The remaining Jaegers are relocated to Hong Kong under the command of Marshal Stacker Pentecost who plans to try to destroy the Breach using a tactical nuclear weapon, despite unsuccessful previous attempts.

Four Jaegers remain operational – the refurbished Gipsy Danger, the Russian Cherno Alpha, the Chinese Crimson Typhoon, and the Australian Striker Eureka piloted by father-and-son team, Herc and Chuck Hansen.

[37] Brad William Henke and Larry Joe Campbell portray members of an Alaskan construction team that Raleigh joins after retiring from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.

When pilots drift, they quickly gain intimate knowledge of each other's memories and feelings, and have no choice but to accept them; del Toro found this concept's dramatic potential compelling.

The idea of the movie is just for us to trust each other, to cross over barriers of color, sex, beliefs, whatever, and just stick together.Del Toro acknowledged this message's simplicity, but said he would have liked to have seen adventure films with similar morals when he was a child.

[19][44] Both Becket and Mori have suffered profound personal tragedies; one of the script's central ideas is that two damaged people can metaphorically "become one", with their figurative missing pieces connecting almost like a puzzle.

[47]Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wai Chee Dimock connected the film's central theme of togetherness to its recurring image of missing shoes, stating the "utopian dream" driving the characters is that puny humans like us could be "together"—not only in the specific neural melding that must take place between the two Jaeger co-pilots but also, more generally speaking, in a fractal web of resemblance, filling the world with copies of ourselves at varying orders of magnitude and with varying degrees of re-expression, beginning with the shoes on our feet.

[46] The script also received an uncredited rewrite from Neil Cross, who previously created the Idris Elba-starring drama series Luther and wrote the del Toro-produced horror film Mama.

The unused footage explored the characters and their arcs in greater detail, but the director felt it was necessary to strike a balance, stating: "We cannot pretend this is Ibsen with monsters and giant robots.

[70] Del Toro envisioned Pacific Rim as an earnest, colorful adventure story, with an "incredibly airy and light feel", in contrast to the "super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie".

The director focused on "big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals" and action that would satisfy an adult audience, but has stated his "real hope" is to introduce the Kaiju and mecha genres to a generation of children.

He cautioned his designers not to turn to films like Godzilla, Gamera, or The War of the Gargantuas for inspiration, stating: "I didn't want to be postmodern, or referential, or just belong to a genre.

[7] While del Toro's other films feature ancient or damaged monsters, the Kaiju lack scars or any evidence of prior culture, indicating that they are engineered creations rather than the result of an evolutionary system.

[43] Leatherback, the bouncer-like Kaiju which spews electro-magnetic charges, is a favorite of del Toro, who conceived it as a "brawler with this sort of beer belly"; the lumbering movements of gorillas were used as a reference.

Del Toro hired Academy Award winners John Knoll and Hal T. Hickel, both known for their work on the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Shot using RED Epic cameras on 3D rigs, the scenes produced by 32TEN involved the creation of a quarter-scale office building interior which was destroyed by the fist of a Jaeger robot which was on a separate pneumatically controlled rig, as well as a sequence which depicted several rows of seats in a soccer stadium being blown apart as a Jaeger lands in the stadium, which was created by using quarter-scale seats blown apart by air cannons.

[82] Del Toro selected Djawadi based on his works on Prison Break, Iron Man and Game of Thrones, stating: "His scores have a grandeur, but they have also an incredible sort of human soul."

[85] Two songs appear in the film which are not included on the soundtrack are "Just Like Your Tenderness" by Luo Xiaoxuan, and the ending theme "Drift", performed by Blake Perlman featuring Rza.

The website's critical consensus reads, "It may sport more style than substance, but Pacific Rim is a solid modern creature feature bolstered by fantastical imagery and an irresistible sense of fun.

[127] Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called the film "the work of a humanist ready to banish cynicism for compassion", saying that del Toro "drives the action with a heartbeat".

[128] Keith Uhlich of Time Out called the film "pure, pleasurable comic-book absurdity", and noted that del Toro had lent the proceedings a "plausible humanity" lacking in most of summer 2013's destruction-heavy blockbusters.

He said the Kaijus' civilian victims make a "palpably personal impression", deeming one scene with Mako Mori "as mythically moving as anything in the mecha anime, like Neon Genesis Evangelion, that the director emulates with expert aplomb.

"[129] The Village Voice's Stephanie Zacharek called it "summer entertainment with a pulse", praising its "dumbly brilliant" action and freedom from elitism, but noted the story is predictable and suggested del Toro's time would be better spent on more visionary films.

[135] The New Yorker's Anthony Lane's verdict read as "It is possible to applaud Pacific Rim for the efficacy of its business model while deploring the tale that has been engendered—long, loud, dark, and very wet.

"[136] The San Francisco Chronicle's Mike LaSalle reacted extremely negatively by stating "If this is the best we can do in terms of movies—if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences—maybe we should just turn over the cameras and the equipment to the alien dinosaurs and see what they come up with ... Director Guillermo del Toro, who gave us Pan's Labyrinth not too many years ago, used to be known as an artistic and discerning filmmaker, despite his affection for blockbuster action and grotesqueness.

"[137] Slant Magazine's Ed Gonzalez, who said the film lacked poignancy, compared it to a video game: "a stylish but programmatic ride toward an inevitable final boss battle".

[138] TheWrap's Alonso Duralde criticized the choice to set most battles at night or during the rain, feeling it detracted from the action, and said the comic relief actors—Day, Gorman, and Perlman—stole the film from the less interesting leads.

[144] Science fiction author William Gibson called the film "A ravishing display of intelligent, often wonderfully witty visual design, every frame alive with coherent language, in the service of what is at heart a children's story ... A baroque that doesn't curdle, that never fetishizes itself.

[146][147] A sequel titled Pacific Rim Uprising, directed by Steven S. DeKnight and produced by Del Toro, with Kikuchi, Day, and Gorman reprising their roles, and Universal Pictures taking over the film distribution, was released on March 23, 2018.

On October 27, 2020, the anime was officially titled Pacific Rim: The Black, and would follow two siblings that are forced to pilot an abandoned Jaeger "across a hostile landscape in a desperate attempt to find their missing parents".