The Big Picture

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’s release is right around the corner and director James Wan promises the sequel will embrace the goofiness of the comics even more than the first film. You can also expect to see Wan put his horror sensibilities to use as he teases, “the Lost Kingdom is not necessarily a fun, happy-looking place.” In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Wan teases the next stage of the Arthur and Orm relationship, his zombie-like creatures, the team’s new approach to filming underwater material, and more!

Though he’s best known for his significant contribution to the horror genre, James Wan has found great success making the pivot to franchise filmmking with Fast and Furious 7 and Aquaman. His new Aquaman movie, however, sounds like a prime opportunity to combine both sensibilities in order to deliver a blockbuster-style adventure with some darkness to it.

In DC’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Wan extends the big screen world of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) that he started back in 2018. Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is back for vengeance, wielding an ancient relic known as the Black Trident, which gives Manta the ability to control the army of Necrus. The trident allows Wan to bring some horror to the realm, including zombie-like creatures, and also explore a new brotherly bond between Arthur Curry and Orm Marius (Patrick Wilson) as they must stand together against Black Manta.

While talking with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff ahead of the movie’s release, Wan discussed leaning into the “more absurd” elements of the Aquaman comics for the sequel, including giving Topo the octopus a bigger role. Wan also teases how the relationship between Arthur and Orm evolves, Aquaman’s greatest strength and weakness at the beginning of the new film, and his “underwater zombies.” Check out the full transcript below for all of that and Wan’s thoughts on returning to horror after Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Arthur must enlist the help of his half-brother Orm in order to protect Atlantis against Black Manta, who has unleashed a devastating weapon in his obsessive quest to avenge his father’s death. Release Date December 20, 2023 Director James Wan Writers David Leslie Johnson , Paul Norris , Mort Weisinger

PERRI NEMIROFF: What is something you did on the first Aquaman movie that worked well and you opted to hold tight to that technique or idea while making the sequel, but then I also want the opposite, a part of the process or story that you were able to make even stronger because of your experience making the first film?

JAMES WAN: That’s a really good question! One of the things we did on the first one that I wasn’t quite necessarily sure [about] was just how much we were willing to lean into the more absurd aspect of the Aquaman comic and the world and the characters and all that. And clearly we did that, and for a lot of people that was kind of what ultimately made it fun, right? That here was a superhero fantasy character that wasn’t afraid to be what it is, and to embrace and lean into all of that. So that was something that I wanted to continue with this one, and so we continued down that path. For example, Topo the drumming octopus, I wasn’t quite sure how people were gonna react to him in the first one, but I put him in there. But people really loved him and it became very apparent. He’s a big character in the comic book and so we brought him to the foreground in a bigger way in this one. So it was great to learn from the first movie that I can embrace a little bit more of the goofy aspect of the comic book.

The one thing that we did not like as much on the first film that we moved away from in this one was just the technical approach to shooting the underwater stuff. That was a very painful experience for the actors on the first movie, and it also made it kind of tricky for me to direct them as well because they’re kind of not focusing as much on their performances because they’re in such uncomfortable rigs. So for this next one, technology has gotten so much better in the last five years that we could do something a lot more comfortable in this one.

I was reading about that! A 360 set-up with something like 100-plus cameras …

WAN: Yeah!

It sounds like an incredible system.

WAN: It wasn’t easy to work with that. There was still quite a complicated process to it, but in terms of [it being] just a bit easier for the actors to perform within it, it definitely was.

To dig into some character teases now, I’ll start with Aquaman. What would you say is Arthur’s greatest strength and also his greatest weakness at the beginning of this story?

WAN: I would say his greatest strength, and we played into this quite a fair bit in the first movie, is that he’s very unconventional. The Atlantean structure is so rigid and they’re almost very proper. Patrick Wilson’s character, Orm, Ocean Master, really captures how rigid and how even though they’re very high-tech, they seem a little bit old-fashioned in how they approach things. It’s kind of fun to see Jason Momoa’s version of Arthur Curry approach things more loose. He shoots from the hip, and that’s definitely, good or bad, that’s a big part of who he is, who his character is, and we try to play into that. Sometimes it works out for him, other times it doesn’t.

Jason Momoa & Patrick Wilson Are Like Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones in ‘Aquaman 2’
Image via Warner Bros
 

I always love hearing about the unexpected magic that you can find along the way, whether it’s in production or in the edit, so is there any character or storyline that wound up being more successful than you ever could have imagined at the beginning? Something that proved more powerful than you initially thought it was?

WAN: In the case of this movie, it really was [that] people really enjoyed the relationship between Arthur and Orm. I think what people enjoy about this film is just the world exploration again, the world that we have created, but also going along this journey with these two characters. Obviously, as you can see in the trailer, they don’t get along, they come from different worlds, and obviously they were antagonists in the first movie, but in this one, they had to kind of put their differences aside to try and work together to try and overcome a greater cause. I feel like that is such a universal theme that even applies for us in our world today that I really appreciate, and I hope people will be into that as well.

With Jason and Patrick playing that, I’m already very into it without having seen the movie.

WAN: And those two have really fun chemistry together. Again, Jason is kind of loose and wild and just having fun, and Patrick plays it really kind of strict and rigid, so it’s kind of cool to see that contrast. It’s a little bit like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the Men in Black films. That’s kind of where the humor comes from.

Image via Warner Bros.

I wanted to ask you about something I was reading in your director’s statement. It won’t be a surprise what I chose. You said, “It wouldn’t be one of my films without some of my signature creations, so there are new, dark creatures for audiences to enjoy.” Can you tease one of those dark creatures for us?

WAN: Yeah! Obviously the movie is called Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and we’re hinting already in all the marketing material that the Lost Kingdom is not necessarily a fun, happy-looking place, and so what that meant is it just gave me the opportunity to lean a little bit more into the darker part of storytelling and visual filmmaking as well. It’s kind of cool to create, I don’t know how I would describe them, like underwater zombies? [Laughs] I don’t know what they are really, but they’re basically monsters from another world on our planet.

I’ll take that. I like that tease right there!

This is a big question about the future of the franchise in a sense. I know things are changing going forward after this movie, so it was making me wonder, how would you compare the pressure to need to tee up more with Lost Kingdom compared to what that was like on the first Aquaman movie? If that pressure was even in play at all?

WAN: It’s one of those things where if you let the noise get to you, it can be detrimental. For good or bad, when you’re making a movie it’s so all-consuming that, for me, even if I wanted to, it’s kind of hard to worry about all the other stuff. I just kind of wanna tell this movie that I’m making. And again, because the Aquaman story is so uniquely within its own world, it makes it easier for me to not have to worry about what’s going on outside of me, or in the greater universe, if you will. I’m just able to kind of continue with the second movie what we did with the first film, which is we go deep into our own world, we live within our own world, and that’s kind of really it. It’s like we’re going into Middle-earth and anything else outside of it will kind of remind us that we’re still in the real world, so we really detach from that if you will.

Is James Wan Returning to Horror After ‘Aquaman 2’?
I was determined to squeeze in my last question, which is a selfish question because I just can’t help myself. After this movie, will your next movie as a director be a horror movie?

WAN: You know, I have a tendency to want to go back and forth. So whenever I make a smaller film, I wanna go and make a big film. Whenever I’m doing a big one, I’m like, “Oh, I wanna go and do a smaller film,” and when I do my smaller films, it tends to be a horror film. So, you know, I feel like the itch for horror is potentially calling, but we’ll see.

I’ll take that! And I’ll just continue keeping my fingers crossed for Malignant 2.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 23.

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