With a hype teaser already online, the first official teaser trailer for Steven DeKnight’s Pacific Rim: Uprising, is expected to arrive on Friday. In the meantime, the film is taking the online stage with a set of solid first-look stills to share which are host to an amalgam of Jaeger hardware and new characters in costume including more on actor John Boyega and Scott Eastwood.
“Jake is the prodigal son,” Boyega tells EW. “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.”
The film follows Guillermo Del Toro’s cult hit film, released in 2013 and with actor Idris Elba who played the role of Stacker opposite then-starring actor Charlie Hunnam and actress Kikuchi Rinko. The sequel will additionally bring back the role of Mako, played by Kikuchi, as the Entertainment Weekly report delves more into from Thursday.
This time, Mako is Jake’s protector, despite their awkward history. “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,” Boyega says.
Jake thrives as a black market retailer. The monster attacks from the sea have driven the wealthy inland. Middle America is now prime real estate, while the poor populate the coasts, where they could be the first to face an assault.
“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,” Boyega says. “He sells and buys stolen goods, and some of that includes Jaeger parts.”
This sets up further details about the plot and setting which involve the “masses of poor huddled on the coasts” who are now building their own Jaegers to defend from new and incoming Kaiju threats. The report also delves into Jake’s implored submission into the Jaeger program as penance for his crimes which also sets up a fateful reunion with former friend, Lambert, played by Eastwood.
“…They were brothers,” Boyega says, but that bond broke when Jake ran away. “Being in each other’s heads in The Drift, they know each other’s thoughts, so they have great moments of hashing out what happened in the past.”
And on the new, impending Kaiju threat:
“The Kaiju have found a new way,” Boyega says. “They are way more intelligent than we thought they were. The monsters you saw in the first movie were the test run, to see how the planet would hold up. The breach we thought was closed is not their only way into our world. Their plans are more specific. Jake leads the team in trying to build up a new defense against that.”
EW has much more on the kinds of kickass Jaeger hardware moviegoers can expect when the film opens on March 23 from Legendary and Universal. Check out the pics below!
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