Looks Like There are Lightsabers in 'Pacific Rim Uprising" 

The latest poster for Pacific Rim Uprising shows four giant Jaegers wielding all sorts of advanced weaponry, and one of them wields what looks like a giant lightsaber.

Legendary Pictures released the new poster on Tuesday to tease the release of a new trailer on Wednesday. Though the blade itself is partially obscured by another Jaeger’s gravity cannon arm, the poster offers a fairly clean look at the orange Jaeger known as Saber Athena.

We know from the panel at New York Comic Con over the summer that each of Pacific Rim Uprising’s new Jaegers has its own signature weapon. The movie’s official website even offers brief descriptions of each, along with blueprints for each giant robot.

Saber Athena, as it turns out, is “the sleekest and most elegant Jaeger ever created.” The “fastest in the fleet,” Saber Athena carries two twin plasma blades on its back that can be joined together into a longsword — which is what we see in the poster.

Saber Athena’s fighting style is described as “acrobatic,” which could mean it’s a spiritual successor to Crimson Typhoon from the first movie.

Here’s the new poster in full:

Unlike the chain sword we saw in the first Pacific Rim, these blades radiate with glowing blue plasma and don’t compact in any way. The material looks remarkably similar to the “graphene arc whip” wielded by Guardian Bravo (the Jaeger at the center of the poster in the background).

New Jaeger technologies, like arc, no doubt emerged as innovations within the ten years that passed since the first movie occurred. We haven’t really seen these twin blades cut anything just yet, but if they’re anything like the arc whip, then they must shock and burn anything they touch.

They’re probably not quite the same as a superhot blue lightsaber from Star Wars. Instead, they probably more closely resemble the riot control batons wielded by members of the first order that the, like the stormtrooper that confronted Finn in The Force Awakens or Captain Phasma in The Last Jedi.

Maybe we’ll know more about this and other weapons when the next trailer drops tomorrow.

Pacific Rim Uprising will be released in theaters March 23, 2018.