Superhero fans have been known to be a picky bunch. And for good reason, many grew up reading about their favorite heroes adventures, identifying with their struggles and their successes as well. So when movie studios want to translate their favorites on screen, fans become more than vocal about their disagreements with who will play a character. When Jason Momoa was cast as Aquaman, he may be one of the few actors to get the fans approval.
Jason Momoa had showcased his physicality and acting chops in films like Conan the Barbarian and Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones. Imagining the actor as Aquaman was not a hard transition for anyone to digest. The actor himself seems to have found a kinship with his DCEU character. The actor confessed the reason in a recent interview [via comicbook.com]. Momoa said:
“How I identify with that is kind of being…a bit of an outcast. You see, he wasn’t really too accepted…I wasn’t too accepted. There weren’t any races where I grew up.[Mamoa grew up in rural Iowa]. There’s no Chinese, no Mexican, no Black. I grew up in Iowa. I graduated with like 100 people.I was born in Hawaii, so I would go see my father…[I] just wasn’t accepted on the local side by some people because I wasn’t raised in Hawaii. I identify as being that outcast and not really fitting into two different worlds.”
Fans of the Aquaman comics will know that Arthur Curry was also a character trying to find a place in the world. As a half-human, half-Atlantean, Curry was pulled between two worlds. His father was a simple lighthouse keeper, but his mother Atlanta was an exiled Queen of Atlantis. Once Arthur learned about his roots, the hero felt conflicted by his conflicting identities and constantly struggled to reconcile them even after becoming the superhero known as Aquaman.
