If there was a symbol of the continued disarray of Warner Bros.’s superhero arm, it would be that for the last decade, the keepers of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman allowed Aquaman to become the most successful and dependable hero in the Hall of Justice. When Aquaman made its first billion in 2018, DC got its Iron Man moment, when a supposedly JV player could outperform the varsity team, making the prospect of a successful shared universe possible. Even for the king of Atlantis with a really sick trident, that’s a lot of pressure.
As more A-list superhero movies continued to disappoint since Aquaman’s release, its sequel, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, became the final, lumbering zombie of the Snyderverse. It was a no-win scenario for the film, burdened by the previous universe while hoping to retain some autonomy for viewers who know this entry “won’t count” toward a larger story. Then came the reports of on-set mayhem. Between the neverending spate of Amber Heard gossip and frequent delays due to reshoots, the impression most formed was that The Lost Kingdom is another disaster for DC.
Through it all, though, James Wan, who does seem like a guy who just wants to make a fun superhero movie for people to eat popcorn during, has insisted that nothing of the sort happened on his set. Speaking most recently to Empire, Wan says the production needed “seven or eight days” of reshoots, which is “nothing for a film of this size.” Wan, pushing the blame onto his cast, said, “It’s so hard to get your actors back once you’ve finished the initial shoot.” It must’ve been a nightmare pulling Jason Momoa away from Slumberland and The Last Manhunt, two very real movies that don’t only exist to fill out the filmography section of the actor’s Wikipedia page. Didn’t anyone think to trick Momoa by changing the title to Aquaman: The Last Manhunt? We have to assume that would work. Production pulled a similar stunt to get Julie Andrews to play a whale in the first movie, we presume. However, it should be noted that few have had more successful reshoots than James Wan. In the talk with Empire, he asserts that he “built an empire franchise out of reshoots,” referring to the extensive fixes needed to make The Nun, the belle of The Conjuring ball.
Wan is right about one thing: It is “fun to write about” production mayhem like the one supposedly hanging over The Lost Kingdom. As he put it, it “gets clicks,” because people like reading about Aquaman overcoming adversity and have for more than 80 years. Still, he says, this “narrative” is “not the reality.”
According to Wan, the reality is that he sees this sequel as a Tango & Cash-inspired buddy comedy between Atlantean royalty.
“From the start, I pitched that the first film would be a Romancing The Stone-type thing—an action-adventure romantic comedy—while the second would be an outright buddy comedy,” Wan said. “I wanted to do Tango & Cash. Jason plays Arthur larger-than-life; Patrick [Wilson] plays the straight man. It’s not unlike what Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones did in Men In Black—like Tommy, Patrick plays it dry, but very funny.”
Okay, you win, Mr. Wan. That does sound worth fighting for.