Amber Heard was never a big part of Aquaman 2, says director

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has gone through a long, long process to get to the screen. The movie was made during the pandemic, which was hard enough. It was originally going to come out last December, but a series of calendar reshuffles pushed it back a whole year, during which time the entire DC Universe changed. Now, the thing is being rebuild from the ground up under the watchful eyes of James Gunn and Peter Safran. Everything that people used to associate with it — including Ben Affleck as Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman — is being tossed out.

So where does that leave Jason Momoa as Aquaman? What is this movie if it’s not tethered to the wide DCEU? “Obviously, I have to be mindful,” director James Wan told Entertainment Weekly. “If I’m living in a house, and the house is getting renovated around me, it’s hard for me to not take notice, because the roof, the ceiling’s missing, right? But the beauty of this movie, this Aquaman world, is that, very early on, we always said that we are our own separate universe. My goal was always: If we could spin off a Seven Kingdoms universe, that would be my ideal dream. So, what we do, ultimately, doesn’t get affected by all that stuff, all that noise.”

It makes sense that DC would want to keep Momoa around as Aquaman even as it phases other aspects of the universe out, since the first Aquaman movie made over a billion dollars after it came out in 2018. That’s the most money of any movie starring a DC character. You don’t just get rid of that. You adapt.

“The tricky thing early on was not knowing whether Aquaman would come out first or come out after [The Flash],” Wan said. “So, we just had to be prepared. At the end of the day, the best thing I would say about this movie is that it is not connected in any way to any of those films. That’s the bottom line.”

Wan wouldn’t confirm whether Batman actors like Affleck or Michael Keaton would appear in Aquaman 2, but it sounds like no? “You’re going to have to wait for the movie to come out.”

Was Amber Heard’s role in Aquaman 2 “pared down”?

The delays weren’t the only controversy weathered by Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The movie stars Amber Heard as Aquaman’s wife Mera, who played a big role in the first movie. Heard became radioactive after going through a very public, very ugly defamation trial with her ex-husband Johnny Depp.

Heard claimed that her role in the new movie had been “pared down” as a result of the bad publicity surrounding the trial. Wan didn’t confirm whether this was true, but did say that his idea for the movie never centered Mera. It was more about Aquaman and his brother Orm, played by Patrick Wilson:

"I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go. The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera’s journey. The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm. So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We’ll leave it at that."

Aquaman and Orm, who fought against each other in the first film, will have to team up this time against a common enemy: Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Their journey will involve journeying to the titular lost kingdom, which is full of all kinds of strange devices. “One of the funnest things for me about this movie is designing the Lost Kingdom,” Wan said. “We see what the Lost Kingdom is, we see this society, and within it we see the vehicles and the toys and the weapons and all that. The Octobot is one of their traveling vehicles that move in and out of the water. Everything about the Lost Kingdom came from my love for the Silver Age Aquaman comic book, which is the 1960s comic book. So, everything about it has a very retro feel.”

The whole idea of teaser trailers is “hilarious,” says Aquaman 2 director

We’ll see a proper trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom this week. In the meantime, this teaser trailer can hold us over.

If you think it’s weird to essentially have a trailer for a trailer, you’re not alone. Responding to a comment on his Instagram, Wan himself wrote, “i know, it’s hilarious.” Well, as long as we’re all on the same page.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will finally come out in theaters on December 20. After that, the future of the franchise is uncertain. Does it fade away like some of the rest of the old DCEU guard, or continue on in its own parallel universe? Whatever happens, Wan is ready.

“What I like between this one and the first one is, you really do see the growth of Arthur,” the director said. “He starts off as this kind of wanderer, and in the second one he finally has more of a direction of what he wants to do with his life. If and when there is a third one, that’s what it should be; it should be growing these characters because I think we’ve set up certain things in a good place in the second movie that you can definitely draw upon in a third. I don’t have any stories, but growing the characters is the biggest thing that I think the next Aquaman movie should be about.”

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h/t The Hollywood Reporter