Aquaman deleted scenes: Why THIS major Arthur moment was cut – ‘It sounds important’

The DC blockbuster already clocks in at over 2 hours and 20 minutes, so it’s understandable that James Wan wanted to make trims wherever he could. And it seems there’s one sequence in particular that didn’t make the cut, but would have provided some more interesting insight to Arthur’s backstory.

Speaking to Comic Book, Wan revealed that a scene was filmed in which we saw Arthur first realising he could breathe underwater.

It’s quite a key element of Aquaman’s very character, but it seems the time constraints kept it out of the final edit.

“I know it sounds very important,” he added, “but it being a flashback scene, I really felt like I had too many flashbacks as it were, and that I didn’t want to cram another one in there.”

The site adds, however, that Wan hopes to add the deleted moment to the DVD and Blu-ray release next year.

Aquaman has won the US box office but with a slightly lower box office haul than its DC predecessors.

Its unfortunate for a studio desperately in need of some good PR, but at least word-of-mouth should stop Aquaman from sinking as quickly as, say, Justice League.

That movie bowed to $93.8 million compared to Aquaman’s $67.4 million, but reviews for the ensemble offering were dire, whereas the sheer lunacy of Aquaman seems to have endeared it to fans.

And in any case, the caper has performed exceptionally well internationally. It’s Warner Bros’ most successful movie ever in China already.

Another moment that ended up being deleted – although in this case it wasn’t even filmed – was a very gory one indeed.

“[Will Beall, writer] had a really quirky out-there [sequence],” Wan said, according to Dark Horizons.

“It wasn’t the studio, it was me that said, ‘I don’t know if we can have that in there, that’s a bit weird.’ As much as I loved it.

“He had this sequence where… Aquaman has been apprehended by King Orm and he’s been thrown into this dungeon. Like this really awful prison deep in Atlantis.

“He ends up starting a prison riot, where all the guards are sharks.”

He added: “They were shark-guards, like all shark head… and he kills one of the shark guards and the shark starts bleeding and then that starts a feeding frenzy among all the other shark guards.

“It just went nuts. We’re talking like clouds of blood billowing everywhere and he uses that to escape.

“I was like ‘Holy c**p, I don’t know if I can do that.’”

Aquaman is out now.