The long-awaited first trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was finally released today and it’s a lot. Director James Wan is certainly not holding back in returning to the world of Atlantis and seems to even be upping the ante on every single level. But what exactly is going on? What are the intentions here? Instead of guessing, we thought it might be better to hear it from the man himself.
Earlier this week, io9 was among a group of journalists invited to catch an early glimpse at the trailer and speak to Wan about it afterward. Over the course of the discussion, the man who previously directed Saw, Insidious, and Furious 7 explained some of his thoughts and ambitions with this latest DC instalment.
“It’s a movie that’s very close to me. It’s very special to me, especially from where we started with the first movie and with where we’re going with this one,” Wan said. “For me, it really feels like The Lost Kingdom is like the perfect companion with the first Aquaman. It’s like one and two just feel like it fits together. So I hope you guys feel the same way eventually when you see the final film.”
What else did he say? Like Aquaman, let’s dive in.
No DC Connections…for now
One thing you won’t notice in the trailer is any hint of any other DC characters in this film. And that’s very much on purpose.
“The beauty about Aquaman two and Aquaman one is I’ve always designed these two films to be within their own world,” Wan said. “And so the advantage of not being hooked into this bigger universe is ultimately whatever happens over there, it doesn’t really affect my movie. And so, as you can see in this film, it doesn’t hook it to anything. It lives in its own world. And that’s very much what we found worked really well for us on the first film, and we’re doing exactly the same thing.”
Hashtag Family
The trailer beings with lots of talk about how Arthur now has responsiblity as a father and Wan’s inspiration for that is, well, furious.
“I learned about family from Fast and Furious, you guys,” the director of Furious 7 joked. “You can see a bit of that played into [Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom] in a big, big way. No, seriously. The family aspect in this is something that was very important for me and you have Vin [Diesel] thank for that.”
Overall tone
“I’m trying to capture that sort of early Spielberg sort of spirit,” Wan said. “That sort of early Zemeckis spirit of ‘Yeah, we can lean dark but it can also be fun as well.’ And there definitely are sort of shades of that in this world.”
Black Manta
Though Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) was in the first movie, the plan was always for him to be the villain in part two. “My plan with the first movie was always to kind of set up a relationship with him,” Wan said. “He was kind of like a glorified side character in the first one, but we knew that was going to be okay because we knew that the second movie was where we’re going to go into with him in a much bigger role.”
Manta’s new powers
“He’s a human, which he still is in this one, but because he has stumbled onto the Lost Kingdom, he’s now empowered in a way that he wasn’t in the first film,” Wan said. “So finally, he’s able to kind of go one-on-one with Arthur Curry, who is a superhuman being.”
Atlanna’s role
Nicole Kidman returns at Atlanna, Arthur’s mom, and Wan talked about her role in this one.
“Nicole definitely plays more like the right hand to the king in this one,” Wan said. “She’s a motherly figure, but she’s also an advisor as well. Like a royal advisor, just because there’s a bit more politics within the world of Atlantis. And Arthur is not really from that world. And so, you know, he needs someone to kind of help guide him.
The stakes are more personal
“One of the things we want to do is give [Arthur] something to care about so that when his world starts falling apart, it hits him harder,” Wan said. “It means more to him. Whether that’s his immediate family or the family with the kingdom that he’s looking after now. And so those are the kind of things that we’re kind of building on.”
Brotherly Love
To help defeat the newly superpowered Black Manta, Arthur recruits his former adversary, and brother, Orm, played by Patrick Wilson. And again, that was the plan from the first film.
“The plan was always going to be that Patrick’s character was going to switch,” Wan said. “I knew that from the get-go in this film. That’s why I didn’t want to kill him at the end of the first movie. He was going to ultimately be like somewhat of a pseudo-antihero in this one. And I wanted to see just the relationship between Jason and Patrick.”
Environmental issues
“One of the things we love about the Aquaman character and the world that they live in, especially even from a comic book, is just how much Aquaman has always been about the environment more than any of the superhero characters,” Wan said. “And so we felt that we want to lean into the environmental aspect with this movie. We wanted the second film to still be fun and really adventurous and colorful and everything, like the first film, but we want to have a little bit more to say, something a little bit more grown-up.”
Orm’s complexity
A huge part of the movie will be seeing not just the relationship between Orm and Arthur, but Orm’s growth as well. “Here’s a bad guy in the first movie, and even though he’s working with Arthur in this one, it’s it’s still very important to kind of still remember where he came from,” Wan said. “So there’s still antagonism between the two of them throughout the whole movie, which is actually where some of the fun derives from, seeing the two of them bicker, but at the same time also leaning on the more human aspect of his character.”
The Black Trident
What’s the deal with this “Black Trident” that Black Manta now has and everyone is worried about? “Without giving too much away here, in his search to try and fix the power suit that he had in the first movie that was all banged up and destroyed, [Black Manta] stumbles across something much bigger,” Wan said.
Things are definitely darker
“It is a little bit darker than the first movie as second movies tend to be,” Wan said. It just felt like the correct progression for this film.”
Inspired by the Silver Age
“Like the first movie, this one leads into the Ray Harryhausen sort of spirit even more,” Wan said. “[There are] shades of Jules Verne in this as well. And, as you can see in the trailer, aesthetically, I’m leaning pretty heavily into the Silver Age comic books. Aquaman of the 1960s. Silver Age Aquaman. So a lot of the designs in this film are very retro feeling. The spirit and the tone are very retro.”
Horror vibes
“I don’t know how to stay away from horror, you guys,” Wan joked. “So in the Last Kingdom we’ll be introduced to a lot of creepy, scary, Lovecraftian looking characters. And ultimately, that’s what our heroes have to work together to stop. This Lovecraftian universe from breaking through into our main world.”
The Lost Kingdom
So what exactly is the Lost Kingdom and what problems does it pose? “The Lost Kingdom, without giving too much of it away, it is a world that was sort of locked away for very good reason,” Wan said.
Mera’s role
How much is Amber Heard’s character Mera in the film? Well, besides being the mother to Arthur’s child, Wan said the following.
“Mera obviously is a massive character in the Aquaman world so we obviously want to be respectful to the character,” he said. “That’s the bottom line. I want to be respectful to all the characters and do everyone justice. But at the end of the day, I have this story to tell, but I [also] have so many other characters to serve, and I felt like I told the Arthur and Mera story in the first one so I can sort of focus on Arthur and Orm in this one. And so basically it’s a journey movie really with those two and then the other characters sort of like pepper their world.”
Lots of world-building
“World-building is very important for the Aquaman universe,” Wan said. “We enjoy all the different worlds that really no superhero movies kind of go into. And that’s what’s so cool about the Aquaman films is it’s really stand alone. It lives in its own universe. My dream would be to create a Seven Kingdoms cinematic universe by itself where we can visit all the different worlds that we sort of touch on these two films.”
New creatures
“Very early on when I was given a few properties to look at and I picked this particular one because I felt like I can really kind of leap into that world,” Wan said. “The quirkiness, the weirdness, and just have fun with it. And yes, definitely seeing how much people enjoyed that in the first film meant that it gave me more confidence to lean into that in this one. I know the trailer doesn’t quite touch on it, but there are a lot of really quirky sort of underwater characters in this one.”
Will we see more Aquaman?
“The Jason Momoa story as Aquaman definitely has more places to go,” Wan said. “And yes, when we get to the end of this…we’re not going to giving things away because where we go at the end of this movie, it does tee up something bigger.”
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