Headscratchers / Justice League: Throne of Atlantis

• how was it that wonder woman and superman could breath underwater?
  • Superman may or may not need to breathe (it varies by continuity), his body can be sustained by the yellow sun radiation his cells have been soaking up all his life. Wonder Woman. . . well, she's a demigod, so may have that as part of her powers. What's really headscratching is how Flash and Batman can survive in Atlantis with only a little breath mask, when the water pressure should crush them pulp.
• Why didn't Orm attack the city with the tidal wave, instead of soldiers? Then there would have been no possible way to defend against him.
  • My guess is that he wanted the humans to know what the Atlanteans were capable of. He wanted them to fear the Atlanteans, so first, he created what was almost the most devastating natural disaster ever, and then revealed that he was the one who did it. And just to prove another point, he was going to show them that despite having the ability to just wipe the floor with them using the wave, they could still kick their asses with normal infantry.
  • (Not the OP) Guess, you are right, but 'scaring the humans' would work just as effectively, if he actually destroyed the city with the wave. "Holy shit, there is a hidden non-human race who has capacity to create tsunamies! Who knows what else they are capable of?" Instead he sent his troops, who are near-unstoppable in water, to fight on land without, so it arguably qualifies as Villain Ball.
  • If he just showed up afterwards and started ranting about how he was personally responsible for a tidal wave, people wouldn't really have any reason to believe he's anything more than a deranged opportunist.
    • Ignoring the fact that tidal waves are caused by earthquakes so every government with halfway decent seismology equipment would be able to confirm that this man wasn't an opportunist we're not given a single reason to believe that this was even particularly difficult for him. All he needs to do is pick up the phone and say something along the lines of "there will be a tiday wave at such and such location and such and such time." Strictly speaking he doesn't even have to kill anybody. If five tidal waves hit uninhabited parts of say Antarctica over the course of a day and then one approaches, then stops just yards away from New York people are going to listen. And if they don't he can start wiping out coastal cities at will. It's not like that Justice League has any realistic hope of victory if Orm stays in the water or ways of fighting Tidal Waves.
  • Orm needs to make sure people know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's responsible, and marching his army out of a tidal wave he created accomplishes that. And call up world leaders. . . how, exactly? Atlantis doesn't exactly have cell towers. And even the biggest tidal waves can only reach so far inland. . . eventually, if Orm really wants to conquer the surface, he'll have to put Atlantean boots on dry ground. Even if he has no interest in acquiring and holding surface territory and just wants to kill all humans, he'll need his soldiers on the ground to ensure that goal is actually achieved. And Orm is a bit of a Blood Knight, so leading his army personally in battle would be a more appealing tactic than destroying them from afar. Finally, one of his main motives is to preserve the ocean from the predations of the surface, and mass tidal waves would be as damaging to the ocean's ecology as they would be to the surface.
• How were Flash and Batman surviving underwater at the end? They don't have superstrength. The pressure should be crushing them.
  • Batman has a suit which presumably protects him from such things. As for Barry... Speed Force. Actually: he's normally subjected to extreme pressures whenever he uses it, so it helps underwater.
    • (OP) I guess a better question in Batman's case is why he didn't have a deep-sea Batsuit on. Batman being Batman, it would seem more likely he'd take the time to change suits.
  • Same way Wonder Woman and Superman were apparently breathing just fine. Even Cyborg despite not having lungs presumably respirates. His heart and brain are still organic and need oxygen and while it's not impossible giving him the ability to breathe underwater is an odd attachment to just throw on while you're in there.
    • Superman and WW are not human and presumably have Justified Super Not-Drowning Skills. And given that Col. Trevor doesn't hesitate to ask Cyborg to search something at the bottom of the ocean, presumably he already had the necessary upgrades. He may have even had his lung replaced in order to be able to survive underwater.
• At the big finale, why would Mera just heartlessly kill all those soldiers? I mean, sure, it was war, but come on! These are her own people and they were just doing what they believed was right! And it wasn't like she was trying to just knock them out or incapacitate them, either. She goes straight for the headshots and slices them in half.
  • You said it yourself. It was war. Unlike the Justice League, who have a (sometimes frustrating for me, personally, but that's another argument) no kill policy, Mera doesn't, and she is fighting people that have no problem killing her. Responding to lethal force with lethal force makes sense.
    • Trying to minimize casualties when you are hoping that those soldiers side with you at the end of the day also makes sense. People are less liable to listen if the ones making the revelation were slaughtering them a moment ago. Mera certainly has the means to use less lethal attacks with that powers of hers. There's a difference between naively hoping zero casualties in an armed conflict, and turning every attack into a butchery because you are unwilling to make your water constructs a little less sharp (Not the OP).
• Why were the army in Metropolis with tanks and weapons, they had no idea they were being invaded? For all they know, it was just a tidal wave coming. In fact, they actually address the army as Alantians, which at this point in the movie the only surface dwellers hat knew really existed were the Justice League.
  • Batman says they can't evacuate the cities. He doesn't say they can't warn anyone.
