Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 kaiju movie Pacific Rim has only grown in reputation since its release and many people would have loved a sequel from del Toro. Instead, we got the disappointing Pacific Rim: Uprising in 2018, which made little impact. And now del Toro has been sharing his vision for a sequel that we unfortunately never got to see.
The 2013 film starred Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi as co-pilots of a giant mecha, built to fight kaiju. Idris Elba also starred, as their commanding officer – Pentecost. del Toro worked on a sequel screenplay, but when the rights to the franchise switched from Warner Bros to Universal, his vision for the film was abandoned.
Hardly any of the original cast ending up returning for Pacific Rim: Uprising and Kikuchi’s character Mako was downsized to a minor role and then killed off-screen, which was a huge disservice to the significant part she played in the first film. This would have been one of the biggest differences in del Toro’s version of the sequel.
Another huge revelation in del Toro’s vision for Pacific Rim 2 would have been that future-humans were inside the kaiju, controlling them; “We find out that the precursors are us thousands of years in the future,” del Toro explained to The Wrap, while promoting his upcoming noir Nightmare Alley.
“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.”
And Mako would have had a central role; “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.
If you love all things kaiju, check out our guide to the best monster movies of all time.