A little over a week ago, acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro announced that Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures have scheduled a release date for a sequel to the 2013 epic ‘Pacific Rim’ in 2017. Though the giant robots vs. monsters movie didn’t initially make waves, it eventually became the highest grossing original live-action film last year, which was a pretty good indication that we’d be seeing more of Raleigh, Mako, Newt, Gottlieb, and all the Jaegers and Kaiju. But besides catching up with those characters, what else can we expect from the next chapter of the popular franchise? The director recently dropped some hints.
While speaking to Wall Street Journal about his upcoming FX horror series ‘The Strain’, Del Toro took some time to discuss ‘Pacific Rim 2’. For starters, we’re promised “some new jaegers and a lot of new kaiju”. Then, to continue the worldwide success of the film, the plan is to make it “multicultural and humanistic as much as possible, to make characters from many nationalities or gender, to make them equal in the scope of the adventure, in the day-to-day of the adventure”. Finally, he went into some aspects of the plot that will further explore the connection between Jaeger pilots known as The Drift and the various methods leading to it’s discovery:
“Screenwriter Zak Penn and I really went in, we started with screenwriter Travis Beacham about a year and a half ago, kicking ideas back and forth. And, admittedly, I said to Zak, let’s keep kicking ideas till we find one that really, really turns the first movie on its ear, so to speak. (…) It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book, that had its own mythology, so we had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie. Namely, for example ‘the Drift’, which was an interesting concept. [Then there was] this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And we came up with a really, really interesting idea. I don’t want to spoil it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different.”
As awesome as all of this sounds, the part that excites me more is that alternate dimensions will be involved, which means that we may get to see even more of Del Toro’s unique creature creations than we saw in the first film. After seeing the worlds he created in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘Hellboy’, you can only imagine what else he has in store for the world of ‘Pacific Rim’.
What do you think about these hints about ‘Pacific Rim 2’? Are you excited for the upcoming sequel? Is there anything that you hope Del Toro and company explores in the film? Let us know in the comments below.
‘Pacific Rim 2’ drifts into theaters on April 7, 2017.
