Pacific Rim feels like one of those films that would not get made today — an original, auteur-driven blockbuster that a studio was willing to invest $200 million into. In 2022, you don’t have studios throwing that much money at an idea. However, Legendary and Warner Bros. did, and it resulted in a beautiful epic about humanity united against insurmountable odds. Though a modest hit both critically and commercially, earning $411 million worldwide and a 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, it quickly earned a dedicated fan base and a sequel seemed inevitable.
In 2014, Guillermo del Toro, director of the original film, confirmed that he would return for the sequel and said that development of the script had begun with Zak Penn (The Avengers, Free Guy) and the original film’s co-writer Travis Beacham. The rumored to be titled Pacific Rim: Maelstrom seemed set to reach its initial release date of April 2017. However, in early 2016, everything changed.
Del Toro announced that he was stepping back from directing the sequel, citing a busy schedule and wanting to make The Shape of Water as his reasons for leaving. Meanwhile, the studio announced Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight would take over as director from a script written by Jon Spaihts. Two years later, Pacific Rim: Uprising released to a mixed critical reception and disappointing results, and fans were left to wonder what del Toro’s original vision for the second Pacific Rim could have been.
Four years on from the sequel and almost a decade after the original, del Toro revealed some of the ideas he had for the sequel in an interview with The Wrap. “It was really crazy,” 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. 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.”
There is a lot to unpack, and it’s interesting to take note of the elements that survived. For instance, the idea of the villain being a human under the precursors’ influence was a narrative throughline that remained in Uprising, though it seems that del Toro intended for the role to be a new character rather than Charlie Day’s Dr. Newt Geiszler. However, what really stands out is how different del Toro’s sequel was from what audiences got in Uprising.
As far as blockbuster sequels go, Uprising plays it safe. It opts to try and recreate the same big robots, big monsters action as the original without really attempting to develop the conflict beyond that. Del Toro’s sequel, on the other hand, would have included an earth-shattering twist that redefines the whole franchise — namely, that the precursors who sent the kaiju through the breach are, in fact, what becomes of humanity thousands of years in the future. It’s a mind-boggling revelation that would have been interesting, as it means that the breach was not a portal through space but one through time. Del Toro also implies that the precursors are not creatures in their own rights but giant biological jaegers with the remnants of humanity piloting them.
Finally, del Toro confirmed that fan-favorite Mako Mori would have had a much bigger role in his sequel. “To me, the hero was Mako Mori,” he explained. “I wanted her not only to live, I wanted her to be one of the main characters in the second movie.” It’s tragic that one of the main characters of the original had her role greatly reduced in the sequel before getting unceremoniously fridged, but at least del Toro had big ideas for her. Sadly, just like Mako’s story, del Toro’s original vision for a Pacific Rim sequel will forever remain an idea in his head and make fans wonder what could’ve been.