Summary

  • Guillermo del Toro didn't direct Pacific Rim: Uprising because he had to leave to helm The Shape of Water when the Toronto soundstages were lost.
  • He has never watched the sequel because he says it's like watching home movies from an ex-wife - terrible if it's good and worse if it's bad.
  • The final script for Pacific Rim: Uprising was very different from Del Toro's original vision, although some elements remained.

Guillermo del Toro has revealed why he didn't direct – and never watched – Pacific Rim: Uprising. His original 2013 movie Pacific Rim was set in a world where pairs of human soldiers operate giant robots called Jaegers to fight giant monsters called Kaiju. He eventually dropped out of making the 2018 sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising and the job went to television director Stephen S. DeKnight. The movie, which starred John Boyega, failed to make a profit at the box office and earned a Rotten score of 42% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Del Toro recently spoke with original Pacific Rim. During the conversation, he revealed that he had to drop out of making Uprising because a deposit wasn't put down on the Toronto soundstages he wanted to use, meaning they'd be lost for months, and he had to leave to helm his future Best Picture winner The Shape of Water. He also revealed that he's never seen the movie because "that’s like watching home movies from your ex-wife." Read his full quote below:

We were getting ready to do it, it was different from the first, but it had a continuation of many of the things that I was trying to do. Then what happened is—I mean, this is why life’s crazy, right?—they had to give a deposit for the stages at 5pm or we would lose the stages in Toronto for many months. So, I said, “Don't forget we're gonna lose the stages,” and five o'clock came and went, and we lost the stages. They said, “Well, we can shoot it in China.” And I go, “What do you mean we?” [Laughs] “I’ve gotta go do Shape of Water.”

I didn't see the final movie because that’s like watching home movies from your ex-wife. It is terrible if they're good and worse if they're bad, or the opposite. You don't wanna know. So, I didn't see it. I did read the final script, and it was very different. Some of the elements were the same but very different.

Pacific Rim: Uprising Is A Unique Anomaly In Guillermo del Toro's Career

Pacific Rim Uprising Rise Up Poster Cropped

Guillermo del Toro is no stranger to projects going unmade or ending up being helmed by a different director. He has been attached to quite a few projects like this including the Hobbit trilogy (which was eventually directed by Peter Jackson), as well as many other movies that didn't end up making it to the screen at all. However, Pacific Rim: Uprising is a unique anomaly in his career.

Although Del Toro has made his fair share of franchise movies, Uprising is the first time that a direct theatrical sequel to one of his original movies was not helmed by the director himself. The last time that happened, with 2004's Hellboy and its follow-up Hellboy: The Golden Army, Del Toro was in the director's chair for both titles. While sequels have been made to his movies Blade II and Mimic, the former was already a sequel to a movie he didn't direct and the latter's sequels were both direct-to-DVD, making Uprising's wide release an entirely unique situation for him.

Pacific Rim: Uprising's failure at the box office makes it unlikely that Del Toro will return for a possible Pacific Rim 3. In the meantime, he has only directed movies that have not had sequels developed, including Shape of Water, Pinocchio, and the remake Nightmare Alley. While it's possible that another sequel could eventually be developed from his work, given his recent comments it seems unlikely that he would watch it if he isn't directly involved.

Source: Collider