‘Pacific Rim: Maelstrom’ Recruits Zhang Jin To Help Re-Cancel The Apocalypse
Pacific Rim: Maelstrombegan shooting earlier this month, but the cast has only grown larger since cameras started to roll. Nick Tarabayjoined the cast just a few days agoand now Chinese actor and martial artistZhang Jinhas been added to the international ensemble.
The news of his casting comes our way courtesy ofVariety, but like so much of directorSteven S. DeKnight’sPacific Rimsequel, the details remain fully under wraps. We can’t tell who he’s playing in the film, but we can tell you that Zhang Jin was a stunt double onCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonbefore lending his athleticism to 2002’sHero. His more recent credits includeIp Man 3,Kill Zone 2, andThe Grandmaster, for which he won Best Supporting Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
This casting is indicative of three aspects driving thePacific Rimfranchise at this point. First, Zhang Jin’s casting simply doubles down the first film’s international cast of characters, which saw people from the United States, England, China, Russia, and Japan all coming together to wage a war against dimension-hopping monsters by piloting giant robots (have we forgotten just how nuttyPacific Rim’s core concept really is?). While its heart was in the right place, the first film dropped the ball on this angle, rendering many of the supporting characters as one-dimensional sketches before quickly killing them off. Hopefully, the sequel can rectify that.
Second, the inclusion of Zhang Jin alongside other Chinese actors likeJing Tian, Wesley Wong, Lily Ji, Chen Zitong, Lan Yingying and Qian Yong Chen is only further evidence of the growing Chinese film market, which has become increasingly important to the bottom line of most major movies. The firstPacific Rimwas only a modest success at the box office – a sequel only exists because it’s being built to truly appeal to Chinese audiences.
And finally, Legendary Pictures, who are producingPacific Rim: Maelstrom, was acquired by China’s Wanda Group earlier this year. There is still plenty of traditional Hollywood here (Universal will distribute the film), but this robots-versus-monsters sequel represents the changing seas of studio filmmaking in a very major way. International co-productions with diverse casts are the way of the future.Pacific Rimmay be about a world where characters cross borders to save the world, but that optimistic outlook is a side effect of parent companies attempting to make movies for audiences spanning the globe.
Anyway, the only thing we know for sure is thatPacific Rim: Maelstromwill also starJohn Boyega,Scott Eastwood, andCailee Spaeny, with Boyega playing the son of Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost, a key character from the first film. We literally know nothing else, but feel free to peruse thesefreshly snapped photosof Boyega on set for clues.
