John Boyega Has A Very Specific Vision For A Live-Action Attack On Titan Movie

John Boyega has played a Stormtrooper, a member of the Resistance, and right now, in Pacific Rim Uprising, a Jaeger pilot, however what he really, really wants to play is a spastic Titan in a live-action Attack on Titan movie, based on the wildly popular anime.


He's even prepared to throw his hat in the ring as a producer on the project, immediately after having acquired his first producing credit on Pacific Rim Uprising — and he has ideas. "I'd certainly cast a whole bunch of Japanese actors to play the part, although it would look epic. It could be pretty darn cool," he told MTV News at a junket for his upcoming film.


Boyega would pay homage to the original anime by mimicking the fashion of Hajime Isayama, the Manga artist who created the series, in the camera shots. "I love them swinging into action and also you have a panning shot just following them, cruising on by as they cut off the napes. That could be real cool!"


If his work on Pacific Rim Uprising is any indication, his Attack on Titan live-action could be pretty dope. Playing the bacchanal son of Pacific Rim’s fallen hero Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), Boyega’s Jake Pentecost finds himself at a crossroads: prison or training the Pan Pacific Defense Corps’s newest crop of cadets. He chooses the latter and heads to the Shatterdome alongside his young, unintentional partner-in-crime, Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny), where he bestows his Jaeger piloting wisdom unto the youth — wisdom that, it turns out, is crucial.


As a producer, Boyega saw the sequel as "an expansion of what's been created already" in Guillermo del Toro’s introduction to the futuristic Kaiju-threatened world. "The unity with the Jaegers was something that we saw for a snippet in Pacific Rim 1, and right now we get to expand on actual categorize combat in terms of those Jaegers," he mentioned. "We’re right now seeing that we can find Jaeger-on-Jaeger violence in this movie, which is something that we didn’t visualize in the opening film, however we thought it was a potential because of Raleigh’s conflict with some of the pilots in the Shatterdome."


Even though del Toro passed his writing and directing duties on to Steven S. DeKnight for the sequel, Boyega mentioned the Oscar winner, who stayed on as a producer, was accessible to give feedback" during filming to make sure that the movie would stay true to the world he created and fans loved.


And for those fans who may be concerned about the transition, returning cast members Charlie Day and Burn Gorman gave their stamp of approval. "It felt like the baton was passed from Guillermo to Steven, and yes it felt like the momentum was still there," Gorman said.


The only major difference, aside from it taking place 10 years immediately following the original, was the famed addition of adolescents. Spaeny hopes the age span will give younger crowds "someone on screen that they can relate to" (you know, behind that proposed by the ethnically diverse cast), welcoming a new generation to appreciate the monsters versus mecha trope.


Pacific Rim Uprising hits theaters Friday, March 23.