Pacific Rim: What Happened To Charlie Hunnam's Raleigh Becket?
While Charlie Hunnam soon embarks on what promises to be a major film franchise with director Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire," the sci-fi adventure won't mark the former "Sons of Anarchy" star's first turn in a blockbuster action movie.
In fact, one of Hunnam's first lead turns in a major action film came opposite Idris Elba in director Guillermo del Toro's 2013 mega-monster epic "Pacific Rim." In the film, Hunnam starred as Raleigh Becket, a former pilot who, along with trainee Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), co-operate a Jaeger — a towering, robot fighting machine — that gives humanity their only hope of defeating monstrous creatures known as the Kaiju.
Yet while Raleigh and Mako prevail in their quest to defeat the Kaiju in "Pacific Rim," Raleigh was notably absent in the film's 2018 sequel, "Pacific Rim: Uprising."
The prequel novel "Pacific Rim Uprising: Ascension," as well as a book about the production, "The Art and the Making of Pacific Rim Uprising," seem to have the answers regarding Raleigh's whereabouts. According to the books, both Raleigh and Mako returned from their battles with the Kaiju in the Anteverse — a planet-like body that's connected to Earth by a portal — suffering from cancer, which only Mako survived.
"Pacific Rim Uprising" director Steve S. DeKnight, however, has a different explanation about Raleigh's fate.
Hunnam's character was originally in the Pacific Rim Uprising script
"Pacific Rim Uprising" chronicles the adventures of a new generation of Jaeger pilots, led by Jake Pentecost (John Boyega). Boyega's character is tied to the original "Pacific Rim" in that he's the son of Raleigh's colleague, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). While Rinko Kikuchi reprises her role as Mako Mori in "Pacific Rim Uprising," Raleigh Becket is only mentioned by name during the film. Addressing Hunnam's absence, Steven S. DeKnight told Collider in 2018 that a scene was filmed to explain where Raleigh was, but it didn't seem to work with test audiences.
"We tested it, and people had more questions with it in than without," DeKnight told Collider. "We also decided we didn't want to lock ourselves into anything like, 'Oh, Raleigh's dead' or 'Raleigh's retired,' which seemed a little cheap. We wanted to leave it open for the third installment of the movie in case we needed Charlie Hunnam back."
DeKnight said he wanted Hunnam to reprise Raleigh in "Pacific Rim Uprising," and, in fact, the character was part of the film's script. Unfortunately, the shooting schedule conflicted with a remake of a classic film that Hunnam had his heart set on doing — but DeKnight said he was keeping the door open for the actor if there's another "Pacific Rim" film.
"We had just finished the script with him in it, and it was announced he was doing 'Papillion,' his passion project, and unfortunately the dates were exactly the same as ours, right in the middle of when we would shoot, DeKnight said. "So, very sadly he couldn't be a part of this one, but hopefully in a future installment he will be."