helmet. And finally we get a killer shot of Black Manta marching forward in full armor before unleashing an optic blast. But that’s only a few seconds of our beautiful boy.
Apparently SDCC attendees got to see more of Black Manta in action during an extended look at Aquaman footage. And we have no doubts later trailers will give us a better look at the scope of the character’s role in the story. But man, this Black Manta tease just isn’t enough to tide me over. Show me the goods, DC!
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