First Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Trailer Reveals Black Manta's New Secret Weapon

We finally have our first real look at Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, thanks to this morning's theatrical trailer for the long-awaited sequel. And it looks like it could very well end up being worth that extended wait.

The trailer opens with Arthur setting the stage. "Four years ago I was basically unemployed. Now I'm a husband and a father," he narrates, as we see little baby Aquaman Jr. He's also no longer unemployed, as we know--he's the king of Atlantis. But all is not necessarily well. Check out the trailer below.

Enter Black Manta, still out for revenge after Aquaman killed his father at the beginning of the last movie. "I'm gonna kill Aquaman and destroy everything he holds dear. I'm gonna murder his family, and burn his kingdom to ash." To do so, he's got some new toys that we see in the trailer, like a sick new undersea mantis ship, and more importantly a glowing new black trident, which has given him some new powers.

It's a bad situation, so Aquaman visits his brother Orn, the first movie's villain played by Patrick Wilson. Apparently exiled or imprisoned after all the bad stuff he did last time out, Orn's grown an impressive amount of facial hair in the intervening period. More importantly, though, he's got the scoop on that trident.

"In King Atlan's time there were seven kingdoms, and that trident was a curse upon them all," Orn says. The Black Trident isn't a direct pull from the DC comics, though, so it's hard to say for sure what its deal is--but it's likely inspired by one or more (probably more) of the lost relics of Atlan, such as the Sceptor that sank Atlantis back in the day.

Mera, played by Amber Heard, only appears in a single, brief, out-of-context shot and isn't directly referenced at any point otherwise.

Ahead of the trailer reveal, GameSpot attended a press event where director James Wan presented the trailer and discussed the film for about half an hour--he discussed Mera, the upheaval at DC, and future Aquaman plans, among other things, and you can read his comments right here.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom stars Jason Momoa, fresh off his villainous turn in Fast X (though he shot this Aquaman movie first), along with Patrick Wilson as Orn, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, and Nicole Kidman and Temeura Morrison as Aquaman's parents. There will reportedly also be a Batman in the film, though it's not clear yet which one since there isn't one in this trailer.

While the state of the greater DC Universe of films is a bit of a mess right now after Black Adam, Shazam 2, The Flash, and Blue Beetle all failed to impress at the box office and with James Gunn and Peter Safran supposedly rebooting the whole big-screen universe, it's not really that much weirder of a situation than things were for DC when the first film came out, just a year after the Justice League debacle.

Despite those circumstances, that first movie pulled in over a billion dollars at the box office. Can director James Wan pull off another miracle? Find out when Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 20.