Last week was home to the exciting news that Guillermo del Toro officially announced PACIFIC RIM 2 and that it would be stepping into theaters in 2017. With the big news finally out there in the open, del Toro recently spilled some additional info on the sequel with an interview over at the The Wall Street Journal where he talks about sacrificing some elements of the first film in order to fit the mythology into it as well as what to expect from PACIFIC RIM 2. It sounds like it's going to be much different from the first film and del Toro plans on getting started with the creation process in just a few weeks.
Here's what he had to say:
I said to Zak, let’s keep kicking ideas till we find one that really, really turns the first movie on its ear, so to speak…It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book, that had its own mythology, so we had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie. Namely, for example The Drift, which was an interesting concept. [Then there was] this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And we came up with a really, really interesting idea. I don’t want to spoil it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different.
At the time of watching PACIFIC RIM, I never accounted for the fact that they needed to set up the mythology first. You know, that whole creating a world in order to tell a coherent story that fits within that universe thing… I just wanted more giant robots fighting giant monsters! So hopefully now that they've gotten the important stuff out of the way, the sequel will deliver a lot more kickass fights and what not. The fun stuff.