James Wan Explains That Pitbull Song

“Who let Pitbull be famous?”

That’s one of those strange little mysteries that makes life so rich. And it’s one that a lot of us (including our very own Jax Motes) have been revisiting since the release of ‘Aquaman’ and its frankly baffling inclusion of Pitbull’s ‘Ocean to Ocean’, a song that sees the “Cubano Voldemort” rap about the film’s plot over instrumentation from the Toto classic ‘Africa’, with Rhea singing the chorus to the latter song in between verses. If that sounds bizarre to you, you’re not alone. And given the song’s out of left field placement in the film, even those who enjoy the tune were left wondering just what director James Wan was thinking when he made this particular soundtrack choice.

At least one of those mysteries, though, has been solved. No, we still can’t explain Pitbull, but we can explain his presence in ‘Aquaman’! During a conversation with CinemaBlend, James Wan was asked about the song and explained the inexplicable, telling the outlet that the rationale behind its inclusion was an extension of the mindset with which he approached the film as a whole:

“Putting the song in the sequence where Aquaman and Mera walk out of the water in slow motion, I felt: For fuck’s sake, let’s have fun with it! It’s something out of ‘Fast and Furious’. Pitbull was in there very early on. He was really excited to do something for the film. That sequence is very tongue-in-cheek, and we just wanted to have fun with it. And we wanted a cheeky song at that point of the movie. I just wasn’t sure what song it was going to be.”

So let’s be clear. There is no part of this – from the song itself, to the Pitbull of it all, to the sheer amount of time we’ve all spent obsessing over this musical non-sequitur –  that isn’t utterly bizarre. And yet, you can’t argue with Wan’s logic of just trying to have fun with the movie. After all, the most persistent criticism of the DC movieverse as envisioned by Zack Snyder was its overall grim and joyless style. And whatever else you may think of the film, you certainly can’t accuse ‘Aquaman’ of being joyless.

Directed by James Wan, ‘Aquaman’, starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Temuera Morrison, and Patrick Wilson is now playing in theaters everywhere!