For a while, we weren’t sure whether Guillermo del Toro’s terrific Pacific Rim would be getting a sequel, thanks to slightly disappointing box office numbers. Luckily, the big-robots-versus-bigger-monsters action spectacular has been set up with Legendary Pictures and Universal for a 2017 sequel, so we will eventually get to see what del Toro has lined up for the next installment. And though he’s been tiptoeing around exactly what Pacific Rim 2 will be about, the helmer has dropped several hints over the past few months.
At the end of the first film, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) used a giant kaiju to hitch a ride through an inter-dimensional portal at the bottom of the sea in the titular area. On the other side of that rift lay the kaiju‘s brightly colored, more-than-slightly psychedelic homeworld – though Raleigh’s detonation of a giant bomb at the base of the rift cut short their visit. With the rift destroyed, how will the kaiju make their way back to Earth for Pacific Rim 2?
One thing we do know is that the Jaegers will not be going on the offensive and invading the kaiju‘s home turf. That was a popular rumor for a while, and del Toro recently addressed it in an interview with Shock Till You Drop, reluctantly admitting:
“You’re asking the right questions but not necessarily the way you think. If you think are we invading their world, we’re not, but we’re showing more of that world.”
Let the fan speculation begin. Obviously, Pacific Rim 2 will have to bring the Jaegers into conflict with the kaiju again, but exactly how that’s going to happen is still a big question mark. The characters learned in Pacific Rim that the giant monsters are actually cloned weapons made by a race of malicious alien colonists who wish to invade Earth at some point, so a continuation of that plot thread seems like a certainty. But as always, we’re going have to wait a long while for a clear image of what to expect from this del Toro project.
Pacific Rim 2 opens on April 7th, 2017.