Having worked on the likes of Angel, Smallville, Spartacus and Daredevil, Steven S. DeKnight makes the jump to the big screen this week with the release of the blockbuster sequel Pacific Rim Uprising.
Uprising sees DeKnight stepping into the shoes of Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, who directed the first movie back in 2013, and speaking to Flickering Myth’s Thomas Harris ahead of the movie’s release, DeKnight has revealed the advice he received from del Toro prior to making the film.
“The reason he didn’t do this movie is scheduling conflicts,” said DeKnight. “He was going off to do his passion project which was The Shape of Water – turned out very well for him, good decision, for both of us. Legendary had developed three scripts over the years, none of them were quite sitting right with Legendary so they wanted to try again and take another stab at it. So I pitched Guillermo my idea for the sequel, and he really liked it and had a lot of great suggestions. Then he gave me the best advice ever. He said, ‘Look, I’m going off to do my movie, if you need anything, call me, I’ll help in any way I can. But I want you to make your Pacific Rim, I don’t want you to make my Pacific Rim, so go off and make your own movie’, which really gave me the license to try different things and take the spirit of what he did but not feel like I’m imitating him.”
DeKnight went on to reveal how he put his own mark on the sequel , adding that: “A lot of the action scenes in this one are during the day, the first one was at night, in the rain, or underwater. Guillermo did such a brilliant job with that, anything we would have tried like that would have been a pale imitation. So we wanted to go into the daylight so we didn’t copy Guillermo and also offer the audience something new. The two things when I came on, I sent Legendary a five page ‘Steve DeKnight’s Manifesto of Pacific Rim’, two of the most important things were I thought the movie should be two hours or under, and it had to be fun. Fun was the number one thing, and that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be emotional or scary, but at the end of the day, when the audience is leaving the theater I wanted them to have a smile on their face and just having had a really good time at the movies.”
Be sure to check back tomorrow for our full interview with Steven S. DeKnight, and read our review of Pacific Rim Uprising here.
The globe-spanning conflict between otherworldly monsters of mass destruction and the human-piloted super-machines built to vanquish them was only a prelude to the all-out assault on humanity in Pacific Rim Uprising.
John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as the rebellious Jake Pentecost, a once-promising Jaeger pilot whose legendary father gave his life to secure humanity’s victory against the monstrous “Kaiju.” Jake has since abandoned his training only to become caught up in a criminal underworld. But when an even more unstoppable threat is unleashed to tear through our cities and bring the world to its knees, he is given one last chance to live up to his father’s legacy by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi)—who is leading a brave new generation of pilots that have grown up in the shadow of war. As they seek justice for the fallen, their only hope is to unite together in a global uprising against the forces of extinction.
Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (The Fate of the Furious’ Scott Eastwood) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), as the heroes of the PPDC become the only family he has left. Rising up to become the most powerful defense force to ever walk the earth, they will set course for a spectacular all-new adventure on a towering scale.
Pacific Rim Uprising sees Steven S. DeKnight (Daredevil) directing a cast that includes John Boyega (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Adria Arjona (True Detective), Scott Eastwood (Suicide Squad), Cailee Spaeny (Counting to 1,000), Levi Meaden (Aftermath), Karan Brar (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Nick Tarabay (Spartacus), Zhang Jin (Ip Man 3), Mackenyu (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) and Jing Tian (Police Story: Lockdown), while Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day and Burn Gorman reprise their roles from the first film. It is set for release on March 23rd, 2018.
