James Wan was at the Television Critics Association press tour this week to discuss CBS' MacGyver series, which he directed the pilot for. I sat down with Wan to talk about his new take on that classic '80s series (I’ll have more from our conversation on MacGyver soon), but we also chatted about his next project – the DC Extended Universe movie Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa.

The director of Saw, Insidious 1 and 2, The Conjuring 1 and 2, and Furious 7 chatted about his approach to the character, conveying speech underwater, what Aquaman comic book writer influenced his movie version, and more – and why he feels Aquaman is the Wolverine of the Justice League/DCEU.

IGN: With Aqauman, we’re going to meet him in Justice League first. Did you discuss how he'd be defined there, before moving into your movie?

James Wan: Yeah, as much as I possibly could; as much as I could get in there. The train on Justice League has kind of set off already! That's basically Zack's vision for that world, but you know, early on, Zack [Snyder] tried to involve me as much as he could and I really appreciated that. It's just that it was very hard for me to solely focus on it, because I was still in the midst of finishing up and shooting Conjuring 2 for Warner Bros. - the same studio! So it's this very interesting world, you know? As much as they wanted me to be involved with Aquaman early on, I was busy making a movie for them. [Laughs] But now that everything is finishing up, I'm definitely getting in there much, much more. And I'm definitely really excited about running with my standalone movie.

IGN: How do you approach communication underwater? On a comic book page, it's easy to do...

Wan: Yeah, speech bubbles, right?! Maybe it'll be speech bubbles. [Laughs] I never thought about that... Words come out of the bubbles. It's brilliant! That's a cool visual.

IGN: [Laughs] Hey, it would be a literal adaptation!

Wan: It would be very literal, yeah! No, here's the thing I always say, if you have water in your lungs, like these characters do, there's no air bubble. So I don't know... I just think in my movie, I want to kind of create... I love the idea of underwater speaking but with a real sort of sonic, aquatic quality to it. So there's this sort of aquatic, almost sonar/whale thing. Even though it's in a human language, there’s this slight sort of underlay to it, this ping to it, which I think would be interesting for us to design from a sound design perspective. Yeah, it will be fun. Also, Zack has some ideas that he'll be doing in Justice League.

Listen, I'll be honest, in some ways, JL will be an experiment for me to see what works and what may not work as well. And then kind of go, okay... Here’s the great thing, with all these superhero movies, you watch from one movie to another, and they always sort of slightly change things along the way. You kind of have to do that to make what's best for your film.

IGN: Everything is very analyzed with these movies and people are talking about what was reshoot on one or different versions on another. Do you try and put that aside and just think, "I have to do my story here for Aquaman. This is what I'm focusing on"?

Wan: You have to. You have to. You have to make the best movie you can. You have to make the best movie out of yours. You want to stay true and you want to be respectful and honor the world that we all collectively live together - the cinematic universe. So you want to honor that, but at the same time, you've got to make the best movie you can for your own movie.

IGN: So I have to ask about The Wrap reporting Black Manta is your villain...

Wan: Dude, you know I can't tell you that! [Laughs] Come on! As much as I want to share this with you, I can't do that this early on.

IGN: Are there certain creator runs or storylines from the comics that were a big influence as you were putting together the movie?

Wan: Listen, I'll be honest, I really love what Geoff Johns did with it. I really think he took this character that had become the joke of the superhero world and made him frickin' cool again. And I really admire it and that is my leaping off point.

IGN: Is it interesting working with Jason on the approach to the character, and as you mentioned, overcome people's preconceived notions?

Wan: Yeah, I actually think it's a brilliant move on Zack and co. to cast someone like Jason. Immediately, the whole joke aspect of Aquaman goes out the window. You have such a muscular, superhero-y character and one that is almost, to me, in some ways... I look at him, he's kind of the Wolverine in some respect. He's the outsider who gets pulled into this world and he kind of doesn't want to belong and he was doing his own thing. And he prided freedom above everything else. That kind of plays nicely into who his character is. He's like a reluctant superhero, right? He's the reluctant king, basically, or would-be king.

Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.