Luke Owen addresses the possibility of a sequel to Pacific Rim…
Warning: here be spoilers for Pacific Rim.
I was among the many people who praised Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham’s homage to kaiju-eiga cinema, Pacific Rim, upon its release last month. I went to a press screening of it, gave it a ★★★★ review, recorded a podcast on it and then paid my £8-odd to see it the day it came out because I wanted to watch it again. I loved it. As a fan of Japanese monster cinema, it had everything I could have asked for (save for some better acting) and felt that it was the sort of movie Ishiro Honda would have made if he was still with us today. I am a fan of this movie.
There has been a lot of speculation since before the movie was even released on whether a) there would be a sequel and b) whether the movie would make enough money to warrant one. As sadly predicted, the movie under-performed State side and only ended up number two in the UK Box Office behind Monsters University, putting all hope of a sequel in jeopardy despite Beacham taking to Twitter saying he was already working on a script.
But forgetting the money aspect of the situation, there is a much bigger question that needs to be addressed – does Pacific Rim need a sequel. If you ask me, not at all.
To look at why I don’t think Pacific Rim needs a sequel, let me take you back to the summer of 1997, and a little movie called Men in Black.
For me, Men in Black is one of the best examples of how to do a big budget summer comedy. The characters, the plot and the script are chock-full of wit, charm and charisma to create a thoroughly entertaining movie. And while Men in Black is one of the best examples of a summer comedy, its sequel Men in Black 2, is the perfect example of how not to do a follow-up.
It’s almost astounding how much Men in Black 2 gets wrong. The characters are weaker, the plot is weaker, the villain is weaker and the script has neither the charm nor wit of the original making it inherently weaker. And while all of this helps it be one of the worst sequels put forward by cinema, the main point of contention that I have with Men in Black 2 is that undoes all of the good of its predecessor.
Men in Black has a closed story. By the end of the movie, Kay has decided that he no longer wants to work for the MIB and has his memory wiped so he can reconnect with his former flame and live a happy life, blissfully unaware of the stuff he used to do. Jay becomes a more central role within the organisation (even getting his own unique suit) while the newly appointed El becomes his partner as the first Woman in Black.
So what do they do for Men in Black 2? Press control+Z and start again.
Clearly the studios felt that what everyone liked about the first movie was the relationship between Jay and Kay (a very astute observation, because it’s 100% correct). Kay was a wonderfully cynical man who has seen more than any man should see while Jay was the young, idealistic rookie who is learning the ropes. But by reuniting him with his wife, Kay changed from the character we’d seen to the character we wanted him to become – a happy one. No longer was he the bitter curmudgeon, now he was a happy man on a farm with the love of his life. By ignoring this complete storyline and hitting the reset button (with one shameful line of dialogue to boot), Men in Black 2 goes against what it accomplished in the first movie. The dynamic between the two no longer works because their characters are now different which makes the film feel forced and unnecessary.
While there are many issues from a character point of view with their retconning, the main problem is that Men in Black 2 just feels like a sequel that was made because the studios (and fans) demanded it. If Men in Black needed a sequel, this was not the way to do it. What’s frustrating is that the Universe created in the first movie did open up to the possibilities of sequels, but they went about it the wrong way. If they’d had Jay and El go off on their own adventures, that would be one thing. But what they attempted to do was capture lightning in a bottle a second time and instead just took a giant step backwards.
To bring this back to Pacific Rim, the reason why the world doesn’t need a sequel is because the story that del Toro and Beacham wrote is finished. The heroes closed the breach, no more monsters can come through. We won. End of story. The only story you could realistically tell is one in which the Kaiju reopen the seal – which is akin to Kay getting his memory back in Men in Black 2 in terms of a ‘we need a sequel’ plot threads.
Much like Men in Black, Pacific Rim has created a massive Universe with many stories to tell. In an interview with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode to promote the movie, del Toro spoke of a 400-page bible that he and Beacham put together of the entire history of the Kaiju War. These are people who clearly have a love for this Universe and have put a lot of thought into the ins and outs of its creation. But there is no where to move forward because Pacific Rim is the final part of that story.
Well, why not make a prequel? Seen as though the war is already written down, it would be easy for Del Toro and Beacham to delve into the darker parts of the war. The problem with taking a portion of the ‘bible’ and turning into a movie however is that there is no drama – we know how it’s going to end because we’ve seen Pacific Rim. Even if the humans look to be losing, it doesn’t matter because we know they’re going to survive. One of Monster University’s biggest issues is that the rivalry between Mike and Sully seems pointless as we know they end up the best of friends because we’ve all seen Monsters Inc. It was enjoyable yes, but there was zero drama or character investment.
With all that said Pacific Rim does have scope for other mediums. Beacham has already shown that the movie’s world works as a comic book in the fantastic Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, so why not expand on that with a monthly series? Video games are another option, a cartoon series, novels etc. There is a lot that can be done without the need of a cinematic sequel that repeats what the first film already accomplished.
Pacific Rim shouldn’t get a sequel because the spreadsheets say so; it shouldn’t get a sequel because it doesn’t need one.
Originally published August 22, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
