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Pacific Rim: Uprising‘s big sound
By Jennifer Walden
Universal Pictures’ Pacific Rim: Uprising is a big action film, with monsters and mechs that are bigger than skyscrapers. When dealing with subject matter on this grand of a scale, there’s no better way to experience it than on a 50-foot screen with a seat-shaking sound system. But, if you missed it in theaters, you can rent it via movie streaming services starting June 5.
Pacific Rim: Uprising, directed by Steven DeKnight, is the follow-up to Pacific Rim (2013). In the first film, the planet and humanity were saved by a team of Jaeger (mech suit) pilots who battled the Kaiju (huge monsters) and closed the Breach —
an interdimensional portal located under the Pacific Ocean that allowed the Kaiju to travel from their home planet to Earth. They did so by exploding a Jaeger on the Kaiju-side of the opening. Pacific Rim: Uprising is set 10 years after the Battle of the Breach and follows a new generation of Jaeger pilots that must confront the Kaiju.
In terms of technological advancements, five years is a long time between films. It gave sound designers Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl of E² Sound the opportunity to explore technology sounds for Pacific Rim: Uprising without being shackled to what they created for the first film. “The nature of this film allowed us to just go for it and get wild and abstract. We felt like we could go in our own direction and take things to another place,” says Aadahl, who points out two exceptions.
First, they kept the sound of the Drift — the process in which two pilots become mentally connected with each other, as well as with the Jaeger. This was an important concept that was established in the first film.
The second sound the E² team kept was the computer A.I. voice of a Jaeger called Gipsy Avenger. Aadahl notes that in the original film, director Guillermo Del Toro (a fan of the Portal game series) had actress Ellen McLain as the voice of Gipsy Avenger since she did the GLaDOS computer voice from the Portal video games. “We wanted to give another tip of the hat to the Pacific Rim fans by continuing that Easter egg,” says Aadahl.
Van der Ryn and Aadahl began exploring Jaeger technology sounds while working with previs art. Before the final script was even complete, they were coming up with concepts of how Gipsy Avenger’s Gravity Sling might sound, or what Guardian Bravo’s Elec-16 Arc Whip might sound like. “That early chance to work with Steven [DeKnight] really set up our collaboration for the rest of the film,” says Van der Ryn. “It was a good introduction to how the film could work creatively and how the relationship could work creatively.”
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