Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Promotes That Awesome Drumming Octopus To Key Character

At long last, the trailer for "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" is here, giving us a glimpse of the further adventures of Arthur Curry aka Aquaman (Jason Momoa). I recently got to attend a Q&A with director James Wan who spoke about the film, including something I'm certain a bunch of you are excited for. You may have noticed a second passenger on Aquaman's (Jason Momoa) giant seahorse in the recent teaser trailer. Yes, friends, that is indeed Topo the drum-playing octopus from the first film. In case you were wondering, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that the seahorse is Aquaman's comic book transportation buddy Storm.

According to Wan, we'll be getting a lot of creatures in the new film, and Topo is not only one of them, but our eight-legged musician is getting a bigger role this time around. If you don't know him from the comics, Topo the Octopus, created by Ramona Fradon, is a big part of the Aquaman family and has been around since 1959 when he debuted in Adventure Comics #229. He fights alongside them and even babysits for them. He's family, and he's all part of the admitted "weirdness" that Wan is bringing to the film. 

Wan mentioned during the Q&A that while the second "Aquaman" film was a bit darker than the first one, it still has a lot of fun and humor. He was asked if the success of the first film meant that he felt like he could get "pretty weird here," and Topo was mentioned. Wan said: 

"I've never been shy of leaning weird ... You guys have seen 'Malignant,' [so] you know I go weird [laughs] ... That was part of the reason why very early on when I was given a few properties to look at, and I picked this particular one because I felt like I can really lean into that world, the quirkiness, the weirdness, and just have fun with it.

And yes, definitely, seeing how much people enjoyed that in the first film meant that it gave me more confidence to lean into that in this one. I know the trailer doesn't quite touch on it, but there are a lot of really quirky sort of underwater characters in this one.

And it may be weird to us, but not for them. You know what I mean? That's another species, that's another race for them. And that's ultimately those are Arthur, the King of Atlantis, those are his people. And, yes, Topo has a big, big role in this. A much bigger role in this one."

There's no such thing as too much Topo, so this is absolutely something worth getting excited about.

Wan didn't specify exactly how big Topo's role is, but if I had to guess, in addition to riding shotgun with Arthur, he may be babysitting for the new baby. I would assume, if that's correct, it would be in the early part of the film. As we see in the trailers, Arthur is having a bit of a time being a dad. While he certainly seems to be enjoying it in the clips of him and the baby, he does mention his difficulties to his own father, Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison). 

Plus, he's trying to balance a new baby and a family with his duties as the ruler of Atlantis. That can't be an easy thing, and having eight extra arms to help is the dream of many a new parent. I could easily imagine (and this is only based on my brain noodlings) Topo rocking the baby with one arm, bottle in another, playing a lullaby with an instrument in two arms, stirring the baby food, and changing a diaper with the last two. I have clearly seen too many cartoons. Back in January, Momoa talked about Topo's increased appearance, claiming that "It might be one of the funniest moments of the whole movie." Considering we've already seen that hilarious shot of Aquaman riding Storm across the sky, we can only imagine just how hilarious Topo might be.

"Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" will hit theaters on December 20, 2023.