PACIFIC RIM Retrospective: What Killed This Promising Kaiju Franchise?



A look back at Guillermo Del Toro and Travis Beacham’s 2013 kaiju vs mecha film Pacific Rim and the short-lived franchise it spawned. What were its influences? Where did it succeed or fail? Why was Pacific Rim: Uprising such doodoo? All this and a ranking of the series’ mechs and kaiju!

#pacificrim

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Sources:

https://the-artifice.com/pacific-rim-anime-influence/

https://web.archive.org/web/20130512184641/http://pacificrimbook.com/content/uploads/PacificRimSpread1.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCODo5NeJVU

https://pacificrim.fandom.com/wiki/Pacific_Rim_2

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/why-guillermo-del-toro-did-not-direct-pacific-rim-sequel#:~:text=What%20were%20Guillermo%20del%20Toro’s,planet%20through%20any%20means%20necessary.

https://www.syfy.com/guillermo-del-toro-shares-his-idea-for-pacific-rim-2

https://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/63167

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/2013/

https://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/63167

source

23 thoughts on “PACIFIC RIM Retrospective: What Killed This Promising Kaiju Franchise?”

  1. I saw this film in theaters at the age of 4. Liked but it was too loud for my ears. Watched it when it came to blu ray and still remain a die hard fan of it to this day. One of the best movies ever made. Legendary got me addicted to kaiju films

    Reply
  2. The first movie was pretty good, with great characters, well-developed, believable robots, horrifying monsters and a truly scary villain race. The second movie killed it for me forever. Poor character development all around, dumb robots, garbage monsters and pathetic villain.

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  3. I guess I'm the only one who loved Uprising. I'll never understand the universal hatred towards that movie. I thought it was fuckin awesome. The only real complaint I ever heard was that it had a bunch of kids in it. But then everybody loved Ghostbusters Afterlife which had a bunch of kids.

    Whatever! I give up! Back in the 80s everybody loved the movies that I loved. These days everybody hates everything.

    Reply
  4. The protagonists of Pac Rim Uprising:
    Rebel guy, son of a great man
    A random traumatized kid

    Me: hmmm…….
    (Also where was Raleigh, to which I found the scheduling conflict and etc)
    Mako fuxking dies: mothaf-

    To cope? Watched videos roasting PacRim Uprising

    Reply
  5. Obsidian Fury had 'lava chainsaws' and that ridicilous part is they tacked it onto the Gipy avenger (disrespectfully, I don't like the movie anyway), they had plasma chainsaws which should hotter and although it was fiction, they still had their own science of pacific rim.

    Reply
  6. The kaiju of our times are Stupid, Shortsighted Hollywood Executives and their Woke Writers. The Giant Robot/Kaiju genre is one of sincerity – sincerity in the way it seeks to encapsulate the eternal, allegorical conflict between the Us vs the Great Terror, unadulterated by political baggage (such as all the woke nonsense that Disney perpetrated to its end).

    Hollywood couldn't accept the success of Pacific Rim. To their idiot executives, it wasn't woke enough. They wanted their inane Marvel superhero woke comedies.Without their political blubber, it couldn't possibly be a good movie. So ironic considering how their holy mission to champion woke agenda is so full of insincerity. The one scene in Pacific Rim when little Mako finds renewed hope upon seeing Pentecost coming out of his jaeger is worth more than all the fake heroics of Marvel movies.

    With the success of Godzilla Minus One, I can only hope hollywood wakes up from their ignorant stupor and get another team of sincerity (if they cannot get Guillermo, bless him) to make a proper sequel.

    Reply

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