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5 Ideas For A Pacific Rim 2 Or A Spinoff

I love Pacific Rim. Like, really love it. Its flaws are as easy to spot as any of the film's lumbering, gargantuan beasties (Kaiju, to the uninitiated), but that hasn’t stopped it from being my favorite blockbuster released since The Dark Knight. At a time when the summer movie season means you can expect plenty of remakes, comic book movies, and a nasty undercurrent of cynicism waiting for you in theaters, for Pacific Rim to not just exist, but be as overwhelmingly entertaining as it is, is to have a grand blue bolt of joy strike an otherwise barren big-budget landscape. Here’s a film that offers the same big, loud, dumb spectacle every other summer blockbuster has been trying to sell you for years, but actually understands the restraint required to make being big feel as such, the cadence of loud that turns noise into Rock & Roll, and that entertainment can be dumb, without being stupid. It took Marvel five movies and two-thirds of an Avengers to get the kind of slack-jawed, silly grin out of me Pacific Rim managed in an hour, and then maintained through multiple viewings.

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So, before bothering with that pesky “research” thing, here’s where my head was at for a direct sequel, the very idea of which possess a number of challenges. Repeating the same conflict by having another breach open somewhere else would be too familiar, and Atlantic Rim sounds like a bad SNL sketch, let alone the actual title for an Asylum knockoff mockbuster (one co-written by Sharknado scribe Thunder Levin). Sequels need to raise the stakes, not recycle them, which is hard to do when the fate of the world is hanging in the balance from the word “go.” Naturally then, there’s only one logical way to move things forward: Solar Rim.

Hear me out. Based on Newt’s drifting experience, the insectoid aliens responsible for unleashing the Kaiju (referred to as Precursors on the film’s wiki page) had originally tried to invade earth during the Triassic period, but decided to wait until the atmosphere was more conducive. Since that period was over 200 million years ago, that perhaps indicates our universe and theirs don’t experience time in unison, meaning it could be well into humanity’s spacefaring future before the Precursors try opening another breach, this time with the intent of exacting revenge on the human race. Instead of just fighting their monsters, a technologically advanced mankind of the distant-ish future would have to confront the Precursors themselves as well.

What, you thought all the aliens died when Gipsey Danger Chernobyled their asses on the other side of the breach? No, humanity’s great victory at the end of the first film simply amounted to little more than blowing up one of the Precursors’ cross-dimensional airports. And they liked that airport. A more dedicated, interplanetary invading force bent on humankind’s obliteration means the Jaeger program would have to be updated with all the advancements this future mankind would have at their disposal. Instead of Jaegers and Kaiju fighting underwater, they’d be duking it out in high orbit, while fleets of smaller craft buzz by, engaging in ship-to-ship battle, trying to tip the balance of combat in favor of each species’ respective champion. It would mean making the influence of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Independence Day on Pacific Rim even more apparent, but hey, it worked out pretty well the first time.

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