Here’s a new promotional video for Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel to the original post-apocalyptic monster movie where humanity must fight off extinction with the enormous war machines known as Jaegers. John Boyega of Star Wars: The Last Jedi leads the cast of world-saving pilots, but one actor that was curiously left out of much of the movie’s footage shown so far was Rinko Kikuchi, whose integral character had been a welcome presence in the first Pacific Rim and whose absence was sorely felt by this viewer when the sequel began rolling out promo for its 2018 release.
Right off the bat, director Steven S. DeKnight (Marvel’s Daredevil series), who takes the reigns from creative maestro Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water) for this entry, namechecks some of the godfathers of tokusatsu, the kaiju king Godzilla and the kaiju-busting Ultraman.
In addition to Mori’s heroic reprisal, the film sports an extraordinary amount of Asian star-power, including Jing Tian (The Great Wall), Zhang Jin (The Grandmaster), Kim Jeong-Hoon (God of War, Zhao Yun), Wesley Wong, Lily Ji, Chen Zitong, Lan Yingying, and more.
Of particular interest to us here at Henshin Justice Unlimited is that the film will also feature an appearance from actor Mackenyu, whose father Sonny Chiba was the subject of recent note when he met Keanu Reeves of John Wick. Mackenyu is known to tokusatsu fans as the future son of Shinnosuke, who inherits the monster-fighting detective’s superpowers in Kamen Rider Drive: Surprise Future. No stranger to a dystopian warzone, we look forward to seeing what he can do in the Uprising realm, whether his part is big or small.
Speaking of big, here’s a closer look at two of the film’s new giant monsters:
Shrikethorn
Hakuja
They look so friendly!
This may be one of the first times that a featurette about a movie excites me more than the trailer. Typically, I loathe these sorts of pieces, where filmmakers sit down and tell you why you should care before you’ve even had a chance to really immerse yourself in the thing on your own. But Pacific Rim, like the gnarly creatures who invade the world of the film, is a strange beast. Maybe it needed something different to truly build my excitement. Whatever that special ingredient was, I’m back on the hype train after some mild cynicism managed to seep through in recent weeks. Let’s do this.
Uprising also stars Cailee Spailey and Scott Eastwood in new roles, while Charlie Day and Burn Gorman return from the original film to lend another dose of quirky science power to the fight against the Kaiju.
Pacific Rim: Uprising arrives March 23, 2018.
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