Aquaman is something of a course correction for the DC Extended Universe of films. It's big, it's strange, and it's genuinely entertaining. But what really makes the absoultely bonkers story and settings work as well as they do is the cast. The actors assembled for the film bring gravitas and humanity to the cast of Atlanteans, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II brings a more human, but no less complex character, to life.

Playing Black Manta as the hero of his own story, Abdul-Mateen turns the potentially one-note villain into one of the most compelling DC bad guys to appear on film, perhaps ever. Part of that comes from the humanity of the performance, but remember -- this is a movie where he shoots lasers at Jason Momoa's head, so he also had to bring it for massive action sequences.

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He admitted as much to CBR, explaining that those aspects of the job are really the best parts of being an actor. "It's just a different side of the dream," he told us. "On one side you get to work on a more intimate, more specific way. It's not even more specific, it's just in a different genre. And in this genre, it just kind of asks you to open up even more."

He compared his stint in the DC Universe to his previous work on the Netflix hip-hop history series The Get Down.  "When you're working under Baz Lurman [director and creator of The Get Down], everything you're working with is going to be heightened. So you take a lot of those elements and bring it to this world and say, 'No, we want more.' So you really have to believe that you're making something that can contain all that emotion and scale. But that's why you have [director] James Wan there to usher in those moments."

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"Black Manta is a guy [who has] real motivations," Abdul-Mateen continued. "And once an actor has that, then you can go through the full of emotions and experiences because it all points back to something that's relatable, something that's real. At the end of the day, the audience has the opportunity to say 'actually, this guy has a point.'" I may not agree with the how, but he definitely has a right to want revenge and to want payback and to want destruction. And then you get to use your imagination as an actor to figure out how to make all those things happen. That's the beauty of it".

But even with all that drive and passion about acting that drives Abdul-Mateen, there's still a little bit of that little kid inside who's just excited to be in the big toy box. When asked what other super hero he'd be most excited to punch in the face, he grinned and exclaimed, "Batman! And that's only because I grew up watching Batman - so I think myself, Yayha the actor, would be really giddy about being in the same space as another person wearing a Batman suit, and then I get to punch him in the face?! That would almost be worth taking off a piece of the gear to punch him with a real fist."

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Directed by James Wan, Aquaman stars Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Amber Heard as Mera, Patrick Wilson as Ocean Master, Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry, Dolph Lundgren as Nereus and Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna. The film opens on Dec. 21.