With an April 7, 2017 release date already locked in, it’s no surprise Guillermo del Toro is deep into work on Pacific Rim 2. What’s a bit more intriguing is that he’s planning the movie with an eye on the sequel, the not-yet-greenlit Pacific Rim 3.
Whereas Pacific Rim 2 is expected to differ quite a bit from Pacific Rim 1, it seems 2 and 3 may be more closely linked.
On the one hand, Pacific Rim was a fine film and Guillermo del Torro did a fantastic job with it. Like my friend Fizz said on episode 52 of of The MovieByte Podcast where we talked about Pacific Rim, it was as if every time a Jaeger punched a monster in the head, it was like del Torro punching Michael Bay in the head and saying that is how you make action movies. So understand that I’m coming at this from the perspective of having liked the first film. And yet, I worry about this as a tendency toward sequelitis. Aren’t we kind of counting our chickens before they hatch?
The direction we’re going is very different from the first. Some of your favorite characters come back, some others don’t because we have decided that we’re going to shoot ambitiously and say ‘Let’s hope we have three movies.’ So some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one.
I’m glad to hear the second film is going in a different and perhaps more original direction though.