Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler reveals how Aquaman affected the movie's depiction of Namor

Marvel's Namor is one of the few comic book characters to have made his debut before his DC counterpart Aquaman. Namor also known as the Sub-Mariner, made his comic book debut in 1939, while Aquaman appeared two years later in 1941.

However, when it came time for their big screen debut, Namor was beaten out by Aquaman. Directed by James Wan and starring Jason Momoa in the lead the movie arrived in theaters in 2018 and is one of DC's most sucessfull ventures.

The movie grossed over a billion dollars worldwide and has a sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom coming out next year, so with both Namor and Aquaman having so much in common how it director Ryan Coogler change things up?

In a recent interview with Uproxx, the director answered this exact question.

"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 have a sense of awareness of what the marketplace might want to respond to, and might be interested in."

He added "I think giving people something different, if you can give somebody something good, that’s also unique, I think it’s always 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."

Ryan Coogler also talked about what steps he took to make Namor stand out and not be compared to Aquaman.

For us, it was like, Yo, you got to wear the green trunks. 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 into either one. He has to be very confident and very dangerous. In the comics, Namor can always back up what he’s saying.

Well, it would seem that the director's approach worked as Tenoch Huerta's portrayal of Namor was well-received by critics and fans. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently dominating the box office and has grossed over 340 million dollars worldwide.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently running in theaters.