Guillermo del Toro explains the plot of his scrapped Pacific Rim sequel
One major character would have made it out of del Toro's version alive
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Guillermo del Toro is finally sharing his vision for that Pacific Rim sequel. Del Toro directed and co-wrote the original 2013 film, which is all about humans in the near-future who use giant robots called Jaegers to fight sea monsters called Kaiju in the Pacific Ocean. The Oscar winner was originally attached to write the sequel as well. Eventually, he departed the project, and the ultimate sequel, 2018's Pacific Rim: Uprising, strayed heavily from his original concept.
Del Toro explained his ideas for the sequel in an interview with The Wrap. He said, “The villain was this tech guy that had invented basically sort of the internet 2.0. And then they realized that all his patents came to him one morning. And so little by little, they started putting together this and they said, ‘Oh, he got them from the precursors.’ The guys that control the kaiju. And then we found out that the precursors are us thousands of years in the future.”
He continued, “They’re trying to terraform, trying to re-harvest the earth to survive. Wow. And that we were in exo-bio-suits that looked alien, but they were not. We were inside. And it was a really interesting paradox.”
“It was really crazy,” he said of his idea. “And some elements of that they took and they re-jigged.”
Another big difference between del Toro’s imagined sequel and the actual sequel is the fate of Mako Mori. In Pacific Rim: Uprising, she has a minor role and dies off-screen.
“To me, the hero was Mako Mori. I wanted her not only to live, I wanted her to be one of the main characters in the second movie,” del Toro said.
Pacific Rim: Uprising was ultimately a critical and commercial flop, but the universe still continues with Netflix’s anime series Pacific Rim: The Black, which released its first season earlier this year, with a second season currently in production. That series has a grittier tone than the earlier films.
31 Comments
What Pacific Rim: Uprising did with Mori is still one of the most baffling decisions. I mean, they introduce this step-sibling relationship that had so much richness… And they kill her off so that we can another generic blond guy around as the partner instead?
And she was arguably the most popular character of the first movie.
Not only was she popular, she had a compelling character arc and really intriguing relationship. In addition they actually managed to not think that pairing had to be romantic.
You’re right, it really didn’t have to be, Hiemoth.
Lord knows she’s the only one I can remember. 8 years later.
Not just any generic blonde guy — Clint Eastwood’s less-talented son!
Movie sucked.
I liked Uprising more than most but fridging Mako was a fucking crime.
When you factor in the fact that Chinese so-called studios were financing this and had Chinese B-list actors in it (only speaking in Mandarin, “We don’t need to speak English!”), you know the Japanese character has to die.
And that’s why you don’t try to continue a GDT thing without GDT. Stupid Hollywood.
Absolutely. There’s a kernel of weird to his ideas that bland sequels can never match.
What does everybody think of del Toro’s premise for the second movie? I’m not sure how it would play for us to discover that the kaiju were sent by our future selves to destroy us before we rendered the planet entirely FUBAR.
It’s a really interesting, and timely, dramatic idea, but doesn’t lend itself to a big action movie like the first one was….
I liked Uprising well enough, though mostly due to John Boyega.
Reading this… I honestly prefer Uprising. The whole “the Kaiju were sent by humanity a thousand years in the future” twist is monumentally stupid for many reasons.
Killing off Mako Mori aside, I enjoyed Uprising as well. It just has so many goofy ideas. It reminds me of a comic book sequel where the writers could just throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. But it doesn’t have anything close to Del Toro’s craftsmanship. And the CGI sucked. I’m surprised it cost over $100 million.
To be fair, we’re talking about a movie where a triumphant beat involves a giant robot unsheathing a giant sword.
haha, “unsheathing a giant sword”.I’ll see myself out.Tip your server.
Yeah, I also enjoyed Uprising (with the exception of killing off Mako). I liked the way they followed up on the but with Charlie Day’s character mentally linking with the kaiju. The kaiju scenes definitely weren’t as visually interesting as the ones in the first film, but I was impressed with how they were “shot” in such a way that you could always tell what was happening.
I think Charlie Day really sold the idea of a guy who’s mind is being torn in two in front of us. “He’s not strong enough!”
Just because you say something is stupid doesn’t make it so. In the right hands this could have been a great and poignant story
Doctor Who basically did this story twice, once on TV and once (much better) on audio, with the remnants of future humanity invading the present. Still, would have made a more interesting story than Uprising.
See also: Tenet; Fringe; countless comic books and sci-fi novels. It’s a cliche.
IMO it’s a trope that still has not reached its cliche phase.
Seven Soldiers is the one that sprang immediately to mind for me.
I really liked the Toclafane as NuWho villains. There’s something potent about future humans so desperate for survival that they abandon everything, physical and cultural, that makes them human, and are then ultimately defeated by their ancestors embodying the best that humanity can be (sharing stories; coming together as one; using their minds).
While Uprising isnt the greatest movie, GDT’s plot has some…major issues, the biggest being if the precursors are future humans…why don’t they go back and just talk to past (present) humans and make sure that future Earth is survivable instead of sending monsters to kill/terraform it. Or if that isn’t possible for reasons go to a past where there isn’t people (I know the extinction of the dinos are supposed to be a version of this but there is like… 50 million or so years they have to work with instead of going straight to modern earth)
No, no, it makes much more sense to go back to a point in time where sentient creatures not only exist on the planet, but also are technologically advanced enough to pose a threat and fight back. Simply going back say, another 100 years before nuclear weaponry and mechanization would be INSANE.I like the idea— but yeah, that’s always a flaw unless it’s hand-waved away as “this is as far back as they COULD go”
There’s a theory regarding time travel that you could only go back as far as when the the time machine was first switched on. It probably wouldn’t work here, seeing as it’s millions of years in the future, but you could maybe change it to when time travel was first invented and use that as a plot point, like a Kaiju scientist uses the link to invent time travel giving you a nice paradox.
Or how’s this: the rift was accidentally created by a secret weapons test in the present day and time moves normally at both ends, just millions of years apart.
Oof, I love Del Toro but I hate Scooby Doo endings. Aliens should be cool aliens, that’s invariably going to be cooler than “They’re humans from faraway land/time! Nothing else in the universe is cool.”
Pacific Rim is just Weekend at Bernie’s fanfic.
Hmom, yeah, that kind of sounds not great, like some Film Theory YouTube video or something. Right up there with “it was all a dying dream” , etc.