Pacific Rim Uprising Will Reveal More About the Kaiju

When the trailers for the original Pacific Rim arrived online, they sold us on the idea of something we’ve all come to know and love: giant monsters. After we saw the film, however, we knew there’s a lot more to the beasts that are crossing over from Earth through a breach in the Pacific Ocean. The Kaiju were created and cloned as part of a colonization effort by an inter-dimensional species, but after the breach closed, what happened next?

Pacific Rim Uprising will pick up ten years after that breach was slammed shut by Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh Becket and Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori, but questions linger. Is the breach REALLY closed? Will the aliens and their Kaiju ever find another way back to Earth?

While visiting the set of the sequel earlier this year, director Steven S. DeKnight told us his thinking about what went down in that climactic battle of the first movie, and how it relates to the sequel.

“I actually always approached it that they didn’t blow up the entire alien world, it was just the opening of what looked like their monster warehouse. So you also have to assume that creatures who have mastered interdimensional travel have many worlds and have conquered many worlds, and I think that’s referenced in the first one. My thing was, they plugged up one hole, of course they’re still out there and probably pissed off. So that was a very easy natural thing, but we did want the time period to go by a lot longer where it’s the question of, ‘Are they ever coming back?’”

As DeKnight said, when the sequel begins, the population is divided by the very question. Some think there’s no reason to keep the Jaeger program alive because the Kaiju are gone, while others remain steadfast that they will return. Among those that are eager to protect themselves from the threat of a Kaiju is Cailee Spaeny’s Amara, a new character who has ties to the original film.

“She was an orphan through the Kaiju attack 10 years ago,” Spaeny, who marks her feature film debut in the role, told us. “So through that process she’s definitely built a hard exterior, and had to figure out how to survive on her own. And she’s definitely taken that upon her to figure it out herself. And she’s built her own Jaeger, Scrapper, and it’s basically her only friend. She’s taking that on her to make sure that she never has to deal with being alone again, and if the Kaiju do come back, which she believes they will, then she will be ready to fight.”

As we know from the trailer of the film, the Kaiju are in fact, back, and they’re bigger and badder than before.

“I like to look at it as there are a lot of things when you watch the first movie that leave questions and we looked at what all those are and we take ideas from them,” producer Cale Boyter revealed.

Unlike the first Pacific Rim, which had many monsters that were direct homages to the likes of Rodan or King Kong, Uprising will be creating its own type of Kaiju.

“I don’t think you will,” DeKnight replied when asked if fans will notice any direct homages with the Kaiju. “We were very cognizant of trying to create some truly unique creatures and I can’t say a lot about it, but there’s some very cool variations to what these creatures are and what they do… We went down so many paths with these creatures.”

Finally, if there’s one big question mark about the Kaiju, their masters, and their mission that remains from the first movie, it comes from one line uttered by Charlie Day’s Newt: “They’ve been here before in sort of a trial run… it was the dinosaurs.” Will we get an answer to this riddle?

“Without giving something away,” DeKnight teased. “Dinosaurs are mentioned.”

Pacific Rim Uprising will land in theaters on March 23, 2018.