After a fairly long period of uncertainty, the status of Mako Mori role in the Pacific Rim sequel has been revealed. Given that Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh Becket was confirmed to not be returning, there was a degree of speculation regarding Mako’s role in the film. However, the summary of the movie was released, revealing that not only would she return, she’d have a significant role.
The summary also revealed more about John Boyega’s Jake Pentecost. Boyega first appeared in the teaser, not long ago, and is the focus of the movie poster that was released the other week. Now audiences have some context to attach to his character.
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.
That bit of the summary provides a solid idea of what audiences can expect from Boyega’s character. Jake will be something of a hard headed punk, from the sound of things. The aspect of both wanting to live up to a legacy, while also coping with the legend’s loss is interesting.
Of course, there’s also the angle of a pilot’s perspective. It could be looked at as Jake feeling conflicted over being rendered insignificant or irrelevant by his father’s sacrifice. Not just on the level of raising the bar to an impossible standard, but literally. The summary implies that the Kaiju were gone seemingly for good. So the need for pilots was reduced to zero. If that factors into Jake’s arc, he could be a very compelling character. It’d be a first for the series, whose characters drew the most criticism in the first film for being rather flat or otherwise generic. Speaking of which…
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.
Mako suffered largely from a case of genericness in the first film. Her family was killed by the Kaiju, so now she hunts the monsters. If these beasts were called Titans, her name would be Eren. JAEGER! (I kid. Stop rage typing. Attack on Titan is fine.). This could potentially give her a little more to work with. She now has a weary adoptive sibling to play off of, for example. She takes on a leadership role, which could be awesome for the character, as well. There are plenty of directions to take her. It’s just a matter of steering her away from that blandness that she embodied the first time.
The summary mentions a war, though it doesn’t exactly specify if it’s talking about the war with the Kaiju or not. It’s likely, but it could also be possible that after the Kaiju were defeated, there was some sort of giant robot war. Honestly, the Pacific Rim world is too awesome to be as mediocre as the first film was. So these epic ideas are worth getting excited over. But then there’s still more, covering other aspects of the movie.
Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (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.
So in other words, they’re a ragtag team of rowdy misfits. That’s what this is saying. Two guys who don’t get along, but kinda do, the team mom (as that is the only role Mako could possibly play, here), and a teenager. Yeah. Misfits. Of course there will be others, but Pacific Rim is about giant robots fighting giant monsters. It’s all in on being as ludicrously fun as possible. So misfits is perfectly fine. All in all, it has the makings of a significantly better movie than its predecessor. Hopefully, it delivers on that potential.
Pacific Rim Uprising comes to theaters March 23, 2018