Since people are largely ready to leave the DCEU and its King of Atlantis behind, the public probably has not fully realized the version of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom that reached theaters last Christmas was not James Wan’s director’s cut.
Dolph Lundgren, who starred in the film and its prequel as King Nereus, isn’t afraid to burst some bubbles with that news – on the off chance it happens to. Moreover, he preferred the direction the movie was going in before the reshoots.
“I was just disappointed for the moviegoers, because I thought the original script was great and the original cut — I saw a little bit of it, it was really good. So I didn’t see any reason to start reshooting and reshaping the story, which obviously led to disappointment in the moviegoers and not just me,” the action star said to ComicBook.com.
Lundgren seems to confirm the rumors that the reshoots drastically changed the plot of Lost Kingdom by leaving some things out. He added that Nereus and his daughter Queen Mera played by Amber Heard were on that list, which he blamed on a “corporate decision.”
“I just realized that it was some kind of corporate decision that they try to limit Amber Heard and then I’m playing her dad and went along with it,” Lundgren said. Heard’s account of events while making Aquaman 2 was much the same when she was cross-examined during the Johnny Depp defamation trial in 2022.
But, while she testified her part was being pared down with each passing rewrite, James Wan contradicted her and Lundgren’s view of things in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. He stated to the publication that Mera was always going to be secondary to Orm (Patrick Wilson) and Arthur’s (Jason Momoa) adventure.
“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,” said Wan.
He also downplayed the reshoots as nothing out of the ordinary.“We have big actors in this movie, and everyone’s schedule is really hard. So, we had to break up our shooting schedule into sections. We’ll shoot a bit here now, because this actor’s available, and then we’ll do another shoot now, because this guy’s available,” he explained.
“People are like, ‘Oh, they’re doing a whole bunch of different shoots!’ No. If we actually combined them all together, it’s actually not that many number of days at all.” he added.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom had rough seas compared to its predecessor. Making only $375 million worldwide compared to the over $1 billion of the first one, it effectively tanked at the box office.
The sequel might get a chance to redeem itself when it comes to shores on streaming, which will occur sooner than expected, this Tuesday.