Thought the Pacific Rim franchise was done? Think again. The disappointing 2018 sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising may have squandered the potential for Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 film to spawn a major movie series, but now it’s coming back in a new form on Netflix.
Pacific Rim: The Black will relaunch the universe in the shape of an anime-styled animated series. Earlier this week, the streamer gave us a taste of what was to come with a brief teaser and now, the first full trailer has landed.
The Black will see the tables turned in the battle between the Kaiju and the Jaegers, with the giant monsters having gained the advantage over the human-piloted robots. With Australia overrun and evacuated, two kids left behind will have to journey through the perilous land in search of their parents, armed with an old Jaeger for protection.
For more, here’s the synopsis:
“There was a time when Kaiju rose from the Pacific Rim only to encounter gigantic robots, Jaegers, built to fight them back. That time has passed. Now, Australia has been overrun by Kaiju, forcing the evacuation of an entire continent. Left behind, teenage siblings Taylor and Hayley embark on a desperate search for their missing parents, teaching themselves to pilot a battered, long-abandoned Jaeger to help in their quest and give them even the slightest hope of surviving.”
Going by the premise, The Black will take a similar approach to the world of Pacific Rim as Camp Cretaceous does to the Jurassic World universe. And why not? The kid-oriented focus works well for that series, which is better than you might expect, so you can’t blame Netflix for wanting to see if the trick works again for this one. Plus, the show comes from the minds of Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson, the creators of fondly remembered Marvel cartoon X-Men: Evolution.
There’s certainly a kaiju-craze going on right now, in the run-up to Godzilla vs. Kong, so the good news is Pacific Rim: The Black will be able to keep you entertained until that other Legendary Entertainment production gets here. The animated series’ first season (a second has already been commissioned) is due on Netflix in just under a month’s time, on March 4th.
