Horror Master James Wan Says Aquaman 2 Features 'Lovecraftian' Villains
Horror has long been a jumping-off point for big studio directors. Sam Raimi made the "Evil Dead" films before he got "Spider-Man." Peter Jackson made one of the bloodiest films ever filmed with "Braindead" (aka "Dead Alive" for us Americans) and then did "The Lord of the Rings." This is a trend that continues to this day. James Gunn is one of the most powerful directors and producers in the business right now and he got his start with Troma!
Then we have James Wan, who transformed the horror cycle twice in the last 20 years. First with "Saw" in 2004, which kicked off a short-lived, but prolific movement of "torture porn" horror, and then with "Insidious" and "The Conjuring" in 2010 and 2013, respectively. We're still living in the ripples of those two movies which have spawned franchises in their own right as well as pulled supernatural horror back into the mainstream.
Wan's love of horror is apparent in any of his interviews, but you need look no further than his non-horror movies to see that he just can't completely ignore the genre. In the first "Aquaman" there was that creepy scene where The Trench creatures swarm poor Aquaman's fishing boat, which is an apologetically horror sequence. Turns out, Wan just can't quit horror, as one major name in horror literature serves as a direct inspiration for the villains in his next "Aquaman" installment, titled "Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom."
That name is H.P. Lovecraft.
More tentacles, more problems
I mean, it goes without saying that Lovecraft and sea-based horror go hand in hand. The man is known for using an abundance of tentacles in his horror fiction, but it's far from a given that his particular brand of aquatic nightmare creatures would serve as the inspiration for the baddies in a superhero film that costs multiple hundreds of millions of dollars to make. At a recent trailer launch event attended by our very own Jenna Busch-Henderson, Wan confirmed that the basic story of the sequel involves not just Lovecraftian creatures, but perhaps a whole Elder God universe. He said:
"I don't know how to stay away from horror, you guys. So the Lost Kingdom, we will 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 own world."
Well, that's certainly a worthy quest for Aquaman. I don't know about you, but I don't like it when Lovecraftian universes try to overtake my own, so I'm glad we have at least one muscle-bound heavily tattooed fish king willing to fight the good fight for us.
Wan also added that the threat in the movie was brought upon by humans in our hurry to plunder the Earth's remaining resources. He didn't directly refer to it as such, but it sounds a little like the dwarves in Moria. They delved too greedily and too deep and awoken something in the dark. Looks like humanity made a similar mistake here, but instead of a Balrog we now have to face a world of multi-limbed sea-life monstrosities. I guess we kinda brought it on ourselves.
"Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" hits theaters on December 20, 2023.