Lou Diamond Phillips on "Aquaman"

A week or two ago The Onion A.V. Club posted an interview with actor Lou Diamond Phillips, most famous for his work in La Bamba and Young Guns. But of course, Mr. Phillips also appeared in the failed Aquaman pilot, Mercy Reef, so I was curious to see if he would be asked and/or comment about that particular role. Sure enough:

"Aquaman (2007)—'Tom Curry'

LDP: I can't even speak to that very much, because I've never seen it. Everything pointed to the fact that that project should've been a slam-dunk. It was from the creators of Smallville. The CW was going to rebrand and launch their new network, and it just seemed to be such a great calling card to have a big, slick project like that. So to me, it was a no-brainer. We had filmed the pilot in Miami, and it went beautifully. And I'm literally waiting for a call to go to the upfronts, and not until the day before do we get the call saying, 'Well, we’re not going to pick it up.' And it was devastating to me.

I had real high hopes for the project. And when something like that happens, I don't even bother to watch it, because it's just too painful. It's like, 'My God, what could've been…' And it ended up being literally the number-one download for two weeks once it became available on iTunes, so I was like, 'Do you see? It would've had an audience. It would’ve been a hit.' But they blinked and were afraid to pull the trigger. So it's just one of those things that I chalk up to…it's one of the reasons why I’ll never understand the industry."

In fact, it was Phillips who brought his role in Aquaman up first, in response to an earlier question about another failed show he was on:

"It isn't always a slam-dunk, no matter how good it is…cough, cough, Aquaman pilot. [Laughs.]"


Obviously we'll never know how good a show Aquaman/Mercy Reef could have been. I had some issues with the pilot, but at the same time if it had been a Smallville-sized hit, I think we'd be talking about an Aquaman movie as a When, not an If.

Mercy Reef Pilot Script - 2006

With Aquaman's final (as far as I know) appearance on Smallville just a few days away, I thought now would be a good time to take a look at the original script for the Mercy Reef/Aquaman pilot, starring Justin Harley as young Arthur Curry.

If memory serves, I picked this up on eBay, curious to see how different it was from the finished show. Turns out, not all that much--most of the scenes you see in the script are in the show, if their order is moved around a bit.

Watching the pilot, you can see how Smallville creators (and writers of this script) Alfred Gough and Miles Millar really tried to front-load this show with elements that would make it as commercial as possible.

I don't mean that as a slight, at all: rather, its a realistic approach, in terms of getting a network to greenlight an expensive, effects-heavy hour-long TV show. The setting is on the Florida coastline, giving the show the reason to fill the background with young men and women in bathing suits and bikinis (less clothes=more ratings).

Also, they rejigger the Aquaman mythos to make it more like Buffy The Vampire Slayer; a show with (presumably) a similar target audience and that one that could generate many seasons' worth of stories. There's a scene later on in the show where Arthur takes up with a cute blond girl, only to learn she's not what she seems:

This scary chick gets an arrow in the chest, courtesy McCaffery (played by Ving Rhames), who ends up being the Giles to Arthur's Buffy.

The final scene of the show ends with Arthur and McCaffery as the proverbial light house, where Arthur is nervous but excited about the new life that stretches out in front of him.

Of course, that was never to be--right around the time this pilot was produced, the WB and the CW merged, resulting in fewer spots for two networks' worth of shows, plus all the new series' pilots, and Mercy Reef/Aquaman got rejected, another instance of weird, external circumstances conspiring to deal a blow to the Sea King.

And while this show was certainly very different from the Aquaman most comics fans are familiar with, I really would have loved to have seen where Gough and Millar went with this--to say nothing of what it would have done for Aquaman's popularity, in and out of comic books.


Remember to watch Smallville this Friday, November 19 @8pm EST!

Mercy Reef Parking Pass - 2007

Definitely one of the most...obscure items ever to show up here on the Shrine (and that's saying something), this is just what it looks like--a parking pass (presumably for somewhere on the WB lot) given out to people who were attending a special preview screening of the ill-fated Aquaman TV pilot, still called Mercy Reef at this point.

Even after shopping for eBay for about ten years now, I'm still amazed at some of the stuff people think to hold on to. Although I guess I shouldn't be that amazed, since I bought the dad-blamed thing!
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Yes, congratulations Firestorm! You are the subject of a new blog, called Firestorm Fan, created by F.O.A.M. member Shag Matthews which officially opens today!

