Charlie Hunnam hopes Pacific Rim 2 remedies spectacle over storytelling

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The movie chronicling the war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures didn't exactly make TRANSFORMERS box-office dollars, but PACIFIC RIM did do well enough to warrant a sequel. Aside from not having a license to rely on, there were those who felt the lack of success was due to the characeters being painted in broad strokes. That's putting it mildly, but I'm also not in agreement with those folks. PACIFIC RIM star Charlie Hunnam , on the other hand, is. He recently addressed the 'spectacle over substance' battle that big-budget movies face and how he looks back on his kaiju adventure.

Charlie Hunnam on the effect and story of PACIFIC RIM:

I think world creation and monster creation and all of that stuff is exciting as a secondary element of storytelling. When it becomes more important than storytelling, I get very nervous, and you sort of lose me a little bit. Although we tried very hard on PACIFIC RIM to marry those two elements, I do feel like ultimately it got weighed heavier on the side of spectacle than storytelling. I hope that we are able to remedy that a little bit going into the second. Not to say I wasn’t proud of the film. I really liked it, and I felt like it delivered exactly what it was supposed to. But I do feel like we could have maybe plumbed the depths of the character and the storytelling a little bit more.

While I found Guillermo's simplistic (not stupid) style to fit PACIFIC RIM like a glove, I realize that the second film will have to have a little more meat on it in terms of characterization in order for it to feel warranted. I'm not worried about the creatures or the action, as that's del Toro's bread and butter, so I hope Hunnam's concerns are addressed (if he still has them) once the script is finalized.

PACIFIC RIM 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on August 4, 2017.

One sequence from PACIFIC RIM that obliterates anything attempted in the bloated Transformers flicks.