Guillermo del Toro's 2013 science fiction extrvaganza Pacific Rim may not have amassed as much profit at the box office as production company Legendary Pictures may have wanted, but the severly underrated movie had a lot more going for it than at first seems apparent. While Godilla and Kaiju fans may relish in seeing impossibly gigantic creatures fighting each other amidst manmade landscapes, a portion of average audiences struggle to suspend enough belief to enjoy the concept - one can believe that Godzilla and a few MUTO's may have existed among us unnoticed, but ones belief in the concept is stretched as more and more kaiju are introduced. While some will argue thats all just in the name of fun and entertainment, some audiences prefer more grounded, plausible fantasies; Christopher Nolans Dark Knight trilogy being a case in point.
Could Guillermo del Toro be about to unleash an army of epic size upon humanity?
Pacific Rim allowed such audiences a gentle introduction to the Kaiju phenomenon by having the Kaiju come from another world/dimension, while also introducing such audiences to the other popular Japanese fantasy element; the mech. Thus with a simple explanation for the Kaiju's existence del Toro was able to deliver a big budget Mech v Kaiju movie made in Hollywood. Unfortunately despite his best efforts the film wasn't as successful as last years Godzilla. And with both Godzilla and King Kong being much more recognisable names, even to general audiences, it really comes as no surprise that del Toro's planned sequel, Pacific Rim: Maelstrom is being sidelined by Legendary Pictures. But maybe the highly successful production shouldn't be so eager to put the brakes on del Toro's sequel.
While Pacific Rim gave us Kaiju v Jaeger action, del Toro has promised that the sequel will take a different route, and as we said in our last article we have a suspicion as to what that direction is. For del Toro, a sequel that just repeats the formula of the original isn't enough (take Hellboy II as an example). Del Toro's wildly vivid imagination will want to take what we saw in Pacific Rim and increase it ten fold, and bigger robots or bigger monsters isn't enough of a justification in the mind of del Toro. But how does one go bigger, how can the stakes, the threat and the scope be increased beyond what we saw in the first movie. The answer is simply "Invasion".
It was revealed in Pacific Rim that the Kaiju where in actual fact biological Jaegers that were being controlled via telepathy by the beings that sent them here, the Precursors (pictured above). The Kaiju, which were sent in ever increasing sizes were but the first wave, the scouts, the recon ahead of a full scale invasion which will no doubt consist of both Kaiju and Precursor forces. A good analogy is the highly successful video game series "Gears of War", in which a planet seemingly only populated by humans suddenly found itself beset upon from a vast army of hardened foot soldiers supported by towering beasts - imagine an army of Pecursor soldiers storming Tokyo with a trio of Kaiju behind them as they meet an army of human soldiers, tanks, jets and helicopters, with a few Jaegers taking up the rear.
To answer all tweets re: PAC RIM 2: Budget ready. Awaiting script from John Spaihts. Then is up to the studios to give it a green light.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 11, 2015
This is what we believe Guillermo del Toro has in store for us with Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, and Kaiju fan or not, we can't wait to see the visionary director be given the support he deserves and bring this epic vision to the big screen. Hopefully with John Spaihts script having been completed (see above), Legendary Pictures can now realise the epic porportions of what del Toro has planned and greenlight what could possibly be one of the most epic science fiction movies ever imagined.
