Pacific Rim Uprising: The Biggest Unanswered Questions

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for director Steven S. DeKnight’s Pacific Rim Uprising, in theaters now.

In 2013, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim saw humanity defending itself against a swath of inter-dimensional Kaiju using giant robots called Jaegers. These giant monsters invaded Earth from an alien world called the Anteverse, sent by overlords known as the Precursors. Luckily, the breach was sealed and the monsters that had come through were all killed, and thus Earth was saved.

Or perhaps not.

With Steven S. DeKnight now in the director's seat, Pacific Rim Uprising raises the stakes even more as we learn just how the Precursors adapted for a second crack at invasion. This time, it doesn't involve Kaiju alone, but instead, they lay very intricate plan that ties in human-brainwashing and the sneaky use of a few Jaeger-Kaiju hybrids, all meant to take out the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and their Rangers, and once more open the rift up for bloodthirsty Kaiju to come over.

Thankfully, mankind prevails over the monsters yet again. But amid all this new chaos, we're still left with quite a few big questions regarding the events of the sequel.

Really... Where's Raleigh, Exactly?

Charlie Hunnam's Raleigh Becket helped seal the breach in Pacific Rim, becoming a legend in the process. As a result, fans understandably expected him back for the second chapter. But due to production delays, a scheduling conflict arose with Hunnam’s passion project, Papillon, and he was forced to drop out. This parting with Legendary Pictures was amicable though, and the studio indicated that his character could return for future battles later on in the franchise.

And so, Raleigh is indeed written out of this story as having left the Corps during the peacetime in between films. His absence is quite vague though, because Uprising hints that while many pilots went into the private sector with companies such as Shao Corporation, Raleigh may have actually gone to the United Nations to take up a diplomacy role. DeKnight makes this plot point ambiguous for whatever reason, leaving us truly wondering about the protagonist's exact whereabouts.

With a new wave of Kaiju attacking and Raleigh's co-pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), overseeing the Rangers, a more specific and detailed reason should have been given for his absence, even if there's some hope of him returning for a potential third film.

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How Did Newt Actually Open The Breach?

Charlie Day's Dr. Newt Geiszler returns and as we suspected, he's the villain. In Pacific Rim, Newt 'drifted' with a Kaiju brain to stop the invasion but this mind-meld actually results in the Precursors mind-controlling him. As a result, evil Newt's been retrofitting Shao Corporation's Jaeger drones with Kaiju DNA, creating lethal hybrids. The other big twist though is that Newt's drones are actually equipped to open new breaches for invading Kaiju.

This is... problematic. Even though Newt is under alien control, there's still a lot of science and hard technology that would be required to open such a rift. In the first film, Newt lacked the research tools and equipment, which didn't even exist on Earth, to understand the breach, so while now, he'd have the inside knowledge on how to go about creating these portals, actual execution would still be far-fetched. The movie simply glosses over these issues in Newt's master plan, and never actually addresses where he gets the tools to pull off the job.

How Did Newt Fool The Shao Corporation?

While Newt infecting the drones with Kaiju DNA feels a big deus ex machina, another issue that isn't well-explained with regards to his scheme is just how does he manage to pull the wool over Shao Corporation's eyes? When he finally reveals his nefarious plot to his former bestie and fellow scientist Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), as well as his new boss Liwen Shao (Jing Tian), Newt simply says that he uploaded some code to the drones to re-purpose them.

That's a stretch because there were literally thousands of engineers working on and monitoring the drones, who were way more hands-on than Newt. So it's pretty clear the company had a firm grasp on their new weapons. Also, infecting all these drones would have required physical tampering, not just backend corruption, so how did Newt do all this and slip past the extensive security systems that Shao Corporations has? Creating these hybrid monsters would have required some assistance outside of the computer room and we're left wondering how Newt accomplishes all this while rolling solo and apparently, invisible.

Where Was Jake During The First Kaiju War?

In Uprising, everything comes full-circle regarding the heroism that runs in the Pentecost family. However, just before Jake (John Boyega) ends up living up to Stacker's (Idris Elba) legacy, we learn that he was actually kicked out the Corps by his father for his careless attitude just before the first War. The thing is, Jake's whereabouts right after are left obscured, making the retcon about him being a disgraced Ranger feel a tad forced.

Sure, we know he eventually turned into a scavenger, but insight into what Jake actually did when he was booted from the military would have added depth and context to the character, especially given that Stacker never mentioned his son as a Ranger before. Neither did Mako, so to hear them also playing up a brother-sisterly bond just doesn't feel organic. Specific details about Jake's history would have better connected him to Pacific Rim, further helping us to understand why he wasn't called upon years prior when the Rangers' ranks were limited, and his father's team had to risk it all to cancel the first apocalypse.

In theaters now, director Steven S. DeKnight’s Pacific Rim Uprising stars John Boyega, Rinko Kikuchi, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, Karan Brar, Ivanna Sakhno, Zhang Jin, Zhu Zhu, Burn Gorman and Charlie Day.