I love it when someone loves a particular character so much they feel compelled to open up their own blog, hang up an "Open for Business" sign, and have at it!

Firestorm deserves one just as much as any other superhero, so head on over there to check out Shag's efforts to celebrate DC's premiere Nuclear Man!

Aquaman: The Pilot DVD - 2007

Ok, so I finally got around to viewing the late, lamented(?) Aquaman pilot film. I knew as soon as I heard it was being made available as part of some Smallville boxed sets, it would show up on ebay by itself. And of course, ebay didn't let me down.

The main complaint I've read about this is that "its not Aquaman." And in a lot of ways, those criticisms are correct--there's a huge of amount of differences between this Aquaman and the one we/most people know, but I think it matters what kind of "different" it is.

The Gene Hackman Lex Luthor was certainly very different from the one in the comics(at the time), yet I don't know too many people who complained--the movie Luthor was a murderous, vain genius who could face down Superman, so it seemed like the people who made the movie understood what Luthor represented in the Superman mythos.

Then there's Catwoman, the Halle Berry movie where you got the sense the producers didn't give a crap about the character or its fans; it was just a "property" to be mined for whatever bucks could be squeezed from it.

To my relief, I felt that Aquaman was much more the former; an attempt to take some of the basic elements of the Aquaman story(mother from Atlantis, can communicate with sea life) and turn it into a contemporary, ongoing series. Plus, all we ever got was the pilot, where of course the differences from the source material are that much more stark. Smallville seemed a pretty big reinvention of the wheel when it first debuted; after six seasons it's become almost a live-action Who's Who in the DC Universe.

Justin Hartley is pretty good as Arthur, Ving Rhames is a bit one-note as his mysterious mentor(but again, this was just the pilot), and of course(this being a show aimed for the WB audience) its filled with lots of eye candy for both sexes. It opens with Arthur being arrested--again--for freeing some dolphins from theme park captivity; a nice, humanistic touch that I thought lines up perfectly with the Aquaman most of us know.

The effects are pretty good--Arthur looks good swimming at superspeed, and a scene of him jumping out of the water onto a boat was suitably heroic. There's a backstory involving Atlantis that clearly would've provided the backbone for several seasons. And he occasionally dons a t-shirt/shorts combo made of orange and green, which made me smile every time I saw it.

While certainly no masterpiece, I thought it was a solid show and certainly deserved a chance(hey, if there's room for another season of One Tree Hill, there was room for this) to find its creative footing. If they had been a little more far-sighted, perhaps the struggling CW Network would now have a show poised to take over for Smallville and entertain its large, youthful audience. Good job, CW.
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Shameless Plug Department: I just updated TreasuryComics.com, so for all you regular readers of the site(and you know who you are), please head over there and check it out!

Best Buy Ad - 2007

I was sent this by newest F.O.A.M. member Britt Schramm(wow, three new members in one week? that's a record!)by him sending me this ad.

Apparently, the Best Buy chain is having a special deal where you get a separate disc featuring the Aquaman pilot along with any Smallville season purchase. Luckily, BB has slashed the price of the box sets to a measly fifteen bucks, so it's actually a pretty good deal(Holy Loss Leader!).

According to Britt, the DVD has "Nothing flashy about it. Actually, there's nothing on it at all--no menus, no chapters, nothing except for the pilot show. But beggars can't really be choosers and (don't tell Best Buy or WB this but) I would've paid $15 for the pilot if they actually put some effort into it."

Is this not the weirdest fate for any unsold pilot in history? Sure, the Smallville or Wonder Woman DVDs have come before packaged with "bonus" episodes of Isis or Shazam!, but those are samples of full series. To my memory, no other time has a cancelled pilot been this heavily marketed--don't get me wrong; I'm glad it's available but between this and the iTunes thing it feels like the WB is going "Nyah, nyah--this is what could've been. Instead, enjoy Gossip Girl!"

...so, before I head off to Best Buy, let's take a moment to reflect on the DVD art for the pilot:

It's probably a good thing they bothered to paste "Aquaman" on the top, otherwise this looks like another type of DVD altogether.