Steven DeKnight: Pacific Rim Uprising Originally had a Reference to 'The Thing'

[THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PACIFIC RIM UPRISING]

Despite not being directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pacific Rim Uprising still manages to be a fun ride, and (personally) it improved on a lot of elements that the first one was lacking. Director Steven S. DeKnight, talks about some deleted scenes with Den of Geek, and reveals that the movie almost had a reference to John Carpenter's The Thing.

DeKnight reveals:

"There was an action scene that I came up with during the Shatterdome attack that I loved. It was my beloved child, but I was like, ‘Ah right. Okay, it's going on a bit too long.' Jake and Lambert were actually gonna make it inside Gypsy, and they were gonna fight one of the Kaiju drones, and they were gonna punch it so hard that it knocked its brain out. The brain was gonna fall to the ground, sprout legs and teeth, and try to eat the cadets."

It was my nod to John Carpenter's The Thing. But once we got in, it was like, not only was it massively expensive and taken more time shooting, it's like a top hat on top of a derby. It's just, let's focus on the story. Sometimes you can just go off on tangents that are great and wonderful, but the aggregate of too much is that the audience just gets exhausted."

This is the scene that DeKnight was thinking of referencing:

I'll be honest, I wasn't really expecting Uprising to be that impressive, but DeKnight's take on the film actually went so many places that I never thought it would; I never even conceived the possibility of a Kaiju/Jaeger hybrid.

Sure some acting in the film is questionable, but John Boyega absolutely shines as Jake Pentecost, and I'm hopeful that we get to see more of him in the third Pacific Rim, should there be one down the line.

Pacific Rim Uprising is now out in theaters.

See Also: Pacific Rim Uprising Expected To Overtake Black Panther At Domestic Box Office