The release of Pacific Rim Uprising is still several months away, but the first look at the sequel has arrived courtesy of a new feature from Entertainment Weekly, and while the new film may not have Guillermo del Toro behind the camera or Charlie Hunnam in the lead, it boasts the incredibly charismatic John Boyega, which is always a great place to start from.
Boyega stars as Jake Pentecost, the estranged son of Idris Elba’s character from the previous film. Jake left the Jaeger program as a teenager, but returns home when a new Kaiju threat arises. Here’s what Boyega tells EW:
“Jake is the prodigal son. He is a young guy who was on the cusp of greatness in his early days when he was training to be a Jaeger pilot, but he always had a troubled relationship with Stacker. I’m the son he didn’t really talk about in the first film … the product of Stacker’s first love.
He felt he never lived up to his father’s expectations and so he decided to leave the Jaeger program and start stealing for a living. When we meet him, he is living in an abandoned mansion in Santa Monica, which is half a mansion anyway because there’s a big Kaiju claw-swipe that has crushed part of it. He sells and buys stolen goods, and some of that includes Jaeger parts.”
Coming home reunites Jake with his longtime friend Lambert (Scott Eastwood), who will also serve as his copilot when they take the helm of Gipsy Avenger, just one of several new Jaeger models featured in Pacific Rim Uprising. Check out the photo below for a glimpse of what we can expect, along with Boyega’s descriptions.
Gipsy Avenger (center, foreground): “She’s an upgrade model from Gipsy Danger in the first movie. She is still a two-man Jaeger and has new weapons and technology. The new Gipsy has LCD screens and holographic imagery of what is going outside. Her gravity sling has improved. Pilots are no longer locked into robot by feet. It has a scanning system that makes the drift easier to handle. Gipsy Avenger is strongest and hardest to operate.”
Saber Athena (far left, in orange): “She’s the fastest Jaeger, and she is agile and assigned two skillful pilots who know how to do martial arts. She has two swords she can join together to slice stuff down. She’s flexible and very fast.”
Guardian Bravo (far right) in red: “She has big electric whips, but is very stocky and strong.”
Fans can also look forward to new types of Kaiju for our heroes to square off against. The monsters from the previous film were “a test run,” but the breach below the ocean isn’t their only entry point to our world, so it sounds like this new battle may be fought on multiple fronts.
Directed by Stephen S. DeKnight and also starring Rinko Kikuchi and Cailee Spaeny, Pacific Rim Uprising will hit theaters on March 23, 2018.
The globe-spanning conflict between otherworldly monsters of mass destruction and the human-piloted super-machines built to vanquish them was only a prelude to the all-out assault on humanity in Pacific Rim Uprising.
John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as the rebellious Jake Pentecost, a once-promising Jaeger pilot whose legendary father gave his life to secure humanity’s victory against the monstrous “Kaiju.” Jake has since abandoned his training only to become caught up in a criminal underworld. But when an even more unstoppable threat is unleashed to tear through our cities and bring the world to its knees, he is given one last chance to live up to his father’s legacy by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi)—who is leading a brave new generation of pilots that have grown up in the shadow of war. As they seek justice for the fallen, their only hope is to unite together in a global uprising against the forces of extinction.
Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (The Fate of the Furious‘ Scott Eastwood) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), as the heroes of the PPDC become the only family he has left. Rising up to become the most powerful defense force to ever walk the earth, they will set course for a spectacular all-new adventure on a towering scale.