Director James Wan talks about the film’s influences
In a little less than two months, WB will finally be released Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. How Original film, this new film looks like a wild romp that stands out from other blockbuster superhero films thanks to its visual splendor and strange mix of aesthetics. Whatever you may think about these films, they are turned out impressivebe it an octopus playing drums or a group of underwater warriors fighting a kingdom of crab people with water laser guns.
Speak with Empire MagazineDirector James Wan explained this for Lost kingdom, He drew inspiration from Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures (like the mechanical octopus Octobot that Aquaman and Orm fight in the trailer), as well as Euro-horror films like the 1965 film Planet of the Vampires. “There was an element of horror in the first film,” Wan said, referring to the brief inclusion of the sea-dwelling cannibal kingdom called the Trench. The Lost Kingdom will have “more of the same,” he continued, and generally have a “very retro ’60s horror look.”
Wans Other point of inspiration for the sequel? Buddy comedies like Tango & Cash, as he had always wanted, a “pure buddy comedy”. In the film, Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry teams up with his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), years after they clashed in the first film, which Wan says allows for both Aquaman Films can “bleed directly into one another” if viewed as a double feature. Wan compared the meeting of Arthur’s goofy bravado and Orm’s more no-nonsense attitude to the dynamic of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the first film Men in Black. “Like Tommy, Patrick plays it dry but very funny.”
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 20th.
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