A multi-cultur Uprisin
Ten years after the events depicted i fi actioner Pacific Rim, the second ch Uprising highlights that in the battle fo planet, anybody can make a differ
IN approaching the second chapter for Pacific Rim franchise, its producer Legendary Pictures wanted to ensure that they were crafting an innovative vision, one that, while honouring the first film (Pacific Rim, released in 2013), would present a bold new interpretation of the Pacific
Rim universe.
Producer Cale Boyter says: “Legendary has always had a signature attitude in everything that we do, and this was the opportunity to create a perfect representation of what the brand represents, and how it wants it to evolve.”
It was important to the production team that no film exist without the perfect story. “There’s a lot of cynicism towards sequels,” Boyter admits, “and we were conscious of that. We had to ask ourselves ‘How do we create something that is going to take people by surprise?’”
MYSTERY ADVENTURE STORY
An important step for producers Mary Parent and Boyter was bringing in Steven S. DeKnight, known for creating and running the hit Starz television series Spartacus, as well as running the first season of the Marvel/Netflix series Daredevil.
DeKnight understood Legendary’s commitment to innovative storytelling, and pitched a compelling tale that checked a lot of boxes for the producers. Within this universe of monsters and mechs was a core human message and compelling emotional story arcs.
“Steven is a genre blender,” commends Boyter. “In his concept, the story didn’t function like a simple sequel to Pacific
Rim. The big idea that he started with was that anybody can make a difference. Taking that core message, the story focuses around Stacker Pentecost’s troubled son Jake, and the young, orphaned mechanical genius Amara alongside him — two broken people who overcome their situations and their mistakes, and end up making an enormous difference.”
The story would also introduce a new generation of pilots — the cadets nicknamed the Cadets, teenagers who have been intensively training to be Jaeger pilots since they were small kids. It would also create intrigue around the return of the Kaiju, and if this return may have been facilitated by rogue human intervention.
Boyter says: “The script we developed has the incredible, big action elements and the human arc around Jake and Amara, but is also a mystery adventure story. It’s 10 or 15 minutes into the picture before you realise you’re in the Pacific Rim world. The tone and the pace would not just be more emotional, but more kinetic.”
Legendary — buoyed by returning fellow producers Guillermo del Toro, Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni — would team up with Universal Pictures, engaging with the studio early in the creative process.
“We walked Universal through what we were doing. We created a pre-visualisation presentation and showed them concepts and key moments from the movie, and they loved it. It made them enthusiastic about what we were embarking on together,” Boyter explains.
In Pacific Rim, a Breach opened at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and through it emerged giant Kaiju, monsters engineered by the alien Precursors to move from dimension to dimension terraforming planets — exterminating the indigenous species and taking full territorial control.
These Kaiju unleashed their fury on coastal cities along the Pacific Rim, and proved virtually unstoppable with conventional weapons.
Giant robotic warriors called Jaegers — piloted by humans connected by a neural bridge — were engineered to fight back. Jaeger Gipsy Danger successfully closed the Breach by detonating a nuclear bomb, helped by legendary Jaeger Marshal Stacker Pentecost, who gave his life to ensure the success of the operation.
BEGINNING OF AN UPRISING
Pacific Rim: Uprising continues the mythology of a richly detailed, wholly original sci-fi universe. With a focus on complex, richly diverse characters, the film is a global adventure — taking the audience from the slums of a future Los Angeles, to China, Tokyo, Australia and deep into the icy reaches of Siberia.
With multi-generational and multi-cultural appeal, this is an emotionally charged, visually spectacular film about the battle for our planet and inspiring human heroism on a whole new scale.
It is the year 2035, 10 years after the events of the first film, in which humanity supposedly defeated the threat of the Kaiju. The war is over. The Breach, the gateway beneath the Pacific Ocean that spawned the Kaiju, has been closed, but the fear that these unrelenting beasts from another dimension may somehow rise again is ever-present.
Vigilance has become a way of life, and the PPDC (Pan Pacific Defense Corps) has been reborn as a global force of highly advanced robotic warriors, with a new generation of young pilots at the helm. When an even more deadly Kaiju threat emerges,
Two broken people... overcome their situations and their mistakes, and end up making an enormous difference. Cale Boyter
these young fighters — dubbed the Cadets — are powered by a drive to avenge and to protect what is left of the world they inherited.
Earth has had a chance to repair, but is in a state of heightened tension. In Los Angeles, Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost and a former star Academy pilot, is now a black market scavenger for Jaeger parts. While trying to steal a highly valuable tertiary plasma capacitator, he encounters young Amara, an orphan of the Kaiju War who found out the hard way that the PPDC Jaegers weren’t just going to show up and save her, so she built her own: Scrapper. With a highly gifted engineering mind, she built her mech guardian angel with parts scavenged from the Santa Monica aftermath.
Newly arrested, Jake is given the option — by his estranged adoptive sister and high-ranking PPDC official Mako Mori of having a long list of charges dr condition: he must agree to young cadet Cadets at the terdome in China, alongsi friend and now rival, Nate b men who were once closer r their relationship was damag n walked away from their share i being great Jaeger pilots.
The PPDC is not only trai h Cadets, but building an adva breed of Jaegers in case the return. A rival drone Jaeger pr developed by Liwen Shao and he Shao Industries, is also now i y. would take the pilots out of the J and control the machines rem causing conflict and resentme the pilots and cadets.
While the Cadets are training to fight off the Kaiju, a new enemy appears at the 10-year end-of-war celebrations in Sydney in the form of a sleek and devastating rogue Jaeger, Obsidian Fury — a terrifyingly powerful opponent that Gipsy Danger will be lucky to survive. The new drones turn on their makers, igniting an unexpected Jaeger-versus-Jaeger conflict and sending the PPDC and the Cadets on a quest to find out who or what is giving this new threat a deadly edge that makes it nearly impossible to defeat.
As the Jaegers go to war, a hidden threat like nothing humanity has seen triggers multiple Breaches to open up across the Pacific Rim, and the Kaiju return, more massive and more dangerous than ever.
Jake and Lambert must determine how the new otherworldly threat is tied to the rogue mechs before it is too late.
United International Pictures