Apparently I'm in the minority here (well, there's only three of us!), but I'm seeing it in theaters, I dug the first one and it owned that massive screen.

Anyway, Uproxx article: More Than Just Monster Punching: What 'Pacific Rim 2' Absolutely Needs.  Sure there'll be agreements on most of these points.

Guillermo del Toro Discusses The PACIFIC RIMverse’s ‘Long Arc’!!

We recently received word that not only would a PACIFIC RIM sequel be arriving April 2017, but we’d also get a new animated series and a continuation of the comic book/graphic novel approach (begun around the first film’s release in PACIFIC RIM: YEAR ZERO).  And, it seems, a number of other toys are in the works as well.  In short:  there’s not merely a movie sequel on the way, but substantial and calculated franchise development. 

Guillermo del Toro has recently been hinting at what we might expect from a PACIFIC RIM animated show (insinuating that a few of the characters introduced there might spill over into the live action movie sequel); his recent discussion with Collider provides even more illumination. 

“We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters.  I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus.  We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did.  And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”

Interesting. Sounding like they’re developing a ‘whole’ universe across multiple platforms, rather than a ‘comic verse,’ a ‘cartoon verse,’ etc. -   a smart, but not necessarily taken-for-granted move which oughta lead to a much more well-rounded mythology (rather than the patchwork effect we see in something like, say, DOCTOR WHO or STAR WARS). 

I like the idea that the drifting is the core technology that they'll be following, since it's very direct with the characters: it's about their backgrounds and personalities, and forces people to work together and confront each other.  It'll be interesting to see what else the tech can do...