• Why does Queen Atlanna look so young in this movie, but her husband, the previous king, looked like an old man in the post-credits scene of Justice League: War?
  • Their marriage was arranged, it wouldn't be the first time an old man marries a young woman by external agreements.
• Granted, Atlanteans' law of succession may be different from most historical monarchies, but it still looks weird that Arthur has any right to the throne, considering that not only he is out-of-wedlock but his mom is only a queen by marriage. And while we are at it, wasn't the king at all embarrassed that his bride-to-be wasn't, you know, virgin?
  • Only those of royal blood can use the trident. Chances are, the king is the one who got the position through marriage since the queen can use the trident just fine.
    • That is exactly correct. The trident can only be used by those of Atlantean royal blood and seeing how Arthur is able to use the trident and his mother is where his Atlantean ancestry comes from it basically confirms the king married into the throne.
    • Probably both of them were royalty. Historically, it was not uncommon for heirs to the throne to marry other members of the royal family, and many arranged royal marriages were between cousins or uncles and nieces. It was also not uncommon for bastards to have a strong claim to the throne if it could be proved that they were of royal blood.

• Why wouldn't the world's major powers just nuke the wave? It's water, just water. There's enough nuclear weapons on the planet to glass it. I refuse to believe something as petty as a wave could stand up to nuclear fire. Speaking of which, why isn't Atlantis a pile of radioactive ash at the end?
  • Its not exactly normal policy to detonate nuclear weapons in response to tidal waves. Also, the wave was moving so fast that it was predicted to make landfall in 20 minutes. That's not much a lot of time to respond and even less if you factor in a safe distance from cities.
  • So to avoid the city being hit by a big wave you are making it so it gets hit by a lot of super heated, radioactive steam, good thinking. There's a reason you never see a nuke used against a tsunami in the real world, you cant't "glass" water, you boil it.
• On another note, Atlantean armor is apparently incapable of defending against a common sledgehammer, or simple ice projectiles, yet can somehow survive .50 BMG rounds? These are bullets that tear solid concrete apart and can penetrate 20mm of steel. And then those non-armored hover things with visible engines stand up to Depleted Uranium sabots. These are rounds that go through over half a meter of steel. And this is before we bring in 155mm Artillery, Steel Rain, and the rest. TLDR: This should have been a unmitigated stomp of with the US army as the givers and the idiots armed with sharpened sticks as the receivers.
  • Agreed but one of the problems with real armor is they are generally designed to be good against something specific. A sledgehammer is just blunt force trauma and until informed otherwise the ice projectiles are magical in nature.
• I understand they made Hal Jordan a comic relief goofball in order to make him more interesting, but if he is so careless, arrogant, and immature, then why did the ring choose him in the first place? Hal screws up Batman's pursuit. He almost got the crooks killed. How the heck did he get a job as a pilot if he is that careless and impatient? He would have been kicked out a long time ago.
  • He does things one way. Batman does them another. Their styles don't mesh well together. He jokes around, but he does his job in the movie. I didn't see it so much as careless as acting like a cop rather than Batman. He acted as an extension of the police rather than the nightmare that the Dark Knight strives to be.
• Why didn't Queen Atlanna expose Orm and Manta's ploy to the populace directly rather than revealing that she knows directly to them? What good could she possibly think would have come from that?
  • This explanation kind of ruins all of those "Atlanna is a heartless bitch" ideas, but there is a way to explain this. If she had revealed Orm's plot, if she had presented absolute proof to her people that the massacre was inflicted by them, what would have happened? Blood. Lots of blood. Her people would have demanded that they be tried, convicted, and publicly executed along with everyone who was part of the plot. So why did she hide it? To save her son, because deep down she loved him. Note that she was perfectly willing to punish Manta, which likely would only have ended in his grisly demise. But she just turned her back to Orm, presumably trusting that he still loved her.
• Black Manta explains his true plan to Aquaman like a Bond villain. Let's assume everything goes according to Manta's plan, how would he be able to kill Oceanmaster and rob him of his riches? Orm and his guards have super human strength (and possibly quick reflexes). Manta is a regular human.
  • The same way Oceanmaster killed Atlanna.
• So what defines royalty as far as the Trident is concerned? As noted above the Trident accepting Arthur is sketchy. Diana is explicitly royalty and despite her claims to the contrary a literal deity. Superman should probably qualify as royalty as well on account of being the last son of Krypton. So no matter how far removed from the throne Kal-El may actually be there is nobody extant that has a more legit claim.
  • First of all, we don't know if Krypton has royalty. Much more importantly, presumably the Trident only cares about Atlantean royalty.
• Atlanna and Arthur...let's assume Atlantean pregnancy is the same as humans, how the heck did the queen hide her baby bump from her husband? Was she hanging with Arthur's dad during her pregnancy?
  • She wasn't married yet when she was with Arthur's dad, just promised to be married. As far as anyone knew, Atlanna was taking an extended bachelorette party on the surface (or nobody knew where she went).