Its easy to see why Carmichael caught the eye of Steven DeKnight, director of Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, the second film in the series that pits giant robots against giant monsters. He recently brought her on board to co-write the movie with Kira Snyder (The 100). He told me I was hired to help provide banter, warmth and cleverness, Carmichael recalled. But DeKnight and his colleagues were also impressed when Carmichael met with them and immediately offered several ideas for what the next generation of Jaegers should be like.
Some unanticipated questions arose for Carmichael when she was writing about giant robots. For example, the Jaegers are variously called she, he, or it, depending both on the Jaeger and the character speaking. And when a new robot came into play, I would do this whole mental calculus about what gender it was, and whether the character speaking even assigned gender to robots. (She made use of a helpful table on the Pacific Rim wiki). Writing kaiju was more straightforward, said Carmichael. For me the most important thing about a kaiju that there is one moment in the fight where you really feel how big it is. The correct size for a kaiju is bigger than you ever thought possible.
The best part of writing Pacific Rim: Maelstrom has been adding humor to the action. I have been writing action sequences my whole life and when I sat down to write them for screenplays it came easily and quickly, Carmichael said. Expect fight scenes that have some of that Inigo Montoya magic.
