EMPIRE 2022 PREVIEW
POWERING UP
AFTER MULTIPLE DELAYS, 2022 LOOKS SET TO POSITIVELY EXPLODE WITH SUPERHEROES. HERE’S WHAT’S IN STORE…
ILLUSTRATION JAMES DAWE
BIGGER, WEIRDER SEQUELS
Last time we saw a Thor film, he lost most of his family and friends and had to navigate the Devil’s Anus. Aquaman’s last outing, meanwhile, featured a bongo-playing octopus and Julie Andrews as the voice of a gigantic sea-monster. So when the directors of both promise to really get strange this time, they mean it. Taika Waititi has said that Thor: Love And Thunder will be “so over-the-top, in the best way”, with Thor losing his powers to a woman and facing off against Christian Bale’s Gorr The God Butcher (alas, not the kind who supplies gods with fresh sausages and tripe). Meanwhile, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom’s James Wan is taking inspiration from Italian horror Planet Of The Vampires, which features reanimated alien corpses, and is promising to bring more of his horror sensibilities to the undersea world. These are not the standard muscularman-in-Lycra-fights-similar punch-ups, but fiercely individual directors trying to push the genre to new heights — or, in Aquaman’s case, depths.