‘Pacific Rim’ Writer Travis Beacham Wanted to Travel to the Other Side of the Rift in Sequels

The original Pacific Rim is a giddy and eye-popping popcorn movie. While director Guillermo del Toro‘s lavish Kaiju movie was noticeably divisive online, it was embraced worldwide and became a modest box-office hit. The Legendary Pictures production earned enough cash in China to produce sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising, which didn’t live up to the charm and personality of the first movie.

Recently, we asked screenwriter and Carnival Row creator Travis Beacham what he initially had in mind for the franchise following the 2012 movie, since the sequel went in a very different direction than what was initially planned. A part of Beacham’s hope was to go to another world, and more specifically, to the other side of the rift where all the ‘lil blue creatures are cooking up Kaijus.

After the sequel’s less than enthusiastic reception, another adventure reuniting the original heroes of the franchise, Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), appeared even less likely. A disappointment for any fan of the original movie, especially considering del Toro delivers the goods with sequels — Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Blade II. del Toro’s sequels get deeper, weirder, and substantially improve upon what came before, which I have no doubt he would’ve done with a Pacific Rim sequel.

When we interviewed Beacham for his new fantasy series, he told us what he originally wanted to see in any sequels following Raleigh, Mako, and Stacker Pentecost after they cancelled (or postponed) the apocalypse:

I talked to Guillermo about it early on, because there were a ton of crazy ideas for where it could go. We definitely wanted to do a film that took place on the other side of the rift and see what that would be like. I don’t know if you could just jump right in and do that, but maybe after a few movies. Personally, I always really wanted to see a prequel. I’m not big on prequels when it comes to other properties, but I thought it’d be fun to go back and see the first Jaegar and first fight with the Kaiju. I wanted to see what that would’ve looked like from the beginning.

The first movie concluded with the door open to go deeper into the other side of the rift, and what a fantastic location that could’ve been for a heap more of Jaegar and Kaiju brawls. From del Toro’s eyes, that probably would’ve looked spectacular. The filmmaker was originally going to direct a Pacific Rim sequel, but he stepped down from the director’s chair over scheduling issues and instead wowed the world with The Shape of Water. He called the script Beacham and himself co-wrote for Pacific Rim 2 “very different.”

Thankfully, there’s still more stories to come set in the world of Pacific Rim. Last November, Netflix announced an anime series that “follows two siblings — an idealistic teen boy and his naïve younger sister — who are forced to pilot an abandoned Jaeger across a hostile landscape in a desperate attempt to find their missing parents.” While I wish del Toro got the chance to work more of his magic on this franchise, at least we haven’t reached the end of Pacific Rim stories.